Question for the Poly experts: if you are rope dropping MK, how much time before park opening do you try to give yourself to get there?
For me, it depends on the MK opening hour.
For a 9AM opening, they let you in the gates 7:45-8ish, so you have an hour to stroll around Main Street up to the Hub. The welcome show is at the castle stage at 8:55AM. I will often leave Poly in the 8:15ish-8:30ish range, maybe earlier if I want to stop at the Main Street Starbucks (the line can be long).
For an 8AM opening or earlier opening, there’s no “hour on Main Street” time like with a 9AM opening. For an 8AM opening, I’d be leaving Poly no later than 7:30AMish. They’ll open the front entrance gates in the 7:45ish-8AM range.
Some folks may want to be more aggressive in their timing than what I’m suggesting above - I don’t like to do a lot of waiting around so would rather be more “right on time” than anything else. Others might be more comfortable allowing more time, even if that means sitting around.
Hope that helps!
Figured I’d quote myself and my reply to your post last week since I just did an 8AM MK opening yesterday (1/2) and wanted to relay the timing while fresh and I have some pics with time stamps to help me remember the exact series of events.
We left our longhouse to walk to the GCH approx 7:15AM.
Upon arriving at the second floor, we learn that the monorail was delayed (should have been running already per the Times Guide).
After a brief moment of panic, I paused and thought through the options:
1) Take the resort launch... I had just seen a boat leave on my walk over from longhouse to GCH, but it was VERY cold (42) and very windy, so didn’t really want to wait on the dock or ride the boat.
2) Taxi/Uber/Lyft/Minnie Van... while walking downstairs I searched for a Minnie Van on the Lyft app, none appeared to be close. So I asked for a cab out front and one pulled around within a few minutes (FYI, there are almost always taxis waiting in the Poly parking lot at all times of the day). We took the cab to CR and asked to be dropped off just past the guardhouse (saves a bit of walk time vs being dropped off at the CR entrance).
FWIW, busses were running as a replacement for the monorail, but I didn’t see one while out front so quickly made the decision to taxi.
I was in line at the CR/BLT walkway security path at 7:33AM. There were about 10-15 people in front of me. While usually very quick, security took a bit of time this morning. The people in front of me had lots of bags and heavy jackets which kept setting off the metal detector.
As we walked to the gates, they let people in approx 7:42AM.
I have our first castle shot at 7:46AM.
The opening show on the castle stage was at 7:55AM.
Even in the face of an unexpected monorail closure, we still made it just as they were letting people on Main Street (although barely), which was my goal to begin with.
Hope that helps!
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in the northeast with current temperatures of 22 degrees F, which is actually a heatwave since yesterday was 7 degrees and tomorrow will be -5. It’s all relative!
. A far as overall locale it's a nice place, fairly quiet and close to the monorail entrance, Lava Pool and restaurants. Since we no longer faced the front we missed most of the woo hooing of the Spirit of Aloha crowds' mad rush to the resort's bars. My only problem is that longhouse is way past due it's renovation date IMO. Perhaps if they charged less for it until upgrade time but we all know that's not going to happen.
