How early to arrive to AK to ride Na'vi River with a 20 minute or less standby wait?

[laurajetter]

We will be at AK on Saturday, 6/23 for 8am RD (EMH that day). Since we have a FP+ for FoP later in the day, we will first be heading to Na'vi River Journey in standby. My aim is for us to be very close to the front of the pack while waiting to enter the park, so that we can minimize the ride wait as much as possible.

We have a group of 9, two on ECVs, and I know there will be people getting ahead of us as we are all trying to stay together but I just want to avoid arriving to the park at a time I perceive as being early enough only to find out there already are massive hoards of people that happened to get there even earlier! What time would you recommend arriving to AK?

 

[FCDub]

The VAST majority of people going to Pandora will be there for FOP. Arrive like 30 minutes early and you should have no problem.

 

[laurajetter]

Okay thanks. Do you know whether they usually do RD precisely at the scheduled time or do they sometimes let you in a little bit early?

 

[dSp12]

You want to get there early because they will let you into the park before opening. You will be stopped at Pandora. We got there about 45 mins before a 9 opening, waited at pandora, then waited again in the ride line until 9. We were in the 1st boat.

 

[Hope Soda]

20-25 minutes early was more than sufficient for us. It was walk on and the rest of the park was still closed when we got off.

 

[laurajetter]

Okay, thanks everyone!

 

[Orsino]

I don't think you even need to be there before rope drop to get a less than 20 minute wait. We went in October and arrived at AK shortly after rope drop. We were not held anywhere so the roped had dropped before we got there. No wait at Navi. We rode twice and also no wait the second time.
I think you are okay arriving AT rope drop and skipping the madness.

The main reason to arrive early is to get out of Navi earlier to take advantage of short lines elsewhere (e.g., Kilimanjaro Safari, Everest) after you are done.

 

[mousefan215]

Our experience was a 15 min wait at around 9:15am. We didn’t arrive to AK until 9am... by the time we went through security and entered, the masses had alread made their way to Pandora. We walked onto NRJ with a 15 min wait. This was in February on a Sunday... AK was pretty crowded that day. I think most people rush to FOP, not NRJ... so I wouldn’t stress over getting there early