Rope drop advantage up in smoke?

[Davey Jones II]

Given the huge number of EMH that Disney has decided to add in the Fall, is rope drop (regular park opening) now pointless, in terms of enjoying relatively light crowds and wait times? I put that question to the Disboard experts!

 

[mamamelody2]

Do you mean EMH rope drop, or regular hours rope drop? I am guessing you mean the regular opening rope drop for those who are not eligible for EMH.

 

[soniam]

I think you will still enjoy relative light crowds. If you show up at regular opening time or later, the crowds will just be worse. The crowds may still be more than normal but light compared to the rest of the day. Also, the earlier the EMH the better, but it's still all relative.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

If I were a non-EMH eligible guest who enjoys rope dropping regular park opening, it's certainly not the best of news for MK & DAK 8/29-11/2 and DHS 9/1-11/2.

For MK & DAK, I guess one positive angle is that they are all 8am regular park openings. 7am-8am EMHs and 8am park openings are just too early for some folks, whether they can take advantage of EMH or not. On the margins it'll be 'better' crowd wise than a 8-9am EMH and 9am opening. But still, I'm sure they will be well attended by EMH-eligible guests so it puts others behind the crowd/line flow of the day.

Also at MK, only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland are open for AM EMH, so a non-EMH eligible guest can still rope drop the other lands with arguably similar results. Admittedly with people already in the park and not the same setup as a non-EMH morning.

I'll be curious to see if the MK MNSSHP days have any sort of added value. Party days are already generally lower crowd days - will be curious to see if 7-8 EMH and 8am regular park opening time changes that dynamic at all, or makes for a good day to visit crowd-wise.

Interesting times.

 

[Ben E N]

I rope dropped HS on an EMH day during winter break, by rope drop, I mean with the regular ticket crowd. It was both pointless and not. Slinky Dog Dash had a wait of 3 hours by the time we got to it, and RnR and ToT were each over an hour. The Alien ride was only a 20 minute wait, though, and never saw under 60 minutes for the rest of the day.
So the top of the line stuff already had a large line to it, but the 2nd tier stuff was a lot easier to get onto than would normally be.

 

[Davey Jones II]

I was referring to regular rope drop, after all the EMH hours.

Everything I`ve read and experienced suggests that there is little point to rope dropping a park that already has a lot of people in it, due to EMH. Granted, an 8 a.m. rope drop might still be interesting, still too early for some folks.

We will be staying on property, so we will have access to EMH, but 6 a.m. is just too early for us -- my God, you have to be up at 4:30 a.m., at the latest!

I am thinking a couple of times, we might do the last hour of EMH, then zig when the rope drop crowd zags.

 

[SoCalDisneyFan2708]

Yea, regular rope dropping a park with an AM emh already wasn’t that great. But if you meant rope dropping the emh then it’s going to be even better at MK and AK. How beneficial it will be an HS is anyone’s guess. My opinion is that if you go to HS for the 6 am rope drop and don’t plan on stepping foot in SW:GE then it could be amazing. I think the majority of the people showing up that early to a park are the ones who want to experience what’s new there. At least that’s what I’m hoping. I live 15 minutes away from Disneyland and already have my reservation for SW:GE there. So when I’m at WDW in September I have no reason to try and get into GE there

 

[Rach3975]

I'm too infrequent a visitor to know, but I also wonder whether having EMH at 3 parks will change the dynamic. Traditionally all the early park people have been concentrated in one park in the morning. Will crowds be lighter when they're spread out over 3 parks, especially with them being 6 and 7 am? Or will there be enough people there who are serious about getting in early that all the parks are as busy as usual by regular RD?

 

[Disneypro1]

We always avoid EMH park for those days...So when we do rope drop..its a true rope drop. Its a sprint to whatever we do first. And yes..at 48 i still win that race! The Johnson family breaks land speed record towards whatever attraction we choose first.

 

[mamamelody2]

We always avoid EMH park for those days...So when we do rope drop..its a true rope drop. Its a sprint to whatever we do first. And yes..at 48 i still win that race! The Johnson family breaks land speed record towards whatever attraction we choose first.

Which is a great approach, but impossible from August 29-November 2, as DHS, AK, and MK have early EMH EVERY DAY.
I hadn't really thought about how that impacts off-site guests, but it definitely is a big disadvantage.

 

[mamamelody2]

I'll be curious to see if the MK MNSSHP days have any sort of added value. Party days are already generally lower crowd days - will be curious to see if 7-8 EMH and 8am regular park opening time changes that dynamic at all, or makes for a good day to visit crowd-wise.

Interesting times.

I hadn't even considered that, but good point! Hmmm...
I'm still trying to come up with a tentative itinerary for our 8/29-9/7 trip and having a terrible time! LOL.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

I was referring to regular rope drop, after all the EMH hours.

Everything I`ve read and experienced suggests that there is little point to rope dropping a park that already has a lot of people in it, due to EMH. Granted, an 8 a.m. rope drop might still be interesting, still too early for some folks.

We will be staying on property, so we will have access to EMH, but 6 a.m. is just too early for us -- my God, you have to be up at 4:30 a.m., at the latest!

I am thinking a couple of times, we might do the last hour of EMH, then zig when the rope drop crowd zags.

We've gone to the second half of an EMH at AK that was somewhat similar to the situation that'll exist this fall in that there were added AK EMHs so we went on a day that had both AK and MK EMH simultaneously. We also went to MK at about 8:30 on a 8:00 regular open this week. Also not exactly the same thing but similar. I'm both cases they were late in our vacation and we knew the kids would not make it by park open so we went about half an hour in.

For AK we were expecting that getting there at 8:30 was going to kill our ability to ride Navi with a short wait. It didn't. At 8:30 it was still posted as a 20 min wait but was less than 10. Normally on an EMH day that wouldn't be true but since MK also had EMH I think it split the crowds. Also that was a random May when they added EMH every day at AK for some reason (it was really out of the blue). I think that also reduced crowds on any given day during EMH because a lot of people might do it once or twice but can't do it every day (that's us). The other rides had similarly first hour short times. FOP obviously did not.

For the 8 am regular MK park opens when we've arrived at 8:30 (we've done this twice). BTMR and Splash still had 5 min waits posted and Space was at about 20. So Frontierland was still a ghost town (haha) and Space was reasonable. 7DMT was not. This was on days that were around 6 for crowd levels.

So for the top headliner in a park, yes, regular RD or arriving halfway through EMH would be pointless but hitting the next Tier down with low waits is definitely still an option. And since you have access to the park and want to do Frontierland, you could still RD that since it's closed during EMH. I would guess that BTMR and Splash will still be very doable.

 

[Klayfish]

Rope drop would have lighter crowds. However for wait times, learning how to use refresh on MDE rendered rope drop pointless a long time ago, IMO.

 

[LSUfan4444]

If you can't take advantage of EMH, I would avoid that park on that day OR schedule my FP there mid morning (10-11, 11-12 and 12-1) and do the less popular stuff before 10am.

 

[SteveInOmaha]

Do you mean EMH rope drop, or regular hours rope drop? I am guessing you mean the regular opening rope drop for those who are not eligible for EMH.

Re-read the original post.

 

[mickeyway]

Our last trip we could not get to the parks at rope drop, so we tried to a new strategy; we just used fastpasses all day. What ever ride we could snag afast pass for we did and for the headliners we waited until a half hour before close and jumped in line. It worked out just fine. Even got on FOP twice.

 

[gharter]

If you are going to try and RD the popular rides, SDD, FoP, 7DMT, PP, etc, I think you will be very disappointed as those lines will be very long by the time you get there. Other rides will probably be very doable.

 

[FutureDisneyEventPlanner]

When I do rope drop, I never rope drop a park with EMH. I just go to those without EMH. Since it looks like almost every park (except Epcot) will have EMH when I go, I'll just be there right when EMH starts. 6 am is early for me but worth it to beat the crowds!

 

[JohnneeO]

I'm too infrequent a visitor to know, but I also wonder whether having EMH at 3 parks will change the dynamic. Traditionally all the early park people have been concentrated in one park in the morning. Will crowds be lighter when they're spread out over 3 parks, especially with them being 6 and 7 am? Or will there be enough people there who are serious about getting in early that all the parks are as busy as usual by regular RD?

I think that is the most important point.

When we have all previously considered the impact of EMH on rope drop, it was typical that only one park was having AM EMH per day, and that a particular park's AM EMH was infrequent. So that meant for on site guests who wanted to attend an AM EMH, there were no other AM EMH options on that day, and attending AM EMH for a specific park meant targeting specific days.

From our own planning perspective, we would target FP+ and dining reservations in parks with AM EMH because we were planning to visit those parks. Now, if I had a similar trip planned, AM EMH is not a factor at all, because it can be accommodated on any day.

Based on this, I would expect that the daily AM EMH at MK & AK would be less of a factor than it was previously, but more of a factor at DHS, since the lure of SWGE will be strong.

 

[DisneyFive]

It definitely impacts the headliners at AK and HS. We typically avoid any park that had EMH, whether it's morning or evening.

MK has so many good attractions that crowds get spread pretty well regardless of morning EMH or not.

I'm glad EP isn't going nuts with more morning EMH's. That park is setup very well for FP+ one headliner and rope dropping the other.

Dan