Yep, we were at HS in November for a crowd level 2 day, when they were closing at 4:30 pm due to a private party, with an 8 am opening. It was still madness due to the terrible rope drop process.
We arrived at 7:30 am and were second at the tapstiles. They started letting people in at 7:40, but then everyone started crowding up to one of the internal rope drops. It got more and more packed, and they didn't actually drop the rope until 8:02 am on my phone. With two kids and a stroller, and getting stuck behind other strollers, and craziness all around us, it was an ugly time. We left the ride at 8:35 am. That's an unpleasant, 65-minute process for one ride!
I mean, it's a very fun, unique ride -- it's probably the most fun ride for families with young kids in all of WDW -- but it's still just not worth it.
I checked my phone as we got off the ride, and RNRC was at 10 min, ToT at 5, Star Tours at 5, GMR at 5. We did RNRC and it was actually a walk-on, but it was posted at 20 minutes with a line growing outside by the time we got off. So if we had skipped TSMM, we could have let the kids walk around from 7:45-8 am (instead of being jammed at the front of the TSMM rope drop crowd), then had 3 rides on RNRC and one on ToT, and on our way to GMR or Star Tours in the same time. As it was, we got one ride on TSMM and one on RNRC.
Next time, one ride on TSMM with FP will be good!