Short trip coming up in a few weeks. Have to do AK and Epcot same day. Plan is to rope drop AK and get out early. Break at hotel and then head to Epcot (extedned evening hours night). Should I save my lightening lanes for Epcot or use at AK and press my luck with same day availability at Epcot? Kids and my parents with us so need to take it somewhat easy this trip.
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If you rope drop get a LLSP for Flight of Passage, rope drop safaris, and ride navi and everest at your liesure. Should be fine to save LL’s for Epcot.
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Both can work. I’d say it depends on your must dos. If Epcot rides are more important to you than AK, then pre-book there, otherwise each approach has some advantages and disadvantages.
I tend to agree with @khawkins71 that you can probably knock out AK rides without LL before you park hop, but would take a few other things into consideration, notably budget, stamina and must-do rides.
Buying LLSP for FoP is indeed the best strategy for quickly finishing AK, but for a large family it can get pricey. If you’re willing to arrive at the gate an hour before EE, you could probably still get everything at AK done with low wait times without LLMP/LLSP (in the order of FoP, Navi, KS, EE and Kali, the moving on to show) - but you’ll be hustling a bit rather than taking it easy.
Buying the LLSP would certainly make it more relaxing as you could arrive a little later, though I think I’d still want to start with Navi before regular park open - and then you’d have to circle back to Pandora at the end to maximize your RD minimal waits on other rides.
Also consider that buying you LLMP for AK and then hopping to Epcot will give you a moderate cost savings, as AK LLMP is cheaper than Epcot.
What are your must dos at Epcot and do you want to ride all three Tier 1s? If you start with LLs at AK, you could potentially start hunting for Epcot LL earlier (otherwise you’d have to wait until you tap into your first ride at Epcot, by which time all Tier 1s besides the one you prebooked will almost certainly be sold out). Remy and TT have single rider queues that work well, so if that’s an option for you I’d book FEA. Remy also has a drop. If you start hunting for LL earlier in the morning (after tapping into your first AK LL), you may be able to still grab two Tier 1s but also not guaranteed. I’d check Thrill data for your crowd levels to see which ones tend to sell out by what time.
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I’m doing something similar in a couple of months. It’s a short trip and we’ll have to hop from AK to either HS or EP. Personally I’m leaning toward standby at AK and just getting LL for the park we hop to. But Safari is our only must-do ride at AK and I think the crowd level is predicted to be a 2.
How big are your kids and are they wanting to do the Bluey experience? That doesn’t require LLs, but I’ve read that the train trip plus Bluey plus the kangaroo walkthrough can take up quite a bit of time, which could factor into when you hop.
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We did AK and then Epcot in April. It probably depends on how early you can get something at AK. I got an early safari time so that we could rope drop something else and then as soon as we did the safari I picked up TT. It helped that we did not need/want Frozen.
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Short trip coming up in a few weeks. Have to do AK and Epcot same day. Plan is to rope drop AK and get out early. Break at hotel and then head to Epcot (extedned evening hours night). Should I save my lightening lanes for Epcot or use at AK and press my luck with same day availability at Epcot? Kids and my parents with us so need to take it somewhat easy this trip.
Editing to add that we will be doing early morning hour at AK and buying LL for FOP and Guardians. My two boys are older but have adhd and waiting on long lines with them is not a good time for anyone. We have been to Disney multiple times but this is our first time park hopping and not using DAS,
AK we will will do FOP, Navii river, safari, Kali, everest, the bird show and then brunch at Rainforest (my dad loves that place for some reason) before heading out. If we rd 7:30 opening what time do you think is safe to make our ADR?
Epcot will be extended evening hours. We want to do all 3 tier 1 plus soarin’ and living with the land. Getting a Baguette from Les Halles is my a 11 yeard old must do because last year we waited on line forever and they sold out when we got to the front. Wish they had a lightening lane for that place!
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I agree with @NTEI that you could do either way.
If it were me I’d do AK LLMP to save money and lock in Preselections there (which will get you through most of the rides) plus LLSP for FoP.
There is a chance you can get FEA and maybe TT on a drop if you use your first LLMP early enough. You should easily get Soarin’. The rest may have to be standby but with extra hours it should be doable. I assume LLSP for GotG as well.
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With what you want to do at AK and the EEH at Epcot, I’d buy LLMP for AK, tap in as quickly as possible and then start booking Epcot LL.
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Also worth noting that this is a less expensive strategy!
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If you are there in a few weeks that sounds like mid-Sept which should be fairly low crowds, better than we had in early August. We did the AK/EP LL combo with Epcot EEH in early August and did not rope drop - early AM and late night in the same day would be too much us. So we did 3 LL’s in AK first (cheapest LLMP!) arriving around 10:30-11 and then as we used them, booked additional LL in Epcot. With some refreshing I was able to get all the LL I wanted. Pay attention to which ones have drops and which don’t - obviously it’s easier to get the ones with drops when they happen so get the non-drop ones first.
Here is how Epcot EEH went for us, for reference:
Soarin - arrived 9:16 PM. 25 min posted, actually Walk-on
Frozen 9:49 PM 50 min posted. 29 actual
GOTG 10:38. 95 posted, line was 6 lanes deep outside the bldg. 10:54 made it in bldg.
11:16 at first pre-preshow area
11:43 getting on ride. Total 65 min.
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