My crew- 2 adults, 3 teens. POR from 8/4-8/7 and YC from 8/7-8/16. 8 park days- 1 AK, 2 HS, 2 MK, 3 EP. We had G+ every day, used ILL every day, and rope dropped every day by arriving 30-60 minutes before each early entry time. We also had MK extended evenings 1 time and 2 times at EP.
This post is not pro nor anti G+ or ILL. This is just to report what happened to us.
The combination of strategic planning, luck, single rider line, G+, ILL, and Early Entry allowed us to ride literally everything we wanted to with extremely low waits. We waited 0-15 minutes per ride, the only exception being Guardian's virtual queue, we did 3 virtual queues, with waits of 60, 45, 40.
Before I begin, we got incredibly lucky this trip with the weather, it rained every day, but we were either eating a meal, napping, at a show, or doing something else indoors, we got wet from rain once and dealt with no closures for rain/lighting either, again, there were closures but none that impacted us whatsoever, pure luck!
The basic plan was very simple:
1. Wake at 6:45
2. Use G+ to book headliner ride
3. Use G+ to book a ILL (FOP, 7DMT, ROTR, Guardians)
4. Immediately go to the park
5. At early entry rope drop ride headliner of our choice
6. Do headliner rides in order of importance until
7. Early entry time expires, then go to higher capacity lower wait shows and rides until 5 minutes before first LL return time
8. At 5 minutes before the return time opens, tap into first LL, sometimes second tap point, then
9. Immediately book the next LL for a ride with a close return window, 0-30 minutes away.
10. Repeat steps 8-9, until return windows start to push out further, then I'd start stacking for late afternoon and evening.
11. Use our ILL during the return window we selected.
Using this method, we'd routinely hit 2, sometimes 3 rides in the 30 minutes of Early Entry and then use G+ to get LL for 2-7 rides throughout the day. We maxed out at 7 LL in MK. Sometimes, we'd skip hundred of people at something like Splash, other times, it was 40 people at Carpets, all told, using G+ saved us hours and hours. We'd use our ILL within the return window we selected.
Single rider allowed us to re-ride Everest, RNR, MFSR, Test Track multiple times. My kids rode Everest 6 times in a row, crazy.
Rope dropping allowed us to ride the headliners at least twice, once at rope drop in the standby line and once with ILL. We did Guardians 6 times-3 virtual queue, and 3 ILL. ROTR 4 times- 2 rope drop standby, 2 ILL. FOP twice-1 rope drop standby, 1 ILL. 7DMT 4 times-2 rope drop standby, 2 ILL.
Extended evening hours did little to nothing for us, by the time the extended evening hours came, we had already gone on everything we wanted, and waking at 6:45 made getting the most out of evening hours very difficult.
While I hate paying all that extra money for G+ and ILL, it really made touring the parks a breeze. We ended up with hours and hours of free time out of lines, we used this time for extra pool time, re-riding, and exploring the parks in-depth.
The one big-time thing that we did not plan for was the fact that no waiting means more walking, we were on the move more than ever. For example, we walked from 7DMT, to BTMRR, to Splash, to Pirates, to Space, to Dumbo in what felt like a blink of the eye. We topped over 125 miles walked for the entire trip. I had blisters on 6 toes and my knees ached, I loved it.
Any questions? I'm happy to help.
