To Rope Drop or Not

[Blondie58]

Worth it depending on who you are traveling with and your "goals" for the day. Normally we like sleeping in and getting to the parks in a leisurely manner. However, we did rope drop to get in the que for Rise of the Resistance. A few years ago we did rope drop to get a ride in the Mine Train when it first opened.

 

[JoJoGirl]

If getting up early will derail your feeling of being on vacation, don’t do it. Enjoying your own kind of vacation is the most important thing.

Otherwise ...

DO IT!!!

Getting some high-wait headliners out of the way early will free up time later to enjoy attractions that don’t have crazy long lines. Epcot probably isn’t all that advantageous to rope drop unless you have a big Frozen fan in your group, because most of the other wait times there are pretty short all day right now.

I rope dropped all the parks this week. Here are the attractions I was able to do with super short waits before official park opening:

Tuesday - MK: Peter Pan, BTMRR, Splash (Went to 7DMT first, but it was was having “technical difficulties” so I changed plans on the fly) Was also able to ride Pirates basically walk-on right after official park opening.
Wednesday - HS: MMRR, MFSR, Black Spire Outpost, then very short wait at TSMM right after official open.
Thursday - Epcot: Test Track (not sure that started running early, but rode with very little wait).
Friday (today) - AK: Flight of Passage and Navi River, then walked on Safari just after park open.

 

[sarobison]

Depends on how one defines rope drop I suppose. For me, being in line for temp check etc for an hour (or more) kinda defeats the purpose. We’ve arrived >30 minutes (or less) before park “open” at all 4 parks the last 4 days.

Tuesday- MK we rode Pooh then waited for 7DMT. Pooh was running before open but mine train didn’t start until right at posted opening.

Wednesday- AK direct to pandora, waited about 40 minutes total for Avatar. Were off the ride by 9:25 and then went to Safari.

Thursday- Hollywood. Arrived maybe 20 minutes before open. Went directly to smugglers run and waited maybe 10 minutes max. Then did Star Tours, Toy Story and Slinky before noon along with some time shopping and moving slowly through the park.

Friday (today)- arrived about 20 minutes before open. Half the group went to Frozen and the other half did Test Track followed by Space. We met at the land, ate lunch, rode Soarin and were on Nemo by 1pm.

So technically we rope dropped but we weren’t the first family anywhere lol.

 

[coolbrook]

We got back about a week ago, and are almost always rope drop people. We did two days at Magic Kingdom this trip however and did rope drop one day and a lunch arrival the other. We enjoyed our morning off and hadn't planned to have the extra day at MK so we kind of considered it a bonus day and each of us picked one ride we really wanted to do after lunch before ending our day at Carousel of Progress. We took it slow and watched the character cavalcades and sat and talked some. It just depends on how you want your day to go. Rope drop certainly helps you get more rides in with less wait.

 

[neverlandsky]

Only RD half of the trip.

We RD Frozen at 20 minute wait then FP Frozen right after. Which at that time the standby wait was already 60 minutes. Glad we did this. It was the one ride we wanted to ride again. Then rode Fast Track twice with little to no wait.

RD Space Mountain at 20 minute wait. Last second at loading dock a child didn’t want to ride and they were nice enough to let me immediately come back and go on as a single rider and gave me directions on where to go, what to do, and how to come back. Then we rode Buz multiple times and 15 minute wait at Auto.

RD Na’vi River with 20 minute wait and then FP at FoP right afterwards.

 

[kniquy]

I usually like to RD but the trip we are on now is 9 days so with multiple days in the parks we don’t feel the need to go all day long. We actually want to be at the parks later to see the Christmas projections. But on shorter trips we will RD to make the most of our time.

This is the first trip where we haven’t RD and I actually enjoy our mornings so much more. We have a time that we want to leave by but it is a loose time.

 

[jamescanuck2001]

Rope drop is the single most effective thing you can do to get the most out of a Disney vacation, whatever the circumstances.

Even better, get a restaurant reservation before park opening, have breakie and do several popular rides while people are still getting through the entrance and walking to where they are going. Then if FP+ is going on, use those and do less popular rides in between. You can be done a park around 2 pm, and its time to spend the rest of the afternoon at Stormalong Bay.

For context, up until about and hr and half after opening, the wait time at Peter Pan's Flight will not exceed 20 minutes, by 11 am it is over an hour.

 

[Pixiedustaway07]

We usually don’t unless we are too excited to sleep. But with HS and Epcot opening as late as 10 and 11 lately we didn‘t have any trouble this year. We like to stay until close though.