Help me understand rope drop advantage

[Princesca]

I never thought of it that way, but technically, that's true... you are kind of just front-loading your waiting in line. That said, I would rather wait in line when there's nothing else to be doing than when there's things I could be doing. I think my plan for our spring trip is going to be to get to rope drop and munch breakfast in line, hoping it will keep the kids busy for at least a little while.

 

[scrappinginontario]

How much of an advantage you receive will depend on arrival time and attraction you choose first. In Jan we chose Remy. Arrived at transportation 85 mins before ETPE. 40 mins later we arrived at IG in Epcot. Immediately got in line for Remy but by then line was quite lengthy. By the time we got off the ride ETPE was over and day guests were in the park.

So, depending on which park you choose, which attraction and, what time you arrive at transportation, it will greatly affect how much benefit there is to ETPE.

All that being said, we're still glad we did exactly what we did as by the time we exited Remy the line was over the bridge and almost into UK!!

 

[dachsie]

Over the years I've read posts of using the "rope drop" to get to a popular ride before the line gets long. For example, a recent post that someone arrived at 7:45 for a 9:00 opening. They were at the front and walked (quickly I assume?) to their ride and got on without waiting. Then they went on to a few more rides before the lines built up to their daytime lengths.

Isn't this the equivalent of standing in line for an hour and fifteen minutes? You arrive at 7:45 for a ride at 9, and you just stand and wait. Hmmm...

And arriving early doesn't help you with any ride except the very first. If the rope drops at 9, and I arrive at 9, I still have my choice of all the rides with shorter early morning lines. And I'm actually a bit ahead of the early arriver, because they do get their first ride right away, but for all the rest of the rides I actually am about even with them, just a bit ahead while they are riding that first ride.

Really, didn't you stand in a "line" for an hour or more for that first ride?

So, what's your opinion? Is getting on one single ride quickly worth the potentially long wait? I know many people love rope drop, so I'm hoping to hear what I'm missing.

That's one ride, but then you can ride multiple others before the lines start building

 

[loveswdw]

Depends on which ride you are trying to knock out. We rope dropped two mornings at DHS to ride RotR. We were there early but even by the time we got into the park for early entry and back to the ride, we waited over an hour. Had we not rope dropped, the wait would've been a lot more than an hour. I'm stubborn and refuse to pay extra to ride when I've already paid a lot of money for park tickets. I'm going to make my wait as short as possible without paying an extra $60 for my family to ride RotR. If that means getting up early, so be it.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We find rope drop way too crowded and stressful. If you’re interested in an alternate strategy, the actual wait times for the headliners are almost always shorter than in the morning, and you don’t have to wait outside a locked gate to get them done.

Time isn’t free, and those that arrived early in the morning are usually long gone by the evening, which is what makes this plan work.

Just be aware that the posted wait times during the last hour or two of operation are intentionally exaggerated to discourage late riders.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Depends on which ride you are trying to knock out. We rope dropped two mornings at DHS to ride RotR. We were there early but even by the time we got into the park for early entry and back to the ride, we waited over an hour. Had we not rope dropped, the wait would've been a lot more than an hour. I'm stubborn and refuse to pay extra to ride when I've already paid a lot of money for park tickets. I'm going to make my wait as short as possible without paying an extra $60 for my family to ride RotR. If that means getting up early, so be it.

You didn’t make your wait as short as possible. Just using Rise of the Resistance as an example we rode it twice, and could have done a 3rd time, on a recent evening with the longest wait being 15 minutes. The posted wait was 85. We opted instead for Tower of Terror, which had a posted wait of 80 minutes with an actual wait of 10.

This was all done between 7:40 and 9 pm.

That’s how you close a park.

 

[MomOTwins]

We often go in summer and the parks are not a place you want to be in a queue outdoors for basically the late morning through whole afternoon—simply too hot! Also the afternoon thunderstorms, which are both unpleasant and also shut down outdoor headliners like 7DMT, Slinky and Test Track. But at 7-9am it is pretty pleasant, and not too hard to wait an hour outside to knock out a headliner or two.

Now we could try do the hard-to-get rides at park close instead of rope dropping. That us less optimal to us, since (1) park close often is the same time as fireworks, and I like fireworks; (2) rides have outages, and if a ride is closed in the evening and you only have one day in that park you’ll miss your chance; and (3) prefer to keep our evenings flexible to do a nice dinner at a hotel (ideally one with fireworks views) rather than be stuck in the park for dinner or have to race back to the park right after eating.

So for all those reasons, we like to rope drop. Definitely subjective preference though rather than something I think everyone should do.

 

[loveswdw]

You didn’t make your wait as short as possible. Just using Rise of the Resistance as an example we rode it twice, and could have done a 3rd time, on a recent evening with the longest wait being 15 minutes. The posted wait was 85. We opted instead for Tower of Terror, which had a posted wait of 80 minutes with an actual wait of 10.

This was all done between 7:40 and 9 pm.

That’s how you close a park.

We weren't in the park at closing. We opted to hop to AK and close FoP instead. I know the closing time strategy as well. As finicky as RotR has been, we didn't want to chance it not being open at the end of the day.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We weren't in the park at closing. We opted to hop to AK and close FoP instead. I know the closing time strategy as well. As finicky as RotR has been, we didn't want to chance it not being open at the end of the day.

I’ve always felt that these rides are more likely to not fire up in the morning than to go down in the evening.

We’ve been doing this for awhile, and the last time we got shut out of a ride at closing time was 20 years ago on Dudley Do Right over at Universal. They gave us free tickets to come back another day.

There are lots of reasons for guests to not close a park, and they all contribute to making those lines the shortest of the day.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We often go in summer and the parks are not a place you want to be in a queue outdoors for basically the late morning through whole afternoon—simply too hot! Also the afternoon thunderstorms, which are both unpleasant and also shut down outdoor headliners like 7DMT, Slinky and Test Track. But at 7-9am it is pretty pleasant, and not too hard to wait an hour outside to knock out a headliner or two.

Now we could try do the hard-to-get rides at park close instead of rope dropping. That us less optimal to us, since (1) park close often is the same time as fireworks, and I like fireworks; (2) rides have outages, and if a ride is closed in the evening and you only have one day in that park you’ll miss your chance; and (3) prefer to keep our evenings flexible to do a nice dinner at a hotel (ideally one with fireworks views) rather than be stuck in the park for dinner or have to race back to the park right after eating.

So for all those reasons, we like to rope drop. Definitely subjective preference though rather than something I think everyone should do.

We like fireworks too. Stick around in Magic Kingdom some time after the show and you will be surprised how much you can accomplish.

On that same recent visit, we did Pooh (with G+), Big Thunder, Splash Mtn, the Carousel, met the princesses (Cinderella and Snow White) and finished up with 7D Mine Train.

Not a bad use of an hour and a half. We were off 7D a couple of minutes before 11 and could have done it again, but opted to shop in the Emporium instead.

 

[scrappinginontario]

You didn’t make your wait as short as possible. Just using Rise of the Resistance as an example we rode it twice, and could have done a 3rd time, on a recent evening with the longest wait being 15 minutes. The posted wait was 85. We opted instead for Tower of Terror, which had a posted wait of 80 minutes with an actual wait of 10.

This was all done between 7:40 and 9 pm.

That’s how you close a park.

While I respect this, the challenge with leaving RotR to the end of the day is that if it's the only day you're in DHS you risk it being down and missing riding all together. During our most recent trip RotR was down 2/3 evenings we tried to ride it. Thankfully the 3rd day it was up at park close and we were able to ride.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

While I respect this, the challenge with leaving RotR to the end of the day is that if it's the only day you're in DHS you risk it being down and missing riding all together. During our most recent trip RotR was down 2/3 evenings we tried to ride it. Thankfully the 3rd day it was up at park close and we were able to ride.

Yes, we closed DHS twice on our 5 day trip. We rode Rise 3 times, with the longest wait being 20 minutes on our first night.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d much rather stroll up in the evening and get in a short line versus arriving before the park opens and hope that my first ride opens on time. And even if it does, the line will still be longer than if I had waited.

As I mentioned before, all of the reasons given to not stay late are what make staying late work so well.

 

[parasail_of_congress]

Over the years I've read posts of using the "rope drop" to get to a popular ride before the line gets long. For example, a recent post that someone arrived at 7:45 for a 9:00 opening. They were at the front and walked (quickly I assume?) to their ride and got on without waiting. Then they went on to a few more rides before the lines built up to their daytime lengths.

Isn't this the equivalent of standing in line for an hour and fifteen minutes? You arrive at 7:45 for a ride at 9, and you just stand and wait. Hmmm...

And arriving early doesn't help you with any ride except the very first. If the rope drops at 9, and I arrive at 9, I still have my choice of all the rides with shorter early morning lines. And I'm actually a bit ahead of the early arriver, because they do get their first ride right away, but for all the rest of the rides I actually am about even with them, just a bit ahead while they are riding that first ride.

Really, didn't you stand in a "line" for an hour or more for that first ride?

So, what's your opinion? Is getting on one single ride quickly worth the potentially long wait? I know many people love rope drop, so I'm hoping to hear what I'm missing.

I would say most people divide time management into two general buckets - time inside the park and time outside the park. There is a finite time available inside the park each day, so if you want to maximize that time, it's best to be inside it, "in front of" as many people as possible.

People comment a lot on here about how much lower the waits are at park close. While this generally can be true, there's no guarantee that the ride will be online, the weather will be good (if applicable) or any number of other reasons that something could not be available. Every park day isn't the same for every visitor. The best way to maximize time in the park is to be inside the park when it's open.

 

[Lanie]

There's also the definite advantage of cooler-ish weather in summer earlier in the day. Definitely easier to walk fast when you're sweating less!

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Here’s a final thought to ponder:

10 people tell you it’s better to arrive early and 2 tell you it’s better to stay late.

Does that mean that early is the better option, or does it mean that early is 5 times more crowded than late.

Think about it.

 

[SmileEar2Ear]

We just RD most of our days a few weeks ago. Here is a quick rundown of why it works. 7:22 am at turnstiles at HS. They let us in the park at 7:30 and we made it to the internal rope at 7:33 to be first in line for TT (the crowd was backed up all the way down the street by 8:00 opening so easily a 30 min wait for those people). We were off TT and on to RnRC by 8:10 with no wait. The wait at RnRC was 20 min when we got off. MMRC was down so we changed plans and got in line for MFalcon right before the main RD at 8:30. It was a 20 min wait for us, but changed to 50 min by the time we were done. We rode Slinky with our Genie+ and sat down for a yummy breakfast at Woody’s before 10am with 4 of the major attractions in the park done. At that point those rides were almost all an hour wait each.

We filled in some shows with no wait (Frozen/Muppets/B&B/Mickey Shorts) and used Genie+ for TSMM, MMRC and Star Tours before a break in the afternoon/early evening. Came back with Genie+ for RnRC, MFalcon (since we did those standy early in the morning with basically no wait we got a second ride using Genie+) and then did Rise as the last ride of the night.

So if you’re willing to get up early (and have a good plan for the first two hours of the day) you can save a ton of time and have a more relaxing, and super successful rest of your day.

 

[cgattis]

While I respect this, the challenge with leaving RotR to the end of the day is that if it's the only day you're in DHS you risk it being down and missing riding all together. During our most recent trip RotR was down 2/3 evenings we tried to ride it. Thankfully the 3rd day it was up at park close and we were able to ride.

ITA. If you have a long trip, end of day is great. If a ride is down near closing, you have lots of other chances to catch it. For a short trip, rope drop just gives you more chances to ride. If it’s down at rope drop, you might catch it later that day if you don’t have another day in that park. Lots of other perks of late nights, but for must-do rides, we always start with “early” as the strategy.

 

[NavyDad]

You’re waiting at rope drop, but you’re doing it while the park is still closed as opposed to wasting time that you could be riding other rides while waiting while the park is open.

Yeah - this pretty much sums it up.

 

[parasail_of_congress]

Here’s a final thought to ponder:

10 people tell you it’s better to arrive early and 2 tell you it’s better to stay late.

Does that mean that early is the better option, or does it mean that early is 5 times more crowded than late.

Think about it.

People can have opinions on whether they prefer early or late, but that's not really the question that the OP was asking.

Showing up for rope drop simply means someone will have more potential time to explore the parks. It's an advantage to be in the park for more hours, assuming you want to do more things in the park.

 

[escriven75]

Ha, I prefer to both Open and Close the parks,……rest once we get beck home!

Ha, we're the same. We go go go go while we're there and then just nap like crazy when we get home!