FoP Rope Drop a Bust Today (Friday 11/8)

[igrsod]

You have to be at the park at least 90 minutes early to be near the front of the pack. You also have to be prepared to walk briskly from the tapstiles to the rope to hold your place. I've rope dropped twice, arriving 90 minutes early, and rode the first flight as a single rider and made the second flight the next time.

The thing I don't understand is that you still waited 90 minutes... just pre park opening. I guess you are saving park time, but most times we don't stay ALL day in the park anyways.
We usually get there 30 minutes before park opening, go wait in line and have always found that the early morning posted time has always been inflated.

 

[Christine]

True, you make a good point. My point is really that you may wait until the end of the day, hoping to get a short wait... and instead, you find it's still a 2 hour or greater wait. I'm not waiting that long, especially at the end of the day. We saw that with FOP on our last visit. Will be back in 2 weeks, maybe I'll test both theories?

I think you should try both strategies. I've done both now (as has my adult son) and we are much happier with the end of day situation. Of course, we had a car so it was really easy for us to just run over at night to specifically do the ride and it didn't interfere with any other plans we had. It's not necessarily a good use of time if you aren't staying at the park late, don't have hoppers, or have to rely on other transportation to jump over there.

 

[Donnainnj]

We were there the same day. Had a late morning fp for Flight of Passage. At 5:30pm we picked up another for 6:30pm.

 

[Heather07438]

Not to mention that a TON of schools all over the country give Mon and Tue off each year for end of quarter/Election Day so it’s a 4 day weekend.

The combo of race weekend, election day, Jersey week and Veterans Day created overlap in this week's trip dates.

People with kids like avoiding the major holiday breaks now because crazy crowds/costs. When their school has a few days off, then kids only need to miss a couple days of school to make a decent length trip. Crowd seasons changed a lot the past 5 years, harder to predict.

 

[DavidNYC]

We were there the same day. Had a late morning fp for Flight of Passage. At 5:30pm we picked up another for 6:30pm.

We had that happen to us last year this same weekend. Couldn't believe it. Sitting watching Rivers of Light at around 7pm or so and just checking to see if we could get one more FP at end of night for 5 of us and FoP just popped up for right after RoL! First time we ever had that pop up same day! Rode it on FP and off in time to get in standby for one more (line said 80 minutes - on ride in 45) so we finally got to experience the full queue which was great.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

The combo of race weekend, election day, Jersey week and Veterans Day created overlap in this week's trip dates.

People with kids like avoiding the major holiday breaks now because crazy crowds/costs. When their school has a few days off, then kids only need to miss a couple days of school to make a decent length trip. Crowd seasons changed a lot the past 5 years, harder to predict.

We were at Disney several years ago for a week for the Wine & Dine and I thought it was the worst crowds of all our Disney trips. Same confluence of events--the races, Jersey Week, heading into Veterans Day weekend, and the last week of the Epcot food and wine festival. Epcot especially was crazy busy.