EPCOT Plans & Wait Time for Test Track During Early Entry

[nighttowll]

I was playing around with Touring Plans, and it kept telling me if I did Test Track 1st during early entry, it would be a 20 minute wait.

Does that sound right? It seems long for first ride at early entry rope drop if you are in the front half of the crowd. I can’t remember, maybe that queue is just that long?

Also, if we decided to do single rider, is that something that gets long later on or could we hit that with around a 20 minute wait around lunch?

I’d rather do Soarin first and Test Track later if I can get a LL at 11:00 or we can do single rider without too much of a wait.

Day is forecasted to be a 5.

My thought was:
7:00 reserve Remy for afternoon/ evening if I can. I don’t want to rope drop that one. Too convoluted to get to IG, and too much backtracking.

Early Entry Rope Drop - Test Track

Soarin
Living with the Land
Seas with Nemo
Moana

11:00 either reserve Test Track if we didn’t get it in the morning or Frozen if one is available, if neither just see what’s available, probably Spaceship Earth

If time still before lunch, Spaceship Earth or TT single rider?

11:30 lunch Corral Reef
The rest of the day, we plan to wing it. Might go back to the hotel after lunch, not sure. Might just wander around looking at topiaries or the countries. I’ll try to use LL that I can get for now or stack. I’m not sure depending on availability.

Don’t want to do GoG and Frozen isn’t a must. The aquarium exhibits and garden stuff is, so that’s why I wanted to do that stuff first even though it’s not where I would typically go.

We’ve got dinner reservations at 8:15 at La Hacienda. Does anyone know if they will let you check in early? I’m going to keep looking for an earlier reservation, but if I can’t get one, I was wondering about just showing up maybe 15 minutes early. I figure every little bit helps. I know 8:00 is still too late to get a window, but I’d just like to make sure we are seated and eating by 9:00.

Any thoughts?

 

[scrappinginontario]

If you’re going to ride TT via single rider you can easily wait and do it later. We’ve done it 5+ times and the wait was always under 10 mins for single rider and often almost walk-on.

 

[g-dad66]

I think Test Track always posts a 20 minute wait within the first 5 minutes of Early Entry.

On December 16, we did Test Track at Early Entry (sure enough, wait was posted as 20 minutes). I'm not sure what time we exited the ride, but we were entering the Soarin standby line at 9:15. So I think we must have exited Test Track at about 9:00 to 9:05.

It rained all that day, so crowds were relatively light.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I wouldn’t waste EE on TT if single rider is an option for you.

 

[buzzgirls&dad]

If La Hacienda is fully booked you will not be seated early and very well may be seated late as has happened to us a few times. If you are seated on time you should be eating by 9:00.

 

[lentesta]

I was playing around with Touring Plans, and it kept telling me if I did Test Track 1st during early entry, it would be a 20 minute wait.

Does that sound right? It seems long for first ride at early entry rope drop if you are in the front half of the crowd. I can’t remember, maybe that queue is just that long?

It's probably a little on the high side, but I wouldn't expect less than 10. We've got recent actual waits during Early Entry of between 8 and 14 mins.

Part of the difficulty in making rope-drop estimates is that your actual wait varies considerably depending on whether you're at the front, the back, or somewhere in the middle of the rope-drop crowd.

For example, at Early Theme Park Entry rope drop at Seven Dwarfs Mine Train on July 1, 2023, it took 36 minutes for the last person in that initial rope drop group to enter the actual 7DMT line. (The first 600 guests entered the line in about 9 minutes, so a decent estimate for that group size was probably close to 2,000 people. And I'm using this example because I'm working with that data right now.)

So all 2,000 people could plausibly claim they "rope dropped" 7DMT. The last person in that group had a vastly longer wait than the first.

We're considering adding a checkbox to the touring plans along the lines of "I hereby swear I will do everything in my power to be at the front of the rope-drop crowd for this plan" to help with these estimates.

Anyway, the other thing I'd suggest before you head over to Test Track is to ask a CM if it's running. In 2023, Test Track was offline at rope drop around 27% of the time, or roughly 2 days out of every week. It's the worst ride at EPCOT for that statistic.