Rope drop at Epcot

[123SA]

If I am at the head of the crowd at rope drop, and speed on over to Test track STANDBY line -- among the first 25 people or so, on a crowd level 4 day, how long should it take to ride?


It's my first trip since FP+ and everything I read keeps saying this first ride will take 1/2 hour and that is just so very different from my pre FP+ experience it's a bit depressing.

 

[Robo]

If I am at the head of the crowd at rope drop, and speed on over to Test track STANDBY line -- among the first 25 people or so, on a crowd level 4 day, how long should it take to ride?

15-20 minutes.

 

[fla4fun]

There is a slight difference with FP+ in that legacy FP typically did not offer return times immediately at park open, where FP+ does. So there will be a few people entering the FP+ line first thing in the day that will slow you down a little more than you would have been before. However, it's still the best time to hit the ride if you can't FP+ it.

 

[LaurenT]

It won't be a long line ... But the ride still takes a while because of the vehicle design part.
If you don't care about that and the single rider line is open, hop on that and you'll be on and off in 10 minutes or less.

 

[wisblue]

If I am at the head of the crowd at rope drop, and speed on over to Test track STANDBY line -- among the first 25 people or so, on a crowd level 4 day, how long should it take to ride?


It's my first trip since FP+ and everything I read keeps saying this first ride will take 1/2 hour and that is just so very different from my pre FP+ experience it's a bit depressing.

if you are within the first 25 people there you will get into the first set of people entering the room to design a car. Once you get into the design room you are past the FP merge point so nobody with FPs will be moving ahead of you.

That design process takes about 5 minutes, then you go into the boarding area to get placed into a car, which for the people in the first group shouldn't take more than another 5 minutes or so. Then there is the ride itself which takes another few minutes, so the whole process would take about 15-20 minutes. But, that has nothing to do with FP+; it simply takes some time to get through all of the stages of the attraction.

It's the same way with Soarin because of the loading, preshow, and boarding process.

 

[jhaig]

Or just blow through the car design part once you're in the room. We just walked through that room last time.

 

[123SA]

okay -- this is starting to make more sense to me. Test Track was closed for refurb the last time we were there. THis design your car thing is new for us and explains the extra time. I'm sure the kids will want to do it since it is new for them.

 

[bluezy]

We did rope drop at Epcot on June 15 -- here's how it worked for us (we were about 8 people back from the tapstiles when the park opened).

8:53 -park opened and we headed straight to TT
8:57 - walked into the ride queue at TT
8:58 - walked into design room (we were part of the first group into the design room)
9:02 - left design room and walked straight to loading area
9:14 - we were back out front -- after spending a few minutes walking through the displays at the end of the ride. We stopped and did a few of the photo booth style pictures with 2 of the cars. I didn't note what time we were actually off the ride, but I would guess that we spent at least 5 minutes wandering around after we exited the actual ride so probably about 9:08 or so.

It actually took us longer to ride it a little later that morning with FP+.

 

[IrishNYC]

We did TT at rope drop on a 4 day and were about the 5th family at our tapstile. We walked as quickly as my five year olds legs could go, and were stopped to check her height (which we were totally confused about because she's 4 inches over the requirement), and we still pretty much walked right in.