Hollywood Studios... early or late?

[DisneyMom2000000]

Family of early risers here. I have always been at the parks during rope drop. The only time I've entered a park after opening was park hopping, and that hasn't happened much!

Anyway, we'll be at Disney for 5 days. Our middle day is at HS. HS is my least favorite park.. but it has some of the best rides... somehow that's possible?!

Anyway, was thinking about planning to do a late day at HS since it does seem to be a short day and maybe we would like a morning with a bit of a slower pace.

The only thing that has me thrown is the FP situation. We HAVE to ride Rock n Roller Coaster AND Toy Story Mania... and I know we can't FP them both. What to do?

Any other reason to choose HS in the afternoon/evening over morning?

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

I prefer getting to HS and any park really at RD.
You can get so much done in the first couple hours as I'm sure you know.

I would get a FP+ for TSMM and RD RNRC.

I can easily get done with HS by noon when I want to.
So if you get up and go and get done what you want to get done then you can have the rest of the day to relax.

 

[VelvetGloves]

If we need to hit both RNR and TSM in the same day, we will go in the evening. We FP RNR, Tower, and Star Tours. We get in line for TSM 5 or 10 minutes before close. This way, we don't really waste park time closing it out. Since we don't need to catch the fireworks or Fantasmic, this works perfectly for us. The wait tends to be a lot shorter this way too, as there are no FP being admitted after closing.

 

[kappyfamily]

The above is what we are doing. We aren't planning to arrive until 1pm. We can't find enough to do there for a full day anymore and RNR will be closed too.

 

[Accident]

The only thing that has me thrown is the FP situation. We HAVE to ride Rock n Roller Coaster AND Toy Story Mania... and I know we can't FP them both. What to do?

Any other reason to choose HS in the afternoon/evening over morning?

Same day fastpasses aren't that hard to get.. You may not get both but you probably will get one or the other.. Just keep looking during the day (and yes it'll go from none to having one with no warning). Generally in the early to mid afternoon is when it's easy to pick up some evenings ones.

TSMM is a walk on near the start of fantasmic.
RnR seems to be busiest in the afternoon but I've seen it down to 10-20 minutes more than once when I went into HS after dinner. ToT gets really short lines at night lately for some reason. (also it's about to close for refurb so make sure it's open when your planning to ride)

Even if your not star wars fans, the fireworks are pretty interesting with their projection show and lasers/spotlights and surround sound if your there when it happens.