On Saturday, March 15, we got on the bus at CBR to MK at 8:15. Got to MK around 8:45 for 8:30 EE. Got in line for Seven Dwarfs and waited 38 minutes which I didn’t think was bad. We were three adult women and needed the extra sleep after doing a monorail crawl the night before.
I will always rope drop and be at the entrance 30-45 minutes early for AK and Epcot (coming from IG) but don’t usually rope drop MK or DHS since I get LL for those two parks only.
We got up “stupidly early” on our last visit to Hollywood Studios (reported afterward as a CL9 day) and was on the first bus from our resort. Yes, we waited outside the gate for 45 minutes, but it was a day that HS allowed EE guests to start riding 30 minutes before the advertised EE time. We made a bee line straight to Rise, walked straight into Rey’s room, then upon exiting, went to Slinky and waited 10 minutes for a ride there, then walked back to Smugglers’ Run and was in the middle of our 20 minute wait when official park opening began and day guests were allowed in.
It’s not that you save 30-45 minutes of wait time during park hours on the first ride, its that amount of time at each and every ride all morning. Good luck doing that showing up after park opening without spending extra money on lightning lanes.