Hi all. I have been away from the forum for awhile since my previously planned trips were canceled, so please forgive me if this has been discussed ad nauseum already. I searched for it and didn’t see much of anything.
We are debating best transportation options for our upcoming trip in March. We will have our own car at the resort and have always liked driving to the parks the best because we are serious rope droppers and want to be sure that we are at the front of the lines. However, hearing now that the parking lots aren’t opening early like they used to and that there is no real rope drop right now, we are concerned that maybe we need to rethink things.
Staying at Pop we will have Skyliner access, so really we could choose between bus, skyliner (for applicable parks of course), and car each day. For those that have been in the last couple of months, what has your experience been? We want to use the transportation that gives us the very best chance of being some of the first ones in the park.
Eta: A great tip for HS is to get an ADR breakfast at Trattoria or Ale around 2 hours before park opening. Leave your vehicle there and walk to HS. You could use the boat to return to your vehicle in the evening.
Thank you! I was able to get an ADR at Ale and Compass also. Feels a little better thinking that I am at least confident about getting into the parks early one day for sure.
Edited to add: I chose a 7:10 for my trip in March because it looks like HS park opening hours are being changed to 9am. So far they are updated through around 2/20 and that seems to be the trend.
I have been watching as we plan to go next week. They were originally posted as 10-7 then moved to 9:00 openings more recently. Disney seems to be posting minimal boilerplate hours and then adjusting closer to the dates 3-4 weeks out.
If I recall from the chatter around here, driving your car, taking a bus/skyliner will all be 15 minutes behind the earliest walkers. (Which can make or break your rope drop strategy). Skyliner would have the highest risk of arriving even later than that.
We drove to HS today and arrived 1 hour before opening. At 8:15 they stated letting cars through. I don’t recall when we banded in but temp screen, security and MB posts were all a walk through. But I do know by 9:30 we had rode both MMRR & SD. The first was a walk-on and the later 20-30 min line.
I’m now wondering about this strategy and if it really makes that much of a difference in total time.
To me, it seems our options are
drive to YC at 720 (from akl) and have breakfast quickly (at 740,if 10 am open sticks)
Walk a mile to HS
Be likely to walk on MMRR before park open.
eat in our room, leave at 830 to try to be among the first cars
Wait 20-30m for MMRR (again, assuming we are among the first cars)
As long as we are among the first cars, that gives us an extra hour in the morning to get ready and saves us about 2 miles of walking (RT) and an expensive ADR. But we do love YC and my kids wake up excruciatingly early, so…
I should note that our only goals for the am are MMRR, TSM and the frozen sing a long. We have an 1115 sci fi adr. We will return in the evening without my DD for the thrills and SWGE.
#2 will be fine for your situation. One good thing is early March should be lower crowds, kinda like it’s been the past month.
I don’t expect the 10am open to stick. Probably 9 from here on out. We got a 7:00 ADR one day, and a 7:05 the other. A & C prices seem pretty reasonable.
Believe it or not MMRR is 4th on the list for longest wait times. The top 3 to rope drop have been SDD, MFSR, and ToT. So MMRR has been a manageable wait most of the day.
I have older kids, and we all would rather be up early than stay out late. But, with younger kids it’s good not to push them sometimes.
SWGE is great in the evenings. Less people than the morning. You could take the boat back to your vehicle when you leave.
We are early risers too (it’s 4 am here) but I can def see DH complaining about a 7 am breakfast on vacation followed by a mile walk before ww even get to the park. Sadly he is not a disney person. Our last trip I used rider swap and same day FPs to manipulate the system so that we didn’t RD and still waited in no standby lines. So he had a blast and loved it. I’m trying to keep that feeling going
I forgot about the ability to take the boats back, though. That cuts our walk back while still allowing us to see crescent lake… hmmmmm
