Just Got Back: An Alternative View

[Mayra]

I don't see how that's really physically possible if the rides are operating normally.

The first, say, 200-500 guests to arrive at EE can't be waiting 55 minutes to ride.
EE loads very fast.
55 minutes will find EE loading hundreds and hundreds of guests
(from reports I've read, about 1,600 to 1,800 guests an hour can ride EE.)

Although I can see, if you don't arrive well-before gate-opening (EMH included) and just arrive "at or near opening time" , then walk in at the tail-end of the guests who have already gone to the popular attractions, now THAT is beleivable on a very busy day to make for some longer waits.

I'm just trying to understand what happened.
It doesn't compute.

I mean somebody (lots of somebodies) have to be the first ones to ride the attractions.
I have been on the very first rides of the day for EE and Soarin' myself, many, many times.

It is possible!! I don't know how, but it is. We were there this year January 6th, 15min before opening. Everyone went running for EE and we waited at least 25min just to get a fastpass.

Every other attraction had little or no wait including KS

 

[Robo]

It is possible!! I don't know how, but it is. We were there this year January 6th, 15min before opening. Everyone went running for EE and we waited at least 25min just to get a fastpass.

Every other attraction had little or no wait including KS

If you arrive that late (yes, 15 minutes before opening is actually pretty late) you will be behind a lot of guests who have arrived before you.

I'm saying you should arrive EARLIER and be at the FRONT of those guests.

And, if anyone does not want to get up that early, I'm not trying to MAKE you do it.
But that's the way to make mornings pay-off.

 

[Mrs. D]

This will be my first trip w/ family as an adult...I have been planning our days based on rope drop, and back at the resort by 2 at the latest... a later dinner and back to the park in the evenings. I figured it would be at least cooler, hoping less crowded, I want to see the fireworks anyway, and I was thinking we could use whatever FP's we'd collected during the day?? I love any theme park at night anyway. My kids are only 4 and almost 6, but I know when they nap during the day, they are wired at night...

 

[luv2nascar]

I agree 2 yrs ago when we went in June we stumbled onto the later night empty rides thing. We are early risers and had a 2 yr old at the time and a 10 yr old. We didn't know how long they would make it into the night so early was our plan. I forget exactly how it worked out but we ended up in MK (I think Disney extended MK hours every night we were there and had second spectro/wishes every night). We had seen wishes on prior evening so we just rode rides while everyone else was watching wishes. We rode many adventures of pooh and no one was in line to ride. I yelled to CM could we stay on and she said sure. I Have never had that happen before. Everything was basically a walk on during 2nd wishes. Ahhh... it was like a dream.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

FWIW, the UG plan for AK is to arrive 30-40 minutes before park opening, instead of at park opening. Additionally, the first step is not to ride EE but to get FP's for EE and then move on to the Dinoland USA attractions (TriceraTop Spin if you have small kids, Primeval Whirl and Dinosaur), then do Kali, Flights of Wonder, Jungle Trek and come back to EE to use those FP's. I suspect they recommend FP'ing EE precisely due to the huge standby crowds discussed.

Great Catch!!!

looking at the AK one day touring plan and the One day combined AK and DS touring plan, it says to get there 1 hour before rope drop on busy days and 40 minutes otherwise. Considering June is fairly busy, it's safe to assume the op was admittedly there 45 minutes later than suggested. Assuming the wait was genuinely 55 minutes rather than it being left from the night before or the ride not operating properly, which is highly improbabe even arriving 15 minutes before rope drop, how does that constitute bad advice on the part of the UG? Going back to just the one day touring plan, I think they suggest fast passing Everest Early rather than riding it is so you can then do a relatively empty Dinoland including TTS which can build some waits later and does not use fast pass. You can then use fast pass fairly easily the rest of the way to avoid bottlenecks at Kali and the Safari.

Originally Posted by Max Rebo View Post
We visited the park Thursday, June 7, a non-EMH day, arriving 30 minutes before park-opening. When the park opened, DD7 and I hightailed it to EE to pick up FPs before meeting DW and DS4 back at the Safari. By that time, the posted waiting time for Safari was 30 minutes. The actual wait was about 40 minutes. By the time we got off the ride, it was already 10:20, almost an hour and a half into the day, and we'd experienced only one attraction.

I can't remember which message board I was reading when I saw suggestion after suggestion to do just what you did but it's a bad plan. Here you have two rides that draw early crowds and remain busy throughout the day. Both of them use fast pass. They are not all that close to each other. You thus cannot beat the initial surge to both of them. Only one. So what you did was you beat the surge to Everest and fast passed it, then you went over to the one you did not beat the surge to (the safari) and rode it. That's backwards. You want to ride the one you beat the surge to and fast pass the one you don't. If you want to get both the safari and Everest in fairly early in the game, consider this alternative ordering.
1. Give ticket media to Wife.
2a. You Ride Everest
while
2b. Wife gets fast passes for everyone to Safari.
3. Walk the trail in Africa. Note the initial surge to Africa is by and large still making its way around the safari at this point.
4. Safari.
You'd have gotten 3 attractions in sooner than you finished the one doing it the other way.

It wasn't getting there early that was bad. It was your ordering.

 

[Bob NC]

We went to AK last Wednesday and Friday mornings. Both days arriving very shortly after opening. (About 5 minutes after opening both days). Both days we walked leisurely back to EE, got in the standby line and waited about 10 - 15 minutes. We then got in the single rider line, 3 more times. Both days we rode EE 4 times in about an hour.

 

[Max Rebo]

I can't remember which message board I was reading when I saw suggestion after suggestion to do just what you did but it's a bad plan. Here you have two rides that draw early crowds and remain busy throughout the day. Both of them use fast pass. They are not all that close to each other. You thus cannot beat the initial surge to both of them. Only one.

It wasn't getting there early that was bad. It was your ordering.

You are exactly right. I misjudged the amount of time it would take to get to EE and back to Safari. (First time to AK)

If I had it to do over again, I would still get the FPs for EE, only I would then head over to DinoLand USA and experience those attractions with virtually no crowds. (Pretty much as the UG suggests) I'd get FPs for Safari later in the day, or skip it altogether (I wasn't terribly impressed with the attraction ... I know that puts me in the minority.)

 

[TSMAMI]

We go to the parks later too. I found on the nights that there are EMH its just adds something special to the trip. We swim all day and then head over. We dont like to walk around in the heat. I have a 6 and an 8 year old and they have done great with this. Where else can you be at Midnight and see little kids running around and having a great time.

 

[Luvmyfam3]

1. Give ticket media to Wife.
2a. You Ride Everest
while
2b. Wife gets fast passes for everyone to Safari.
3. Walk the trail in Africa. Note the initial surge to Africa is by and large still making its way around the safari at this point.
4. Safari.
You'd have gotten 3 attractions in sooner than you finished the one doing it the other way.

I feel sorry for the wife. She totally gets the shaft in this plan....

 

[4eyedbuzzard]

I find your recommendations wonderful news!! I'm going with a group of pre-teens & teens in a few weeks banana: ). Although, I'm sure at the beginning of the trip everyone will want to hit the parks early in the morning....after a couple of days we'll start to want to kick back a little. I'm curious if you tried going to the water parks in the afternoon instead of the morning. I've heard that can be advantageous.

Looks like I may have to tweak my schedule again!!!

Kim

From June 6 to 13 the water parks were good in the am but mobbed by noon or 1 pm. The latest we stayed was TL to 2 or so. To give you an idea, the Slush Gusher and Summit Plunge slides at BB had a 45 and 90 minute wait respectively by 11am. How they were later in the afternoon I can't tell you as we left at 1pm, but the almost daily 4 to 5pm T-storms probably shut the parks anyway.

BTW, MK at night non-EMH was really good from parade time on. We walked on Splash and Big Thunder 3 times each at around 10 pm. We actually came out into the outside part of Splash just as the fireworks finale was going off. OUTSTANDING!

 

[Diznut84]

It wasn't getting there early that was bad. It was your ordering.

I disagree. My point is that both TGM and the UOG (and every other published guidebook) are wrong this past trip in that the most advantageous time to visit the parks was by far in the evening and NOT in the mornings.

This is exactly the opposite from last Christmas (the week between Christmas and New Years) and most of our other WDW trips, when we would have waits of less than 10 minutes early in the morning and go from headliner to headliner. We would then stop for lunch at 11am and leave because the parks were then jammed. We would then return to the parks in the evening for a great meal, the evening shows, and maybe a ride or two.

I should add that with over 300+ days at WDW, I don't follow anyone's park touring tips verbatim. I have no interest in riding all of the rides everyday that I go to WDW. Rather, I customize using the principles of each. And my point, and feel free to reject it (as many of you have ), is that evening touring was much more efficient than morning touring, and that this is a change from previous trips.

No doubt: If evening touring doesn't work for your family, you probably don't want to try it. But if you can do either, I wouldn't accept the advice of TGM and UOG immediately. I would test whether evening touring is working better during your stay.

I now step off the soapbox...

 

[marlynnp]

It just seemed to me like you weren't getting a lot of "bang for your buck"(number of hours at the park versus how long the park is open for) when you don't enter the park until the evening.

Too each their own.

I don't base the "bang for my buck" on just park hours but rather productive park hours - how many attractions I can see/do during the hours I am there.

And I found that during our trip - June 9th thru the 18th - the evening touring worked well for us too. We did well over half the MK attractions in 3 hours one evening from 8-11 by skipping Spectro & Wishes that night (we saw them another night).

Early morning touring also worked for us. We do a mix of both. I schedule an early morning park touring, afternoon nap, late dinner followed by one of the fireworks shows. The next day sleep late, mini-golf and/or pool, dinner and then late night park touring.

On early mornings I book the first character breakfast seating so we are done and partway into the park by rope drop. Donalds Breakfastosaurus and the Crystal Palace are must do's for us!

 

[4eyedbuzzard]

...looking at the AK one day touring plan and the One day combined AK and DS touring plan, it says to get there 1 hour before rope drop on busy days and 40 minutes otherwise. Considering June is fairly busy, it's safe to assume the op was admittedly there 45 minutes later than suggested... how does that constitute bad advice on the part of the UG?

Well, it's hard to criticize the "arriving an hour early" part of the "two parks in one day plan" with one major exception - most people won't find the pace very enjoyable. In order to do both parks in a single day would definitely requiring skipping a few things and keeping up a pretty fast pace - difficult, quite possibly not enjoyable, and downright impossible for some in the hot Florida sun especially in summer months. Getting up at 6 or 6:30am to be at AK by 8 and rushing all day to finish up with Fantasmic after 9pm makes for a pretty tough day. And AK requires a LOT of walking by most people's standards. By the time you're back to your room at 11pm or so you're talking a 17 hour day in the sun, heat, and humidity. This is a vacation, right?

My other comment on all such "arrive an hour before rope drop" plans is that during our past visit earlier this June the result was waiting in a rope drop queue for a very crowded surge(edited from "mad dash") to the prime attractions. Not all of us can or are going to walk as fast as the rest of the crowd from the ropes to the first attractions. Kind of pointless if 500 or perhaps even a 1000people wind up passing you on the way to the first attraction.

BTW, what's the difference between waiting at a "rope drop queue" vs an attraction queue? If getting there an hour early only results in cutting the overall waiting time during a day's visit by 30 or even 45 minutes vs arriving at opening time, it isn't an efficient use of time. If it cuts it an hour it's a wash. Personally, I'd prefer to sleep in another hour while on vacation. To make a park at 8am, an hour prior to rope drop, means getting up at 6 or 6:30 if you're me, the type that wants/needs time to S/S/S, an unrushed cup of coffee, a decent breakfast, etc. We bagged the "prior to rope drop plan" after the first day after talking to guests at other parks that said that all the parks were simply very crowded from the get-go. It was far more "productive" to be in the parks during the last hour than the first.

I honestly think managing FP's well is a bigger key to more enjoyable touring than getting there an hour early. We found that getting another FP BEFORE riding the matured FP attraction, especially by sending the best, most willing walker(s) ahead to get the next FP's right at the "allowed time" works really well. My DS16 and I split the "FP runner" duty and neither of us really minded it as we are fast walkers and it made everybody's day more enjoyable. We spent 5 days total in the parks(2 at MK), and two half days each at TL and BB. During our entire trip, June 6 thru 13, he longest line we waited on was an hour for Soarin' and 45 minutes for Peter Pan.

I will admit/suggest that AK and Epcot are best done in the morning unless you are an on-site guest and go to an evening EMH. Soarin' and TT FP's are usually gone by 11:30 or noon, but if you get there at 9am you'll be able to get FP's for both though the second FP return time will be later in the day. We got to AK just before 9am opening and went on all the major attractions by 3 even though it was mobbed at rope drop according to CM's and guests. There are "lulls" during the day at all the parks around lunchtime, parades, shows, dinner, etc and even right after T-storms that can be exploited. And if there is a T-storm coming in(keep an eye out for the weather), use that time to wait in an indoor standby queue at an indoor attraction. This worked for us several times. For example, we waited standby 45 minutes for Peter-Pan at MK but it was during a T-storm. We stayed dry and got in an attraction while our SM FP's matured.

If you go to WDW during peak times, you are simply going to have to wait in lines at times. Duh! Arriving an hour early MAY cut the wait time for the first attraction if you hurry on over, and you'll get one FP with a reasonable return, but don't expect miracles after the first hour. Everybody seems to be going early. Our experience was that the last hour in the parks were much more "productive" - and FUN - than the first.

 

[dpcheercoach]

We just returned this past week so I'll add my 2 cents if i may...I used TGM for the first time, after learning about it from all you great dis folks, and we found the least and most crowded park days to be very helpful. Even tried MGM on a starwars weekend and was totally regretting every min. of it.(we were warrned!) We found getting to MK 45 min. before rope drop to be very useful as we were able to do all of Fantasyland and the 2 frontierland mts before lunch. And their opening ceremony in front of the train station is a not miss with my 2 young boys. However, we also found that evening touring (after our early dinner ADR's) were more productive, less crowded and much cooler than early mornings at any other park than MK.

Another thing I was disappointed in was the afternoon breaks that we tried for the first time. I didn't feel it was much of a break. For one hour of rest at the resort we ususlly spent a total of 3 hours counting travel time with the buses. I feel it was just as exhausting to try to leave the park and get back in time for early ADR's (not my choice but others we were with wanted early dinners). I guess we could have left the park earlier but that would mean cutting something from our MUST DO list that I didn't want to part with.
But I guess that just means we have to go back again to try a different touring strategey!

I have to agree with the OP on this one. The evenings were much easier in touring the parks then during the heat of the day. We used late nights several of our 7 nights and found them to be most magical!! I say do whatever works for your party.

 

[ladyjayhawk]

Thank you Diznut84 for this info!! Evening touring will work well for us in July (we aren't morning people and we have the time change to deal with). Can't wait!!

 

[mickeymom629]

I am curious as to whether the evenings that you recommend (OP and others), are they the parks with or without EMH? I mean, would you follow TGM (or UG) as to least crowded days, and then go to the evenings for those, or do you go to EMH nights for the parks?

We are going in a couple of weeks, my kids are all teens and we will all have AP's, so we are flexible. I'm trying to plan some sleep in mornings, but I know a couple of my kids will be anxious to begin as we always do - trying to be first ones at the gate.

 

[Robo]

I'm trying to plan some sleep in mornings, but I know a couple of my kids will be anxious to begin as we always do - trying to be first ones at the gate.

If you are, in fact, nearly the "first ones at the gate," there will be no question that you can ride the popular attractions with little or no wait.

This follows the simple logic: The first ones on the rides, will ride first.

While its an interesting thought that you might find attractions "empty" (or nearly so) at night (I have ridden Splash and EE late in the evening with short waits, myself)... the RELIABILITY of FREQUENCY of this flies in the face of decades of experience of many of us here. (To find, say, Soarin' with an empty que at 8:00pm would not be an "every evening" occurrance.)

I will say that the possibility of fewer guests is much more likely early in the morning, than at or near regular closing time.
And that crowds at the beginning of PM EMH (as you eluded to) will likely be very dense.

Its human nature, and that doesn't change with the seasons.

 

[4eyedbuzzard]

I am curious as to whether the evenings that you recommend (OP and others), are they the parks with or without EMH? I mean, would you follow TGM (or UG) as to least crowded days, and then go to the evenings for those, or do you go to EMH nights for the parks?

We are going in a couple of weeks, my kids are all teens and we will all have AP's, so we are flexible. I'm trying to plan some sleep in mornings, but I know a couple of my kids will be anxious to begin as we always do - trying to be first ones at the gate.

We mostly avoided the evening EMH parks, but were at MK for one. And while it was obviously quite a bit more crowded around 10 to 11 pm than on a non-EMH night it was still less crowded than the mornings.

 

[4eyedbuzzard]

If you are, in fact, nearly the "first ones at the gate," there will be no question that you can ride the popular attractions with little or no wait.

The first one or two(if you hustle), yes. Beyond that, not what we found June 6 thru 13.

This follows the simple logic: The first ones on the rides, will ride first.

While its an interesting thought that you might find attractions "empty" (or nearly so) at night (I have ridden Splash and EE late in the evening with short waits, myself)... the RELIABILITY of FREQUENCY of this flies in the face of decades of experience of many of us here. (To find, say, Soarin' with an empty que at 8:00pm would not be an "every evening" occurrance.)

I will say that the possibility of fewer guests is much more likely early in the morning, than at or near regular closing time.
And that crowds at the beginning of PM EMH (as you eluded to) will likely be very dense.

Its human nature, and that doesn't change with the seasons.

Perhaps lots of people are going early now due to all the publicized suggestions everywhere(the DIS, mousesavers, etc, etc) of "You must go early." There are an awful lot of us who have experienced the opposite so far this summer - the last two hours have been much nicer - cooler, less crowded, etc. If I were going again tomorrow I wouldn't step foot in any of the parks until late afternoon if I had evening EMH access. Without EMH access the only ones I would go early to would be AK(closes earlier) and Epcot(due to Soarin and TT popularity) on non am EMH days. I'd definitely do MGM and MK in the pm when the temps are cooler and do the big rides during the last two hours. Other than that I'd stay up late, go to TL or BB during the late morning, resort pool, other activities, etc.

 

[Robo]

The first one or two(if you hustle), yes. Beyond that, not what we found June 6 thru 13.

This discussion would go much better if you didn't exaggerate the numbers.
(It makes things hard to talk about in real terms.)

"The first one or two (if you hustle)" guests will be in the very first CAR of EE, for cryin' out loud.

EE can swallow hundreds of guests in just a few minutes.
If you are among the first few HUNDRED guests to get into the line at EE after rope drop, you will get to ride without a long wait (with no exaggeration, it would likely be under 20 minutes.). This is just how the rides work. If they didn't, nobody would ever get to ride after the first few hundred of the day.

I can't deny that there are lots of guests in the mornings, and I am among them... most days, the very FIRST among them, and I ride the popular attractions with no trouble.

If I'm "late," its my fault.