How long after park open do big opening gate crowds disappear?

[jimjamxoxo]

Hi everyone - I'm new to the forums and excited to be here! My boyfriend and I are planning on coming down from Pittsburgh, PA in January. I'm trying to decide on how many days in the parks we need, but we are both pretty nervous about crowds and COVID. I've seen that park opening draws big crowds to the gates, so we want to avoid that. For any locals that go a lot - how long after park opening do those big crowds dissipate?

Thanks!

 

[yulilin3]

I would say rope drop is actually the best time to go, the big crowds arrive about an hour after park official opening times.

 

[lanejudy]

I've seen that park opening draws big crowds to the gates

I'm not sure if the reviews you read are fairly recent or not. Since re-opening, the parks haven't had huge "rope-drop" crowds. The parks have been allowing folks to enter ~30-60 minutes before posted opening time to spread out and avoid having crowds gathered at the gates. It is hard to get there much earlier because the parking lots don't open and on-site transportation doesn't start too early, so no crowds gathering.

 

[DSLRuser]

meh....not worried about covid at all...but to answer your question....10 mins tops and it gets down to normal entry gate crowd size.

 

[PaladinButters]

I'm trying to decide on how many days in the parks we need, but we are both pretty nervous about crowds and COVID.

The days of just reopened/ no crowds are long gone. There's crowded spots and insanely crowded spots (there's a line to get in to the Emporium for instance but once you are in, it's a free for all mad house) at all times of day. The 'distancing' starts when you enter an attraction queue with markers or a restaurant with spaced tables, because that's where Disney enforces it. So everywhere else in the parks there will be groups all over the place standing/walking where ever and getting in your personal bubble just like always just so you are prepared.

 

[Deb & Bill]

We've been recently in mid-Oct and late Nov. We are Florida residents so we can go weekdays only based on our pass. We usually wind up getting to the park around noon and have found no lines at all to get into the park, both getting temperature taken, getting through security and go through the turnstile with our pass. We don't go on many attractions, maybe one or two if the lines aren't too long. Most of the time we do a nice meal and one or two other things.