Hi All,
Will Disney assign return times before 9am, in the 8:30-9:30 window? My touring plan won’t allow me to ride with a LL before 9am. I’d like to use my first LL as soon as possible to reserve another Tier 1 for later, but I’m not sure if I have to wait until 9am to swipe in for that first LL.
Google says I can swipe in before park opening if I’m staying on-property (which I am), but my touring plan doesn’t seem to allow it.
Does anyone know what the deal is? Thanks in advance…
As far as I know, the earliest LLs would start at official park opening, not early entry.
Honestly, I would never believe any Google/AI info about Disney. There are so many nuances/rules/different parks old info, Google/AI cannot identify what is real/correct.
Please just ask here!
Edited to add: you can use express passes at Universal at early entry. Google seems to think Universal is Disney.
Because of grace period, you can swipe in 5 minutes early. So 8:55 if you have a 9:00 LL. That’s it.
I’ll echo the points PT and Allen made above:
I want to be clear on this step. When you scan in, it should be, at least, your 2nd attraction of the day.
Why do you say this?
Because if you are there for early entry, you shouldn’t wait until 5 minutes before it ends to do your 1st attraction. You should go to a headliner, and then scan in. Especially since many headliners will start loading early.
Oh gotcha. I thought your statement was with regard to the LL themselves and couldn’t figure out why it would need to be your second LL to tap in 5 mins early
I follow now
Just a small note, the earliest LL timeslots for parks are for 5 minutes after official park open. So if MK opens at 9am, the earliest LL time available will be for 9:05am.
I had this same question because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I had a 9am LL but tried tapping in at 8:55am during EE. Turns out, there are no 9am LLs for that reason.
Thank you!
Getting a LL return time for exactly at park open is possible, but they probably don’t give very many of those. I had an 8-9am Haunted Mansion LL return window on 12/29/25 on a day that MK opened at 8am.
That said, I rode it twice standby with no wait before the merge point — before I first tapped in with LL 
I should’ve clarified the MK edge case, but Liberty Square isn’t open during early entry, so you can’t physically tap in early.
This early 5 minutes thing, is that only coming out of early entry? Because I’ve accidentally tried to scan in 1-2 minutes early for a ride on various occasions and I’ve always gotten the blue ring of rejection.
Nope - you should always be able to scan in 5 mins before and 10 mins after and turn green
hmm. Never has it worked for being early. Hovering around the entrance like a vulture waiting for the clock to tick down has always been extremely irritating.
I did this Feb.
Green.
I used BG1 to look at future 1st LLs at MK. On 4/2 official park opening is 8am with early entry at 7:30.
Oh!! Thank you. This makes more sense. My friend just said she got a LL starting at 8 and I told her it wasn’t possible. Do you know if other parks are also opening early next week?
Every park has early entry for on site guests, 30 minutes before official park opening. Every park also allows guests into the park up to a certain point and/or to the entrance of attractions before early entry. Sometimes you can be on a rode before early entry but it is never guaranteed,
Oh, I know that part 
I meant the fact that Magic Kingdom changed their regular opening time from 9am to 8am on Thursday April 2nd, making Early Entry at 7:30. Just wondering if the regular opening time had changed for any other days next week as well. So far, it doesn’t look like they have.
