OK I think you mean Early Rope and Extended Rope.
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Isn’t that a WWWHP thing?
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wingardium leviosa
That’s that other place though
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hey, whatever raises yer rope
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So what happens if we skip rope drop for rope raising? Might as well be talking Double Dutch 🤷🏽
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It’s only 4 days… hard to make a gradual shift with that. 
I appreciate the suggestion though!
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I just read rope raising for the first time last night, and I thought it was already a thing. haha.
I’m okay with park close…but it’s a lot of letters to type…don’t we always abbrevate everything? So PC? Do we already have a PC? Too confusing with Politically Correct? Do people double abbreviate PoC to PC?
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I agree with all of this!! My husband hasn’t done a chill trip before…not sure if he can stand it. He’s not a smell the roses kind of guy. Maybe this is a good time to convert him. I know he won’t object to the sleeping in part…
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Park Close.
Parental Collapse
Painful Conclusion
PC definitely works
I’m out. Lol.
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I thought that rope raising was going to the park a little after it actually opened, when the rope drop crowd had already disbursed throughout the park. But couldn’t figure out what the rope had to do with it and why it was even a strategy.
Sometimes I wish I was a WDW newbie because ignorance is probably bliss.
I’m sorry @BeckyT13, what was your question? 
When DH and I go on couples trips we never rope drop. Except that one time we were in HS at 6:30 am to get a RotR BG. Wandering around without an agenda, hitting up the lounges is glorious. Running around like a crazy person because there are no kids dragging us down is pretty sweet too.
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I may have mentioned it - my kids had apparently never heard me say “rope drop” before and since our trip started all about rope dropping and I kept mentioning it, when they decided they would rather close the parks, they started calling it “rope raising” since it’s the opposite of rope dropping. I’m sticking with it. 
My takeaway from our trip in mid July is that the heat and outdoor lines is a terrible combination and we did maybe a max of 6 hours in the park at a time. On our first MK day, we rope dropped and while we waited I think 5 minutes for 7DMT, after getting up early and waiting in a crowd on the bridge for 40 minutes, it was clearly the last time my family was ever going to do that. We also rope dropped Hollywood 2 out of the 3 days - the first for the Falcon (first family rope drop experience and not bad, as we only waited in a crowd for 10 min before they marched us to the ride) and the second so my daughter could do Tower of Terror without a wait. She then rope dropped the RNRR single rider line, and sent me a picture of the literal rope.
YMMV, but everything after rope drop was a mess. After 7DMT we went right to Splash, where we waited an hour. After Falcon, we waited at Toy Story for 45 min, half of which was in the heat.
After those experiences, we discussed whether or not we wanted to be at the bus stop at 6:30 am for AK rope drop and decided it wasn’t worth it. We slept in, showed up around noon, did Navi, ate lunch, did other rides and when we were ready to be done for the day, got in line for the 90 wait for FOP, ending our day around 6 pm. Since there wasn’t a huge advantage other than the first ride, we just took it easy. For our second MK day, we spent the morning swimming, ate lunch at the hotel, and then hit the park around 2 or 3. (We left around 6:30 pm because it was raining.)
We did HS one night and it was amazing. I wandered around a nearly empty Galaxy’s Edge with my son taking pictures and enjoying the shops before getting in line for Falcon near close. My daughter did RNRR and then SDD. I wished we had only done late day touring for the whole trip.
We stayed at Beach Club Villas and the kids went to Epcot every night. Every night! My daughter rode Test Track four times in the last hour in single rider line. One night we all went together and rode Figment, Soarin, and Test Track in the last hour. Being so close to MK by being at Poly, I would totally take advantage of that closeness and spent the end of the night there every night (assuming you have park hoppers).
I also found this twitter account to be super helpful: https://twitter.com/WDWWait It shows the wait time averages daily with a heat map which really shows you how much better it is to be there at the end of the day.
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This is awesome. Thanks so much for sharing your experiences and insight! Makes me way more confident about doing the late arrival plan!!
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We just got back from an 8 day trip. We only rope dropped once-that was our first full day and at Epcot. We were practically first ones there but then had to wait out in the hot sun with no shade for 40 minutes before being released at 10:30 to go to soarin. For us this trip, rope drop was not worth it. The rest of our time there we slept in a little and arrived at the parks after the rope drop crowd cleared-some days not even until hours later. We closed down MK three different nights, and that was amazing. We definitely enjoyed our evening touring much much better than any other time of day!
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Same here. We rope-dropped the first 3 days. I know they are going back to how RD used to be, but after the past year the “new” process was just too much for too little benefit. Too crowded with the delta variant raging and we found it benefitted for that first ride and somewhat for a second but getting up super early to stand in a mass of people for 45 minutes was just not worth it. Our last two days at WDW we 1) arrived at MK at 10:30 and did fine for the next 12 hours using the TP app to guide us and 2) arrived at AK at 8:00 and did everything except Pandora with minimal waits. Should have stopped there but then waited 90 minutes for FOP only to determine it hadn’t been worth it. We couldn’t stay until close, otherwise would have waited until then. Going forward, until the rope drop procedure or Covid situation changes I think we will stick with the late arrival approach. Still planning to get a trip report out soon!
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Curious what you mean by ‘did fine’ and ‘minimal waits’? Just trying to get an idea of wait times.
We (after arriving) quickly made a plan with all the rides/shows we wanted to do and let the computer do its thing, optimizing after each attraction. We did wait maybe 45 minutes for Splash and Space Mtn and got in line for 7D at park close. But overall most waits were pretty short (10-20 min as I recall, wish I could pull up the wait times I submitted) except those we knew we would have some wait for. The app steered us well I thought. We did 14 attractions and 2 meals in about 12 hours.
At AK arriving at 8 we did 5 rides, ate QS breakfast and saw Lion King by about 11:45. Morning waits for rides outside Pandora were again 10-20 minutes as I recall. We used the app to guide us somewhat but also went renegade a bit.
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I just rope dropped all 4 parks in the last week. All but HS worked out well for us, but we stayed the whole day at each park anyway, only taking a mid day break at MK.
On our HS day, i think we could have gotten way more done by concentrating on the 6-9 pm window than we could do in the morning. Crowds were much lighter in the evening. We had dinner plans in the middle of that window and people were tired, so it wasn’t best for us on that day. But if I had a do over, I would go late and just snack through dinner. We had Ogas at 9:40 pm too, so it was a 14 hour day there! We are nuts!
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Awesome responses and experiences. Thank you!
The thing that got me was, with all those people bottlenecked and let loose at once at RD, the lines seemed to build up for most rides fairly quickly. At least compared to the status quo over the past year when those guests would gradually come in over an hour - while we went from ride to ride. We waited longer for our first ride than we used to and by the time we got off, lines elsewhere were substantial. Probably a factor of capacity increases and lack of FPP also. But overal, not fun. I’m really not too optimistic that the 30 min early access will make much difference.