Rope Drop vs Park Close

[Babe the Blue Ox]

If you don't rope drop, you can't go back and get a do-over if a ride you really want to ride is down or has a long line at the end of the night. This is why most people recommend rope-dropping if you want to have the best chance of riding all the rides you want to ride. There are just too many factors to consider at only park close if you are depending on following a set schedule and/or want to ride specific rides. You might get lucky like the other poster with multiple rides, but you cannot assume that will always occur.

Those are very valid points, but one of the biggest factors that makes a late-night plan successful is the fear that it won't work. Mornings are way too crowded and stressful for us and I would rather hit the headliners multiple times after the crowds die down, which they always do.

We've been doing this for a long time and it has always been successful for us. I've never had a Disney attraction break down at closing time and feel that it's more likely that they won't fire up in the morning. I would probably change my thinking if we ever had something like that occur.

The only time we've ever been shut out of a late ride was over at Universal several years ago when someone jumped out of a Dudley Do-Right boat and it shut the whole attraction down. They did give us free tickets to come back another day for that incident.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Here's another example from a recent summer visit to MK from 8 pm to midnight. We did all of this without G+:

Big Thunder 3x
Splash Mtn 2x
Space Mtn 2x
7D Mine Train
Pirates
Jungle Cruise
Haunted Mansion
Pooh
Peter Pan
Speedway
Barnstormer 2x

We also watched the fireworks and had a couple of Dole Whips.

 

[Mermaidtails1323]

Yes, this is just a normal evening in the park for us. Our last several trips have been either the 2nd week in May or the first week in June. Not the busiest times of the year but not slow days either. These are generally listed as crowd level 7 or 8 days.

We learned about Line Stacking and Disney’s methods for inflating the evening wait times in the 1997 Unofficial Guide and have been using this info to our advantage ever since.

Super helpful! We are going this year late May and may need to try this since kids are getting older. Fear of success has definitely held us back before. Looks like a new thing to try!

 

[ILovePixieDust]

We're usually rope drop people as well but not that the kids are older it sounds like park close might be even better.

Anyone know if it is as effective over the Christmas and New Year's weeks as well??

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We're usually rope drop people as well but not that the kids are older it sounds like park close might be even better.

Anyone know if it is as effective over the Christmas and New Year's weeks as well??

We've done this twice on New Year's Eve in Disneyland and that was by far the most crowded I've ever seen a Disney park. Once the crowds started to congregate for fireworks shows, the lines for the rides dwindled considerably. Watching Fantasy in the Sky during repeat rides on Big Thunder is spectacular.

 

[clm10308]

I absolutely love late nights at MK during Christmas week. Midnight to 2am is the best time for rides. The only negative is that there is pretty much no food available after 11:00.

 

[saraheliz]

We typically do a mix during our trip but we LOVE park close. I wish it was later like it use to be though. My kids have always been able to push through and are so much more pleasant once the sun is down (we go in summer).
I have the greatest video of my 7 year old dancing down Main Street at midnight last year, and we typically end our trips at MK closing out the parks with repeated rides on Dumbo or the Mad Tea Party. There's nobody there so they just let us stay on for multiple rides!

 

[scrappinginontario]

Another factor in the AM vs PM approach is what time the parks close.

The past few years when we’ve been there in Aug and Sep, the latest time any park closed (other than for ticketed parties) was 10PM for MK. All other parks closed earlier. Similar to the parks being less busy at park opening the earlier the park opens, they’re less busy the later the parks are open, but when that’s not late there isn’t the big drop in crowds some above have enjoyed.

 

[Jeneper]

Excellent summary!

We do both. We get a lot done during ETPE and the first hour after park opens to all but then crowds quickly grow.

We plan a headliner for park close but have also missed out on RotR when it was down at park close.

If we had to choose one over the other we would choose Rope Drop to get more done.

Not everyone is a Disney expert so using “ETPE” and “RotR” is not helpful

 

[scrappinginontario]

RotR = Rise of the Resistance
ETPE = Early Theme Park Entry

Please feel free to ask. These terms are used many times daily and as you read the boards you will learn and use them too as people just don’t type them out multiple times each day.

Please feel free to ask anytime someone uses a short form you are not familiar with.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Not everyone is a Disney expert so using “ETPE” and “RotR” is not helpful

To help you and others out, I have created and pinned a thread of commonly used DISboards acronyms. Hope this is helpful.

 

[brockash]

We usually rope drop and are able to get a decent amount done in Early Entry and RD hours. We have never done park close though. How do the wait times compare in the later evening to rope drop times in your experience. Would we be able to accomplish the same goals of we sleep in and stay later? Or stick with early entry and rope drop? Thanks

In our experience RD (if you're one of the first few hundred in the park) far exceeds park close in terms of lines for rides though it may be a more pleasant experience depending on how much ppl on ur party dislike getting up early.

 

[brockash]

Here's another example from a recent summer visit to MK from 8 pm to midnight. We did all of this without G+:

Big Thunder 3x
Splash Mtn 2x
Space Mtn 2x
7D Mine Train
Pirates
Jungle Cruise
Haunted Mansion
Pooh
Peter Pan
Speedway
Barnstormer 2x

We also watched the fireworks and had a couple of Dole Whips.

Wow...we're pretty fast movers but I don't think we'd be able to fit all of that in 4 hrs even if everything was a walk on. I will say in our experience, yes crowds can die down (especially at AK); we've still almost never experienced walkons in the last few hrs of a normal operating schedule. We had a bit more luck when they used to have EMHs until 2 or 3am but not since.

 

[dez1978]

I wonder how well closing the parks down works during thanksgiving week lol. I'm a bit nervous and really don't want to RD every day of our trip

 

[brockash]

I wonder how well closing the parks down works during thanksgiving week lol. I'm a bit nervous and really don't want to RD every day of our trip

In our opinion RD DHS gets us the most bang for our buck, so if you're going to RD I would RD DHS.

AK probably has the most bang for your buck in closing and then I'd say MK (plus RD MK is the most unpleasant to us.)

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

In our experience RD (if you're one of the first few hundred in the park) far exceeds park close in terms of lines for rides though it may be a more pleasant experience depending on how much ppl on ur party dislike getting up early.

One thing to keep in mind is that Disney intentionally inflates the posted wait times in the evenings to discourage late riders. We’ve often found the posted waits to be up to 4x the actual wait later in the day. We first learned about these techniques in the 1997 Unofficial Guide and have been using it to our advantage ever since.

If you feel the lines are longer in the evenings then their closing procedures are working as intended.

 

[Robber Baron]

In our experience RD (if you're one of the first few hundred in the park) far exceeds park close in terms of lines for rides though it may be a more pleasant experience depending on how much ppl on ur party dislike getting up early.

I agree. BUT, the thing is we are early risers, so we're up anyway.

Rope drop I'm sure is no fun for folks that like to sleep later.

 

[brockash]

One thing to keep in mind is that Disney intentionally inflates the posted wait times in the evenings to discourage late riders. We’ve often found the posted waits to be up to 4x the actual wait later in the day. We first learned about these techniques in the 1997 Unofficial Guide and have been using it to our advantage ever since.

If you feel the lines are longer in the evenings then their closing procedures are working as intended.

One thing to keep in mind is that Disney intentionally inflates the posted wait times in the evenings to discourage late riders. We’ve often found the posted waits to be up to 4x the actual wait later in the day. We first learned about these techniques in the 1997 Unofficial Guide and have been using it to our advantage ever since.

If you feel the lines are longer in the evenings then their closing procedures are working as intended.

I wasn't talking about the posted wait times; I meant our experience with the actual wait times. We've always been able to get more done by rope dropping as opposed to closing (at least in the last several years.) We had much better wait times before closing back when they had EMHs til 2 or 3am, but not since then for us. These days we usually rope drop, go back for break and then go back to close. We love the parks at night, however if strictly speaking in terms of how long headliners are; we've had much shorter waits at rope drop for mult. headliners as opposed to park close, but just our experience.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I wasn't talking about the posted wait times; I meant our experience with the actual wait times. We've always been able to get more done by rope dropping as opposed to closing (at least in the last several years.) We had much better wait times before closing back when they had EMHs til 2 or 3am, but not since then for us. These days we usually rope drop, go back for break and then go back to close. We love the parks at night, however if strictly speaking in terms of how long headliners are; we've had much shorter waits at rope drop for mult. headliners as opposed to park close, but just our experience.

Thanks for the feedback. We find rope drop to be way too crowded and stressful for our taste. We find that we can get a lot more done in the evening after the crowd dies down.

A good recent example is Rise of the Resistance, where we found an 80 minute posted wait an hour and 20 minutes before closing time. The first wait was 20 minutes and the 2nd was 10 minutes. By our 3rd trip, the posted wait had dropped to 70 minutes but the ride was a walkon by then. You can’t do that in the morning no matter how early you arrive.

 

[Grace&Carolinesmom]

Back when our girls were younger, we would always do rope drop, back to the room to rest/swim in the afternoon, and then another park in the evening.

Now that our girls are adults, we prefer to get up a little later (by eastern time standards as we live in central time zone). We go to the parks around 11am-ish and stay until close without an afternoon rest time. Sometimes we park hop in the afternoon and sometimes we don't.

We enjoy the parks at night having no worries of getting sun-burned, lower temperatures, trailing off crowd levels and the twinkling lights completely change the park atmosphere. Another plus of sleeping in a little is the buses to the parks have no crowds and we aren't waiting in lines just to enter the parks which saves time and is less stressful.

All this to say--Team Park Close