We’re working with Furman University’s math department this summer on “first hour the park is open” wait-time and genie+ predictions. Some interesting numbers:
Even on slow days, there can be 600 people in the rope-drop group for 7DMT
On busy days it can take more than 30 minutes for the last person in the rope-drop group to get to the ENTRANCE SIGN at 7DMT. (That is, not only would they not get on the ride, they’d just be getting into the actual line, not some roped-off-part of Fantasyland.)
The number of Ligntning Lane guests in the first hour the park is open: 325 (includes DAS and VIP)
Wow. We were there on a CL1 or CL2 day and were middle of the pack. The intent was SDMT but when we started moving, we just “noped” right out of there and pivoted to PPF instead. I had an ILL and we did standby later that day. That line was crazy intimidating.
I believe it. When we rope dropped MK last week, on a very rainy morning (crowd level ended up being a 5 that day), the rope drop crowd was all the way back over the hub bridge. This picture (looking back towards the hub) was 20 minutes before they actually dropped the rope, it continued to build.
This is why it’s so hard to tell people how long their wait will be at rope drop. It depends how close you are to the front of the line. I was extremely proud of my group (including first timers) being pretty close to the front. It helped build my cred that I knew what I was doing when I said it was worth it to get going early
Fascinating! I found rope dropping PPF or Space Mountain to be a better strategy and just sucked it up and bought ILL for 7DMT for this reason. It’s so hard to be at the front of the rope drop crowd, especially for a family with kids.
You are correct. I was wondering if he was including that EE time as part of the first hour the park was open though? Second hour has 1k LLs. Are they really only releasing a scant few LLs for 9-10 (let’s say) or is he counting the first hour as 8:30-9:30 when only 30 mins of LLs are available because that first half hour is EE.
Does that make sense?
Either way, it’s a mind blowing swing in terms of lightning lanes passing through!
We’re considering whether to just tell people to buy the ILL for 7DMT, like we do for ROTR. Still leaves the question of which attractions to visit during ETPE.
We usually rope drop SpaceMTN x2, then Buzz then head to rope drop on Adventureland side. Our ILL for 7DMT was $7 pp and i scheduled it for 10:30 to 11:30 right before a late breakfast at Kona cafe. Worked great for us.
IMHO when you count the time you spend waiting before park open to rope drop, the time you spent waiting in rope drop + line time once you actually get to the ride is not any more of a savings than just waiting in line. If you only had to wait 10 min at rope drop but you got there an hour early, it’s still 70 minutes of waiting.
It would be interesting to look at getting in line at the last couple of minutes before park close too.
Every time I’ve done this I’ve waited 30 minutes or less. They usually inflate the wait times in the last hour of operation. Any time after 10pm it’s usually not that long a wait.
