Flights of Passage 7:30AM

[vleeth]

I'm debating taking a group of 8 to FoP at rope drop on the first week of June. I recently watched a youtube video of a single person going at rope drop and they waited 40 mins to get onto the ride. Is that normal?

 

[Stacybaeasm]

Are you staying on property or off? Do you mean Early entry rope drop or regular rope drop? If it is regular rope drop, a 40 minute wait is actually pretty low.

 

[vleeth]

No this was with early entry and we will have early entry.

 

[meremac]

This isn't terribly abnormal depending on where they were positioned and how far in advance they arrived for Early Entry. If they arrived right at or shortly before Early Entry, they were probably near the back of the pack, so a 40-minute (or more) wait could definitely be possible.

 

[vleeth]

I rewatched the video and she arrived at 6:57 for a 7:00 opening (park opened to all guest at 7:30.)

 

[Smugpugmug]

I would say that's a typical wait time for being at the back of the rope drop pack. If you want to be in the front I would say you would need to arrive an hour or so before the beginning of early entry.

 

[ars0525]

Getting there early for early entry is important. Then walking with a purpose to the ride entrance when they do start opening the park. If you stop to take pictures, go to the bathroom or look at things along the way just remember that's more people getting ahead of you in line. I hate to think like that so you just have to prioritize in those moments. Some days I am on a mission at entry & other times I step aside to let others pass & take a more leisurely pace.

But yes a 40 minute wait even at opening can be normal. You have a lot of other people with the same game plan as you.

 

[Mle8308]

I would say that's a typical wait time for being at the back of the rope drop pack. If you want to be in the front I would say you would need to arrive an hour or so before the beginning of early entry.

I'd rather arrive at 6:57, wait 3 minutes out front and only 40 minutes in line than arrive an hour ahead and wait all that time out front then another 15 minutes to get on the ride! The park is open by the time the really early arrivals get off FOP, so won't make too much of a difference for the other attractions. Plus I am NOT a morning person so I don't even consider rope drop.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I'd rather arrive at 6:57, wait 3 minutes out front and only 40 minutes in line than arrive an hour ahead and wait all that time out front then another 15 minutes to get on the ride! The park is open by the time the really early arrivals get off FOP, so won't make too much of a difference for the other attractions. Plus I am NOT a morning person so I don't even consider rope drop.

That's completely fair IMO. For a lot of people that don't want to pay for the ILL they would rather get there that early and ride it with a minimal wait. I did that in HS where I arrived super early and rode Rise and Smuggler's before early entry even started. I'm going to AK next week and I'm just going to buy FOP, I don't want to be at the bus stop at 6 am for a ride.

 

[hes122]

Last March when we went early entry for resort guests didn't actually exist in its current format, but that's essentially what they were doing anyhow. The time stamp on my picture of the Tree of Life reads 7:35 am. We walked on to Navi River Journey and got in line for Flight of Passage around 7:50ish. My time stamp of the lab in the queue say 8:15, so I think we waited about 30-35 minutes total.

 

[Dnebxr]

Just have an alternate plan in case FOP is down when you arrive! This happened to us last week at early entry and FOP was down for several hours. We went on Navi. Then Everest went down. A huge line built up for Safari as people tried to find some other ride. Pretty frustrating to wake up the kids so early to have the headliner ride not operational at early entry.

 

[planplanplan]

We rope dropped FOP on Sunday with a 7:30 AM park opening. We were on the 6:04 AM bus from Art of Animation and were second in line for our tap style after getting slightly hung up at bag check.

We walked straight onto FOP when the park opened for early entry at 7 AM. We were off at 7:36 AM and walked onto Navi River with no wait (when we got off it was a posted 20 minutes). We then walked over to EE and rode twice with no wait. We picked up breakfast and arrived at KS for our Genie+ LL at 8:45. We grabbed a LL for the 9:30 Lion King show and walked into that show after KS. We then did Kali River with a short wait. (I was stacking LL for an evening at MK after tapping into Lion King At 9:10 AM.)

By 10:30 AM we'd done FOP, Navi, EE x 2, KS, Lion King, and Kali River Rapids. We then walked around on some trails and saw the bird show and other no wait attractions. Even a slightly later start and we would have ended up with longer waits. We had lunch and left the park around 12:30 for a rest before our evening at MK.

 

[Mle8308]

We rope dropped FOP on Sunday with a 7:30 AM park opening. We were on the 6:04 AM bus from Art of Animation and were second in line for our tap style after getting slightly hung up at bag check.

We walked straight onto FOP when the park opened for early entry at 7 AM. We were off at 7:36 AM and walked onto Navi River with no wait (when we got off it was a posted 20 minutes). We then walked over to EE and rode twice with no wait. We picked up breakfast and arrived at KS for our Genie+ LL at 8:45. We grabbed a LL for the 9:30 Lion King show and walked into that show after KS. We then did Kali River with a short wait. (I was stacking LL for an evening at MK after tapping into Lion King At 9:10 AM.)

By 10:30 AM we'd done FOP, Navi, EE x 2, KS, Lion King, and Kali River Rapids. We then walked around on some trails and saw the bird show and other no wait attractions. Even a slightly later start and we would have ended up with longer waits.

Well done! My nightmare is being on a Disney bus at 6:04am!

 

[meremac]

Another option (and I don't know if this is a possibility for you or not) is to do AK in the late afternoon/evening. People with Hoppers tend to hop somewhere else from AK, and even people who don't have Hoppers but arrived early are typically donezo with AK by 4pm-ish. Maybe get there at like 2:30pm-3pm-ish, see a show, walk some trails, work in a couple of Genie+ reservations if you have Genie+, have an early dinner, and then ride like crazy! My kids are typically able to ride Everest like 605 times in a row at the end of the night (ok slight exaggeration, but it's definitely significantly more than my maximum of 3 times in a row). And if we don't have ILL$ for FoP, we can usually get in line about 20-30 minutes before park closing and have a virtual walk-on.

 

[cedricandsophie]

We were there in March and did early entry at AK. We got there about 715 and it was already too late. They had started to let people in much earlier. By the time we got to Flights, walking as fast as we could, the wait was about an hour. next time we will get there at 630 Am. Right after Flights, we went to the River. The wait was 20 minutes. Then we went to the Safari and waited over an hour. The line was horrendous and once we got up to the ’front’, I figured out why, The attendant was holding the standby line to Let 100 to 150 people with the new ‘fast pass’ through At a time…maybe even more. I stopped counting after a while.
We got stopped right st the point where they were letting these people through and we waited another 15 min watching so many people go by. My husband was a little crabby by that time and complained to the attendant. Her response was that she had been told t9 let them all through because they had ‘paid for it’. In the old days with the free fast pass, the attendant might let 50 people go through before stsrting up the standby line again. Very frustrating.

i realized I should have tried to buy a pass for the safari, but we have never had to wait more than 20 min that time of the morning before. Lesson learned.

 

[planplanplan]

Another option (and I don't know if this is a possibility for you or not) is to do AK in the late afternoon/evening. People with Hoppers tend to hop somewhere else from AK, and even people who don't have Hoppers but arrived early are typically donezo with AK by 4pm-ish. Maybe get there at like 2:30pm-3pm-ish, see a show, walk some trails, work in a couple of Genie+ reservations if you have Genie+, have an early dinner, and then ride like crazy! My kids are typically able to ride Everest like 605 times in a row at the end of the night (ok slight exaggeration, but it's definitely significantly more than my maximum of 3 times in a row). And if we don't have ILL$ for FoP, we can usually get in line about 20-30 minutes before park closing and have a virtual walk-on.

We used this strategy this week with stacked LL at both MK and HS and it worked well in both parks. Really fun evenings with tons of rides and no waits.

It didn't work as well for us at Epcot as we didn't get a LL for Frozen before they ran out and our times ended up having us crisscrossing the park (Soarin' --> Remy --> TT). It seems to work better with more ride options. I'm not sure how well it would work at AK.

 

[kmrobins03]

This was our experience from Dec 202. We were towards the front of the rope drop crowd. Note that this includes a short bathroom stop (in the FOP queue bathroom) for my daughter

Arrived 645
Tapped in 709
Held At bridge 715
Park opened for early entry 730am
Off ride by 8am

 

[gharter]

In April, we arrived 6:40, tapped in about 7.
Held at bridge until the park opened at 7:30.
About a 19 minute wait, but we were far toward the front of the line.
Off about 8, and walk on to Navi.

I would arrive at least 40-60 minutes before EE opening time. I would rather wait before the park opens and have a very short wait at a major attraction. Then, while the masses are headed to the attraction I just got off, I can do others with short lines.