Can Genie+ and LL Replace Need to Arrive Early?

[WaltsMartini]

We will be traveling May 7-12, park days May 8-11. We plan on MK, Epcot, HS, AK one park per day.

The plan was that the MK and HS days would be early rope drop days, but Epcot previously had an early open time of 9:30, allowing us a little more of a leisurely morning. However, park hours have changed and all parks now have an early open time of 8:30 am - meaning we need to leave our hotel (Poly) by at least 7:30 each day to be at the parks by 8 and have a good “rope drop spot.” I don’t particularly want to get up at 6am everyday for a week!

So - for Epcot and AK, if we use Genie + and individual ride purchases in a smart way, can we NOT do rope drop for those parks and still have a pleasant time?

For EPCOT, we would grab LL for Frozen as early as possible (9-9:30) and buy Remy’s; as soon as leaving Frozen would do LL for Soarin’. The hope is that we could leave Poly at 8:30, rather than leaving at 7:30 to queue up for rope drop and do Frozen without LL. we do NOT want to do Test Track or Mission Space; do want to do the Seas, Spaceship Earth, and come back after noon break for World Showcase in the evening.

For AK, we would purchase both the safari and FoP, safari for 9-9:30 and Avatar for 11-11:30, and leave Poly via Uber around 8 or 8:30. We mostly want to do the animal stuff at AK, so not concerned about having Genie Plus for the day.

In your opinion, is this an ok plan, or are we missing out by not rope dropping at Epcot and AK?

 

[PalmettoPath]

In my opinion, rope dropping will always provide you with maximum opportunity. Simply because at the very least you can make your way quickly to a popular attraction and check that one off your list with a wait time that will usually be relatively short. You can only do so much with the LL and ILL options. Rope dropping basically gives you a third (and sometimes fourth) guarantee right from the start. After you book your LL and ILL you will know what you didn't get and that can be your first rope drop ride. Of course it all depends on how many attractions you really want to do in any given park. But if you're goal is to maximize your ride potential, then rope drop plus the paid options is what I would do.

 

[godfather927]

I think to a certain degree it does, but it also depends on your priorities and circumstances. For an Epcot day where you really want to ride both TT and FFE in the same day, you basically must RD since you have basically no chance to book both of those LLs on the same day. But, speaking from personal experience with young kids, rope dropping is basically a more drawn out form of waiting on standby anyway. The difference is that the waiting is spread out among different checkpoints, like for the longer bus lines, or park entrance lines, or at the actual rope drop section inside the park, but it's still there. So while there's definite time savings over getting to the park after it opens and waiting standby, it's still a lot of waiting compared to just getting a LL / ILL for that same ride. So in our case, at a park like MK or AK where we can hit all of the big attractions we have prioritized via LL / ILL, there's no need to rope drop at all. The one park where you will most likely to need to RD is HS since the LL availability is the most scarce.

 

[lostprincess_danie]

Your plan depends quite a lot on guaranteed LL times which may or may not be available when you want them. Per a PP, early entry is like another opportunity available for you to get the rides you want. In case your Genie+ plans go awry.

For AK, we would purchase both the safari and FoP, safari for 9-9:30 and Avatar for 11-11:30, and leave Poly via Uber around 8 or 8:30. We mostly want to do the animal stuff at AK, so not concerned about having Genie Plus for the day.

Safari is not available for individual purchase as an ILL. You will need to buy Genie+, which may not be of value if you don't plan to use it for anything else.

I don’t particularly want to get up at 6am everyday for a week!

You will need to be up at 7am on your AK days if you want to snag a ILL for FOP.

 

[3gr8boys]

I agree with previous poster not to expect LL times to exactly meet your wants- but if you edit your "my day" to have just the two attractions you will be looking for at 7:00 and study the availability patterns before your trip, you should be in good shape. ( patterns as in is there still a 7:17 drop for FOP, what shows up for FEA at 7:00 vs 7:07, etc) As PP said, you will have to be ready to get your ILL and first Genie+ at 7:00.

We found genie+ advantageous at AK because we the time we wanted to ride the safari had a very long wait (I remember that it was 105 minutes when we gathered for our 11:00 tour) and we wanted to ride NRJ. (Not to mention we managed to score FEA and TT for our Epcot hop with afternoon refreshing.)

Not being interested in TT makes Epcot easier for you. Last week we had good days at Epcot and AK (7:30 park open, yeesh!) without arriving during ETPE. We too wanted to actively manage getting enough sleep- we did RD ETPE for MK and HS.

ETA we were there during a Spring Break week, park days 4/3 to 4/8.

 

[DisneySyd]

But, speaking from personal experience with young kids, rope dropping is basically a more drawn out form of waiting on standby anyway.

Agreed. Also, I spend enough mornings corralling kids out the door for school…I don’t want to do it on vacation.
I’m going to offer a contrarian approach that worked for us. Since you’re staying deluxe, you can take advantage of extended evening hours at Epcot on the 9th and MK on the 11th.
We did Epcot on March 14th (crazy busy week) and accomplished all the rides you listed without Genie+/$ILL.
7pm - arrived and rode Spaceship Earth (couple minute wait)
- rode Nemo (walk on)
- rode Soarin (went straight into theatre C queue)
- rode Figment (couple minute wait)
- rode TT 3 times single rider (last ride photo showed 9:37pm) - you could watch fireworks instead
- rode Frozen (ride photo at 10:06pm)
- rode Remy (longest wait cause it had been down earlier…off at 10:54pm and could have done it again with 5 min wait but we were done).
- walked back to YC
We don’t rope drop so I was the only one up the next morning at 7am to book FOP and our 1st Genie+ (for stacking rides that afternoon).

 

[DisneySyd]

Forgot to mention that the risk to my strategy is if any rides are down there is less opportunity for them to recover vs having booked them earlier in the day. This wasn’t our only day at Epcot so wasn’t a big deal for us. Both Frozen and Remy went down just before park close but were up again around 9:15ish.

 

[DisneySyd]

We found genie+ advantageous at AK because we the time we wanted to ride the safari had a very long wait (I remember that it was 105 minutes when we gathered for our 11:00 tour)

We also found it useful due to long lines (we arrived just after lunch).
As well, it allowed us to ride some rides twice while only really lining up once (once Genie+, once standby)