Same Day FP for FoP - admit that I don't try that often but still got 1 for 2 of past 3 trips (SDD most recent Aug trip). This is still the toughest FP to get same day and wouldn't expect it to happen.
60 day FP picking - Not for everyone, but we pick our park days after prioritizing FoP. In that if we have 8 park days, we work around what days we're able to get FoP after both of us trying at 60 days from different days (working backwards) simultaneously. On the days we couldn't get FoP, we went for SDD, and filled the neither days with 7DMT. Think we initially had 3 FoPs, 2 SDD, 2 7DMT, 1 TSM.
Change in AK hours - We've been going to WDW late Aug/early Sept nearly every yr and expect a change in hrs to be announced. I think it was about 30 days out, several FPs for FoP were added when the park was to be open from 830pm to 1030pm. We paid attn and added a 9am FoP for day 1, and moved up an afternoon FoP to 905am (ended up with 4 FoPs for our 8 days last mo.).
Rope Drop - We still RD ea. of the 4 days we went to AK to pair with our FPs and go back to back. We target about 90-75 min before park opens. There was a lot of running... but I was able to speed walk and still be 1st or close to 1st at rope. Most days, RD guests began walking 15 min before park open (through taps 45 min before). But there was a day they let us walk 30 min before, and we got off FoP, even with the length of the queue and ride and 7 minutes of videos, and still had to wait for the grace period on our 9am FP to go on it a 2nd time at 8:54. We were surprised that the bridge to AK has been closed off both ways for us. Varied, but we saw 180 min at 930am posted and 60 min at 9am (sometimes tempting for a 3rd time at 1 hr). The benefit of waiting, say 60 min total at RD (arriving 745am for a 9am open and getting on at 845am) vs. waiting only 45 min for Last Ride is that everyone is behind you for every subsequent ride and your aggregate wait time for the other rides are reduced. But there's an argument for RD at a different park and coming back to AK in the evening... or sleeping more.
Last Ride - I've talked to guests who spent 2 hrs and FoP CMs stating it's been about 45min and + as a typical. Few ppl went on with a 20 min wait. we've only tried Last Ride once. It was posted at over an hr and it was actually 45min. We only tried this to see Pandora at night, and the entire queue vs. the shorter RD/FP queue. This is something we'd do, but we tend to park hop from AK in the evenings to MK or HS and our 30-40 FoPs from the past 3 trips have all been RD and FP.
When RD or Last Ride not an option - 1-5pm is supposedly a low period between the am rush of most guests wanting to go on FoP 1st and evening park hoppers. 90-120min (90 and under the target) is supposed to be common at this time vs. the 180 min I see at 930-1030am.
Sundays - EMH is on Sat & Mon at AK, making Sundays potentially a less busy day to visit AK.
