Rope Drop is WHEN?!--Friday, March 17th 2017 Part 1
After our very yummy day of eating at Epcot, we had luckily had an early (well, early for Disney
) night—bedtime at 11:15. I’d planned Friday to be our Magic Kingdom day, and had originally planned to be there at rope drop to hit things like the standby queue for Peter Pan’s Flight and such. Once Disney changed the time of the early magic hours—starting at 7 am instead of 8—I decided to stick with the rope drop plan. ‘Cause again, we have to hit all the things, right? Luckily S was amenable.
So, up at 5:45am! Gosh guys, if I thought 6:30am was early, 5:45 was much worse. But the promise of Disney is strong and we were up and all ready to go and at the bus stop at probably 6:15 or so. Early enough it was still dark out but late enough that there was a surprising amount of people already in line for the bus—I mean, I was hoping parents wouldn’t want to get their little children up that early, but I guess it’s just a function of how large Pop Century is, that even a small amount of people proportional to the total capacity of the resort still makes for a pretty good line at the buses.
We made it on the first bus to arrive though (see, all my comments about the line for nothing
), and if I recall correctly, I think we may have even got a seat. Huzzah! We arrived at the Magic Kingdom to find a pretty good amount of people being held in front of the train station, but not too many. We quickly made it through security and then up to the very front of the crowd, directly in front of the tunnels on the left side.
(See the train arriving? No characters though...)
Not sure how they’re doing the new rope drop procedure (where they let everyone up onto Main Street), but they didn’t do that for the 7 am EMH. They held all of us in front of the train station and then, rather than walking everyone up Main Street behind ropes, they basically just said “Go!” and everyone ran/speed-walked up Main Street to their choice of ride. CMs along the way periodically said “don’t run!” but not many people listened.
S and I were at the head of the pack initially, but we were not going to run and could barely even manage speed-walking (hurting feet, remember?
), so we quickly got overtaken by lots of people. However! Most people, if not everyone that I saw, was heading directly for Mine Train. We had a fastpass for it later in the day, so our quarry was a bit different: Peter Pan’s Flight!
I can hear you already. “Now Tiffany, why in heaven’s name would you get up so early for Peter Pan’s Flight? It’s cute and nostalgic, but not worth all that—just get fastpasses!” Aah, but my focus this morning was not so much the ride itself, but the regular queue. It’s so cute and adorable, with all sorts of great details, and I really wanted to see it again myself and for S to see it for the first time, but neither of us was willing to wait in the actual standby line to do it. Thus, rope drop!
We headed directly for the center tunnel through the castle to get to the ride, but it was blocked off. They were routing everyone across the bridge by the teacups and scanning bands to make sure you were supposed to be participating in EMH. So while everyone headed to Mine Train, we broke off and went up the little path by the Wishing Well to cut over to Peter Pan.
I wish we hadn’t been hurrying so much. There were more people waiting for EMH than I expected, and so I assumed that a portion of them would be heading to Peter Pan. I didn’t want to waste time waiting in line, so S and I were powerwalking quickly over there. But I wish we’d slowed down and enjoyed that first part of the morning a bit. No one was on the path by the wishing well, and no one was in that plaza by the Carrousel, and the sun was just starting to come up. And right as we came near the Castle, we ran into the Stepsisters, playing around and yelling at the castle for Cinderella to “WAAAAAAAAAAKE UP”. It was hilarious, and thinking back now, I wish we would have taken more pictures and stopped and interacted with them a bit (despite neither S nor I being big Cinderella fans).
But, we didn’t. It is what it is. Instead, we continued quickly over to Peter Pan, and ended up being the very first people on the ride! I miscalculated—
everyone was headed to Mine Train. So we got to enjoy the standby line a bit, and it was indeed adorable. S loved playing with the shadows and looking at the nursery. I was a bit disappointed the pixie dust effect was off, but other than that, it was awesome, and worth the early morning and speed-walking, especially since we actually got to ride the ride without any waiting! We thought about riding again, but by that point there was a pretty good standby line going (20 minutes or so?).
After our flight over London, I wanted to stop at the kiosks and book SDFPs, so S went over and rode Winnie the Pooh (which I’d ridden on Wednesday) and I stopped at the Philharmagic kiosks (which were indeed open and running at 7:10 am).
While S enjoyed her time with Pooh and friends, I booked us SDFPs for Jungle Cruise at 8:30 – 9:30am, and then Dumbo for 10:30/10:35. The pre-booked fastpasses were for Mine Train, Splash Mt, and Big Thunder Mountain, and S didn’t want to ride Buzz, Pirates or Haunted Mansion again, so I decided to just book those 2 for now and then try again later. I also didn’t want to spend tons of time at the kiosks, wasting precious EMH, and those had popped up quickly. Pretty good though, if I do say so myself!
As I headed over to meet up with S at Winnie the Pooh, guess who I ran into again?
They promptly decided it would be fun to ride Winnie the Pooh and hurried on…I was almost disappointed I wasn’t a child who could ride with them! But S promptly emerged from the exit, and we continued on to the more adult-oriented Space Mountain! We were gonna hit Little Mermaid first, but I’ve never seen it have a line and figured it would be better to hit Space Mountain first. It proved to be a good choice, as we waited maybe 5 minutes, if that. And as always, it was a fantastic trip into space.
After that, we decided to ride Astro Orbiter. I know, I know, and during EMH hours too. But hey—riding it during the short lines of EMH meant we didn’t spend half an hour or 45 minutes in line later in the day. And the breeze and the sunrise—it ended up being really fun.
Look at that castle view!
EMH ended right as we finished with Astro Orbiter, but no big deal. We walked back up towards Fantasyland, riding the teacups on the way, where I introduced S to the concept of you controlling the spin of your teacup. We got really really dizzy.
Then we hit the Little Mermaid, where I was the chosen one! I’m very excited—can you tell?
Stoned Ariel…
Not stoned S…
We then made our way over to Small World and took advantage of the long sitdown time.
We got greeted on the signs again on our way out, which creeped S out. I told her not to think about it, we’re at Disney—it’s fine. It's aaaaaaaaall fine.
We continued to make our way over to our Jungle Cruise fastpass, but stopped and took advantage of the lack of lines for Aladdin’s Magic Carpets. S was the chosen one this time, and humored me with a picture.
I really like this picture of us though—we’re both awake and fully enjoying the Disney magic at this point!
Then, Jungle Cruise! I again was pretty much the only one laughing. What can I say, I’m a nerd.
I feel like I stopped and made SDFP here for Barnstormer, since we had one for Dumbo and figured we could ride Barnstormer at pretty much the same time. We also stopped and took pictures in front of the Castle.
I swear, S closes her eyes in pretty much every picture. Oh well—Tinkerbell!
At that point, it was about 10 am, and we couldn’t make any more fastpasses (regular or SDFP) yet, so we decided to brave the 25 minute standby line for Tomorrowland Speedway. The only actual standby line we waited in the whole trip…poor, poor us! The line ended up being 19 minutes, according to my “Lines” app timer, so not too bad. And I had an awesome car that went fast and didn’t bang around, so I’m calling this ride a win.
We then headed over to Dumbo. Both sides were running, but there was still a bit of a wait, even with fastpass. Entertaining though—the little girl with the family behind us kept trying to lick the bars of the queue and her dad kept trying to catch her before she was able to.
I think the dad won in the final tally, but I enjoyed watching the match.
After Dumbo, we headed over to Barnstormer and it closed literally as we were about to redeem our fastpasses. We never did get to ride it, but free anytime fastpasses! However at that point, we were hungry and food was foremost on our minds. Gaston’s tavern, and cinnamon rolls as big as your face, here we come!
The cinnamon roll hit the spot perfectly. And when we finished, it was time to ride Mine Train. Guys, this no line/fastpass thing—I’m such a fan. The fastpass line was really quite short, so we hardly waited at all and then off to the mine! I enjoyed waving at people, as you can tell by the photo.
We were definitely flagging at this point as the fatigue from the past couple of days started to catch up to us, but we kept going, as we had a few more mountains to conquer! We wandered over to Splash where the fastpass line was much longer than it should have been, but still only about 10 minutes. We had front row and got pretty wet…but that’s why I planned it for noon!
After Splash we dried off by walking through the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. I really like this walk through, but figured S wouldn’t care for it. To my surprise, she was the one who insisted we do it! It was fun, though I spent a good portion of the time irritated at the couple in front of us who insisted on “walking” their baby up and down the steps. And when I say “walking”, I don’t mean the child was walking and they were there to catch; I mean, the baby can’t walk yet and so they’re holding the hands of the baby as the baby moves its feet. As you may imagine, quite a line built up as the parents helped their non-walking baby climb stairs. Good grief. Sometimes the complete lack of awareness people have astounds me. If your child can’t walk, and there’s no way to get around you, maybe don’t insist on having your child practice walking while a line builds up behind you. *sigh* okay, rant over.
After Swiss Family Robinson, we made our way back over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and enjoyed our 4th mountain of the day—and it was only 1:15 or so! This was another one with a longer fastpass line than I would have liked, but still not longer than 5 or 10 minutes, and when the standby lines are showing like 90 minutes, I’m not going to complain.
Once we finished Big Thunder, we decided we were ready for lunch. We had a 1:35 pm ADR at Skipper Canteen but we headed over there a bit early anyways and enjoyed relaxing in the chairs in the open air lobby. I was under the impression that this was a restaurant where it was possible to get a walk-up reservation, but apparently not today, as there were multiple families turned away. I did see one VIP tour guide show up with a group, and they were seated pretty much immediately. Do the VIP tour guides make ADRs? Or can they just show up wherever they want and get seated? I only ask ‘cause I saw a VIP tour guide show up with a group at another restaurant as well, and I’m curious.
Anyways, Skipper Canteen! I was really excited about this restaurant, cause again, I love the Jungle Cruise. The puns were of course awesome, and the food was yummy. We got the SEA Shu Mai as an appetizer (Legendary blend of Pork, Shrimp, Edamame Beans, and Spices wrapped in Gyoza Skin then steamed).
For meals, which I apparently forgot to take pictures of (good thing its not a dining report, right?
), S got the “Tastes like Chicken, cause it is!” and I got the Steak Salad. S liked the chicken, though she said the breading was interesting—I think it had ginger in it? Something interesting, but she liked it. My steak salad could have used more steak (the ratio of steak to salad was way off), but it was also very good.
By this time, S was really crashing. We’d planned to explore Tom Sawyer Island a bit, maybe relax on the rocking chairs, but S wasn’t feeling it. So, since we hadn’t really made any plans for the afternoon (as we’d ridden pretty much everything we wanted to by this point), she decided to go back to the hotel and rest. I thought about it, but decided I wasn’t ready to “waste” park time—I figured I wasn’t that tired. So S went back to the hotel and I waited at the table for the check.
While I was waiting, I realized that we’d used up our 3 advance fastpasses, so I could book another fastpass on my app! Up I pulled the app, and started poking around to see what fastpasses were available. Lo and behold, as I pulled up Epcot to see what was available, just for fun, there was a Frozen fastpass! For 3:45! Pretty much exactly one hour in the future. I thought it might be too soon, but then realized that I’d bought Express Transportation, and a one-hour-in-the-future Frozen Fastpass when one is at Magic Kingdom seemed like
exactly the situation the Express buses were made for. So I booked it, quickly paid the bill, and scurried over to Buzz Lightyear to check in for the bus to Epcot.
Up Next: How I discover that the Express Bus is pretty much the best thing ever
[I'd planned to keep this post going, but it's now 11 pm here and my husband informs me that it's probably time for bed...part 2, tomorrow!]
aw, thank you! 
Aw, toddlers! Thank you! I had an awesome time in MK--I was shocked how much I got done, especially with Spring Break crowds!
