Howdy,
On our trip a few weeks ago we had a 1:30 FoP FPP but from all the hype I knew we’d probably want to ride it twice. We had a Safari FPP at 9:15AM.
Our day was EMH open at 8AM so there’s an obvious difference between your start and mine, but I think if you want to go for the RD FoP you can still make it all work, especially since you have until 10:40 to get to KS.
First, when creating my TP it wanted to put Tough to Be a Bug in there early too, but looking at the historic wait times for that I just moved it to a later time where I thought it fit in the day for us and was no issue at all.
When we RD EMH, we got to security about 7:20AM and were off the ride at 9AM (you can see my full play by play timeline here).
However even though we had started fairly close to the front of the security line, we lost a lot of ground in our trek into Pandora by getting stuck in the middle of the pack - people on the right and left sides really got in there more quickly. I’d bet I could cut at least 15 minutes off of that wait if I had another chance at staying on the side of the line.
This morning, someone else on another EMH day reported they were on line at 7:38 and off the ride at 8:12, which was terrific.
So, barring any ride down or crazy conditions, I’d bet the worst case scenario for a 9AM open if you RD and are at the security lines at least an hour before open is that you would step off of FoP with at least a half an hour to get to KS. But, if all goes well you also have a decent chance of having time to jump on NRJ and also explore a little.
On our day the NRJ posted wait was a bit high when we got off FoP, so we decided to try later since it was our first time at AK and we had a whole park to see. We then wandered around Pandora to take things in before we explored some more and went to KS. (We never got back to NRJ because we had to much to do.)
While it was certainly crowded at RD, everything went fairly smoothly, just had to keep swimming once you got past the tapstiles and into the flow. Really wasn’t that stressful once there.
Of course, another option might be to RD NRJ, which first thing should be really fast - and not worry about FoP until your FPP. Then you’d have a lot of time after to explore Pandora and add other rides in before KS. Waits at non-Pandora rides were pretty low all morning.
However- I’m not that much a fan of this latter option since even if you choose to go for NRJ, you’ll still have to endure that same crowded trek into Pandora, and why not just keep going into FoP?
(Personally, I’d go for FoP first thing again.)