So I was unable to get fp for the falcon. We will be at Hs in March and our window was already open. I was able to change my other passes. My question is I plan to rope drop and try to snag a bg. I was thinking of trying to rope drop the falcon but my plan says ride it in the evening? Then I’m still left with slinky dog and mickeys runaway train. Thoughts?
Here’s the reasoning…because so many people are showing up for ROTR early, but may not get to ride until much later in the day, the early times in the day when the park used to have lower crowds is now filled with people rope-dropping. This means the standby lines early in the day are much worse. But many of those ROTR folks, once they get their ride in, will leave the park, resulting in lower crowds later in the day.
In fact, when I was monitoring this a few days ago, I noticed at that 7:30 pm, SDD had a wait of 40 minutes and dropping.
3 Likes
My plan currently has me riding sdd at 12 with a long wait and not rope dropping anything (basically waiting till first fast pass). It’s about an hour and a half to my first fast pass unless they change hours. Since I’ll be in the park anyway I’m wondering if I’d be better off rope dropping the falcon or runaway train? I have fast passes for tt, rnr and tsm.
The TPs never factor in a guest wanting to rope drop. It’s your choice which high priority ride to rope drop.
If you can get to the park early enough to be towards the front of the group waiting to go towards a ride, I would definitely try rope dropping MFSR or MMRT. If not, you can probably knock out A$S or ST before your first FP. I’d throw MFSR into your touring plan at park open and see what wait time it gives you as an idea of what it will be if you arent at the front. You may still have plenty of time to wait and get to your first FP, even if its a bit of a wait.
That’s not quite right, they don’t factor in you arriving early to RD but they definitely do tell you what to ride as you enter the park.
As of Sunday I would say that 98.5% of all the people in the insane RD crowd packed into the TSL rope section. There were maybe 600 people at the Sunset Blvd rope. We got our BG at 7:01 and headed back to RnR, made a very quick potty stop and still only waited about 20-25 minutes. By the time we actually entered the RnR queue at around 7:10 I think the line for MFSR was 80 minutes and SDD was 110.
For RD crowd size reference, they had us packed in as tightly behind the tapstiles as they do for the Haunted Mansion preshow (there were CMs actually squeezing through, making people condense in if there were any spaces at all), filling in all the dead space and by the time they started letting people tap in the pack went all the way to security.
1 Like
Hmm. This is good info. But makes me think I should revisit my HS plan again. I was planning to get a RnRC FP for the afternoon and try to do SWGE/MFSR at RD. But maybe I should stick to trying to RD RnRC and TOT, and then head toward MMRR and SWGE after that. Hmmmm.
1 Like
What’s your CL? Ours was 6, though I’d say that it was more like 8-9 at opening, with everything having very long lines. That’s why we abandoned the HS plan altogether after using our RnR FP for a second ride, and went to RD Soarin, get Starbucks, and do Figment and the Film Festival before our 11:30 ADR at Hollywood & Vine.
It seemed like a pretty good 6 when we went back from our nap at 4:15. The 4:30 Frozen show was pretty packed, but I think they just got everyone from the queue in. We waited 38 minutes for Star Tours at around 5, then our BG was called at 5:14 (with a 60 minute return window). We got there at 5:45, waited 57 minutes, then waited 40 minutes for MFSR before hauling butt up to Fantasmic to use our dining package tickets.
It is predicted to be a 3. Last year, same time, it was a 4 I believe. But I do think at opening it will definitely be super crowded. We’re doing TSL at the end of the day to take advantage of FPs for TSM and ASS, and then shorter waits for SDD. But the best way to fit in MMRR, MFSR, ROTR, RnRC, and TOT, and then squeezing in some shows is the trick. 
We were lucky that we had evening EMH that night, so we did SDD twice and TSMM (no ASS, because we’ve all done it on previous trips and nobody liked it enough to wait in any kind of line for it) after Fantasmic.
If we hadn’t had the EMH then we would have skipped Fantasmic, and waited in the ToT line that had formed (posted 100 minutes/Lines estimated time 80 minutes, which was almost double what our TP had predicted the night before) by the time we finished the second time around on RnR. Then 10:30 Frozen show, maybe Little Mermaid if it looked like we could get in to the 11:15 show, then lunch and Star Tours, TSMM, and SDD in the afternoon. Quick bite to eat before heading back to use our BG, then MFSR to finish the (loooong) day.
For what it’s worth, we did Smuggler’s Run twice last week. Both times after 7pm. The first time about 7:15 and we waited about 25 minutes. The second time we got in just before closing and walked right on with no wait whatsoever. We were staying at AoA so it was a quick Skyliner ride over to catch a couple of rides at the end of the day.
1 Like
Yep. We were fortunate to have a CL 1 day two weeks ago but we got in line for SR about 4:45 and waited 25 minutes. (Posted time 30.) And the wait stayed that low or dropped as the evening went on.
@ryan1 Don’t know the timing of your TSL FPs but since it’s right next to SWGE, you could always do SR just before or just after without too much of a walk (even if you did the rest of Batuu earlier in the day).
1 Like
Related to this, are they changing the opening times about 2 weeks in advanced? I missed the announcement for the falcon fast passes and so I was out of luck, but I may have another chance if they change opening and closing times. I have my dates tracked. Plus we may have to wake up even earlier for our bg. We are going at spring break time.