Touring Strategy without FP+ ?

[2minny]

With such short park hours, I would try to take a rest at the park mid day, rather than going back to the hotel. If the park were open 8-10, makes more sense to leave and come back. I also agree with above poster, arrive early for rope drop, much cooler in the summer, and you can get so much done, then sit and have a snack and people watch, to relax a bit mid day.

 

[quagmire0]

If you can get fastpasses, that REALLY helps. However, if for some reason you can't, rope drop, rope drop, rope drop. You've gotta commit to being at the park extra early and being at the front. Know the route you need to take to the busiest ride. Once you're off that ride, hit the next busiest ride, and so on. Take a break in the afternoon, as crowds swell. Try to ride during major parade/show times, while people are distracted. Summer will be busy, but not Spring Break/Holiday busy, so that strategy should work. We made the mistake in 2019 of doing a sort-of-last-minute Disney trip. I didn't have the best fastpass selection at that point, so we were left to try and rope drop our way through it. Didn't work, for the most part. The crowds during Spring Break were the worst I had ever seen at MK and DHS. You couldn't even move forward at certain points in Magic Kingdom. Rope drop worked in Animal Kingdom, and we were able to ride the two Pandora rides back to back with little issue. But when we went to Hollywood Studios for Slinky Coaster, despite going in at rope drop, we still had a bit of a wait as it was slow moving and having issues. That threw everything off and by the time we got out of there, wait times on all the rides were insane. I think we ended up park hopping to Epcot that day.