What is your AK/Pandora touring strategy?

[annabelle004]

We will be there EMH morning, President's Day. I am going with extended family - 9 of us. four adults, five kids ages 7-13.

I keep flip-flopping on how I want to handle the itinerary. We will be there and through security by 7:30. Debating going straight to Pandora and knocking those rides out, then doing other rides/attractions/shows.
Another option is going for later, mid day, FP for FoP (fingers crossed...), hitting NRJ at RD, then heading to EE and Dinosaur. Using FP for Safari too.

My main concern is doing both Pandora rides. I don't want to wait until closing to do NRJ. Everyone really wants to do both rides and I don't want to risk ride breakdown or other issue resulting in missed ride.

I feel like there are several "right answers" here and wanted to ask for some real-life experiences and suggestions. So, what do you guys think?

 

[Gehrig1B]

Rope Drop N'avi River Journey, then hit all the other rides until FOP FP+ later in the day.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Do that strategy I did today. Make sure you're at the park 45 minutes before emh opening. They will let you in early.

Have your fp for FOP.

Go straight to Navi River journey. The parks were slammed today but we still walked into River journey then immediately and back around and waited 10 minutes for a second ride.

Do dinosaur, Everest and finally Safari.

Use your FOP fp.

You'll probably want a second FOP ride. Enter the line about 10 minutes before park close. I did that and the line was at the entrance point and we were on in an hour.

 

[iujen94]

Can you get to AK by 7 instead of 7:30? I've done EMH mornings at AK twice recently. There was a HUGE crowd difference between 7am (when we arrived) and even 7:15. Arriving at 7am, we were able to ride FOP and NRJ and be done with both by 8:20. No way would I try to get in the FOP line if I got to the park at 7:30.

 

[duketennisgal]

I have a different experience arriving at the park entrance at about 7:20 or 7:25am for an 8:00 EMH with time/date stamps on my phone to back it up. On December 2nd AK had 8:00am EMH. My parking lot picture on my phone shows that we parked at 7:15 am, we had a long walk to the front because I thought that the walk to the front wouldn't be so bad... I could never get a FP for FOP so I booked a 9am FP for NRJ and prayed that we would be able to walk onto FOP without crazy lines!

We were bagless so walked straight up to the entrance, however the bag check lines weren't ridiculously long. We were let into the park early and the first pic I have on my phone of Pandora is at 7:37 am. We were in the queue by 7:39am. The last outdoor queue pic I had was at 7:45 am. We went through the pre-shows, the ride, the gift shop where we bought a t-shirt and were outside taking a pick at Pongu Pongu at 8:19...

So, it is very possible to arrive to the park after 7:00 and ride FOP without a crazy wait. It was actually perfect because we then had 40 minutes to just take in the beauty of Pandora before our FP for NRJ.

Now, I will say that by the time we were off the ride the line was 120 minutes, 150 by the time we finished the river journey!

 

[KEW]

I have a different experience arriving at the park entrance at about 7:20 or 7:25am for an 8:00 EMH with time/date stamps on my phone to back it up. On December 2nd AK had 8:00am EMH. My parking lot picture on my phone shows that we parked at 7:15 am, we had a long walk to the front because I thought that the walk to the front wouldn't be so bad... I could never get a FP for FOP so I booked a 9am FP for NRJ and prayed that we would be able to walk onto FOP without crazy lines!

We were bagless so walked straight up to the entrance, however the bag check lines weren't ridiculously long. We were let into the park early and the first pic I have on my phone of Pandora is at 7:37 am. We were in the queue by 7:39am. The last outdoor queue pic I had was at 7:45 am. We went through the pre-shows, the ride, the gift shop where we bought a t-shirt and were outside taking a pick at Pongu Pongu at 8:19...

So, it is very possible to arrive to the park after 7:00 and ride FOP without a crazy wait. It was actually perfect because we then had 40 minutes to just take in the beauty of Pandora before our FP for NRJ.

Now, I will say that by the time we were off the ride the line was 120 minutes, 150 by the time we finished the river journey!

Even though I've penciled in leaving 2 hours (of park time) to do FOP, I'm hoping my experience next week is more similar to yours, except it'll be a 7 am EMH, hoping to get there @ 6 (uber/lyft/etc)...or at a minimum before the first buses start coming in from all the Disney resorts.