Rope Drop Strategy for ILL$ Rides

Walt Disney World Attractions
#1

We will be visiting all 4 parks in early December and will be staying on site. We plan to take advantage of the 30 minute early entry. With young kids with us we aren’t realistically going to get to the parks 45 minutes before they open. I would love to get some of the ILL$ rides done in the 30 minute early entry to avoid paying for them. If we are in the park lined up 15 minutes before the parks open for on-site guests how long would we roughly wait for these rides (is it feasible or is it best to skip them first)?

MK: SDMT, Space
HS: SDD (not ILL$), MMRR
AK: FoP
Epcot: Frozen

I am having trouble finding actual times. I know it depends on how far back in the rope drop crowd we are but any help from people who recently experienced this would be appreciated. If nothing else, it will be the proof I need to get my DH moving quicker in the morning.

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#2

RD’d FOP today. We were at the turnstiles by 06:40 for 07:30 opening. We pretty much walked on. It seemed like everyone wanted to ride that ride. Use turnstiles all the way to the left and be ready for some race walking.

We followed TP optimizations for the most part

It was difficult to toggle between TP and MDE, but we managed

CL were high at EP, MK & DHS on the days we were there.

I must confess we used Genie+ for MK and DHS

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#3

Thank you very much! We will have a stroller for DS2 so I hope it doesn’t slow us down too much. We bought Genie+ for the length of our stay so I figured we would try to prioritize these rides first but figured everyone else would be doing the same thing.

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#4

Genie+ was a little tricky. Several times we thought we were scheduling for the time listed and then ended up with something hours later. Refresh often. Refer to the “stacking” hack in an earlier thread

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#5

Does anyone have any feedback about what SDD, MMRR or Frozen rope drop is like currently?

#6

We did MMRR twice last week. First day we got in line around 8:10 or 8:15 and had a little more than 20 minute wait. The second time we were slightly later in line just before 8:30 and waited between 30-35.

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#7

In case anyone else had the same question I did here was some of our experiences so far from ASMo with rope dropping;

  1. Took 1st (7:08 am) bus to MK and was in 1st 50 people on 7DMT when park opened at 8:30 am.

  2. Took 1st bus (around 7:09 am) to HS and got in line just after 7:30 for MMRR. Only two families ahead of us. Ride opened exactly at 8:30 and broke down as soon as the 1st car loaded. Stood in loading area for almost 30 minutes before it started running again foiling our hope of low waits for RRC and ToT.

  3. Couldn’t deal with getting everyone up a whole hour earlier for AK’s 7:30 am opening so we met at the bus stop at 7 am. Went right to FoP when we got there and was off by 8:30. Line moved continuously.

  4. Today at Epcot we got there at 9:30, a whole hour before the park opened. Went straight to Frozen and still waited 40 minutes because we were that far back in line by the time we made it there. We walked fast with no breaks too. Thinking the people from international gateway had the advantage. Didn’t help that Test Track was down so all the people headed there went to Frozen instead.

Adding:
2nd rope drop day at HS didn’t go as well. Rock’n’Rller Coaster and MMRR were both down. As others have mentioned the amount of rides that keep going down is bad.

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