Are there usually more people arriving early on 9am openings?

[ALK$Disney]

The suggestions are always to arrive 1 hour before park opening. How about for 9am openings? I am going to assume that more people arrive early because its later in the morning. Should the arrival time be 1.5 hours before for the later openings? We are late risers, and the two times we have been to WDW, we usually get to the parks around 10am. On this trip we are planning to get to the parks before opening.

Thanks in advance for the guidance.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

My favorite rope drop story:

I had a co-worker recently telling me about her trip to Disney World. They seemed to be pretty good planners and tried to maximize their time the best they could.

She was very excited to tell me about her experience riding Midway Mania without a Fast Pass. The got up really early, got to the gates about 45 minutes before they opened and waited in a pretty large crowd. Then they hurried as fast as they could to the ride and the wait was *only* 15 minutes. By the time they got off the line was almost an hour long. There were people all over the place.

I rode the same ride 4 times in about an hour late at night and didn't have to deal with the crowds.

 

[ALK$Disney]

Maybe I should have been more clear as to why we want to arrive early. This is mostly for AK so we can RD FOP, and possibly Epcot for FEA. I don't think we will be able to ride either of those rides 4 times in a span of an hour.

 

[Mickeymouseisking]

I think this is a great question! Waiting to see the answers you get.

 

[Klayfish]

Maybe I should have been more clear as to why we want to arrive early. This is mostly for AK so we can RD FOP, and possibly Epcot for FEA. I don't think we will be able to ride either of those rides 4 times in a span of an hour.

When we're at home, DW and I get up at 4am, so I can assure you when on vacation we have zero desire to get up extra early and stand outside of the gates for an hour. Therefore, we don't do "rope drop" the way a lot of people do. If the park opens at 9am...which it usually does...we show up at 9:15am, maybe 9:05am on a good day. With only a small handful of exceptions, my opinion is that showing up extra early gives very little advantage to showing up right at open time. Yes, for FOP my understanding is that you want to show up early (we didn't, see my first sentence above...and we lucked into a FP+). Same with Na'vi, though FP+ are becoming increasingly easy to get for that. 7DMT and TT are good rides to show up at park open for too, though I don't think you need to be extra early for those.

For FEA, you definitely do not need to show up at the gates early. For the first 90+ minutes, the line will be short, you can get on standby no problem.

 

[Robo]

We get up early at home for WORK.
We get up early at home to arrive at the airport for our early-morning flights.
I can assure you that when we are at WDW, we still get up early for FUN!
And, we virtually always arrive well before "rope drop."

 

[ChristineOH]

There have been recent trip reports of people arriving an hour before a 9:00 open to ride FoP and getting good results. I think for both FEA and FoP, arriving an hour before is fine. For FEA, the waits have been low before 11:00 am recently, so RD may not be that important there.

If you want to rope drop at MK, unless you want to be belly up to the rope for 7DMT, you don't need to be there that early. We walked into the park at 8:45 for a 9:00 MK open, and had no problem heading to Peter Pan first.

 

[Klayfish]

For FEA, the waits have been low before 11:00 am recently, so RD may not be that important there.

Yep, really low. We were just there and on multiple occasions walked into the FEA line between 9:30am and 10:00am and never once waited more than 10 minutes. One time, we literally walked right on, and that was around 9:45am...on 4th of July week (forget exact day).

 

[Beer Me]

In my experience you don't need to be a full hour early. 30-40 should be sufficient to ride any e-ticket attraction with minimal wait.

 

[Beer Me]

My favorite rope drop story:

I had a co-worker recently telling me about her trip to Disney World. They seemed to be pretty good planners and tried to maximize their time the best they could.

She was very excited to tell me about her experience riding Midway Mania without a Fast Pass. The got up really early, got to the gates about 45 minutes before they opened and waited in a pretty large crowd. Then they hurried as fast as they could to the ride and the wait was *only* 15 minutes. By the time they got off the line was almost an hour long. There were people all over the place.

I rode the same ride 4 times in about an hour late at night and didn't have to deal with the crowds.

That particular ride is much easier than it used to be since they added capacity. It would be a 90-120 wait 15 minutes after opening. And you can't count on short waits even at night (if you even plan on being there or don't have other plans). I don't fault your friends strategy.

They rode a tier one attraction without using up too much valuable early morning touring hours and they were free to a lot of stuff in the next hour or two.

 

[nicko]

There have been recent trip reports of people arriving an hour before a 9:00 open to ride FoP and getting good results. I think for both FEA and FoP, arriving an hour before is fine. For FEA, the waits have been low before 11:00 am recently, so RD may not be that important there.

If you want to rope drop at MK, unless you want to be belly up to the rope for 7DMT, you don't need to be there that early. We walked into the park at 8:45 for a 9:00 MK open, and had no problem heading to Peter Pan first.

I arrived 30 minutes before rope drop at AK today and there looks to be at least 90 minutes of people ahead of me on FOP. I have been going every summer for 9 years and I am observing a lot more people showing up for rope drop at all the parks. Its probably because Hollywood Studios and MK are closing way too early this summer as compared to previous years. I am not seeing very short wait times around closing either. Again it's because crowds are high yet the parks are closing so early that guests are not ready to go home. It's a disappointing situation.

 

[dreiwhit]

On our last trip in 2016, we got to MK 30 minutes early for the 9am RD. This day was our Fantasyland & Tomorrowland day. Since we had FPs for Peter Pan, and don't ride 7DMT, we headed straight for Tomorrowland. It was almost deserted when we got there. We rode Buzz Lightyear twice in a row, People Mover and then Carousel of Progress. After CoP, we noticed that more people were starting to come in, but it wasn't bad.

At the next day's RD, we walked on to quite a few rides as well.

On every MK day, the area between the tracks and the tapstyles was fairly crowded.

If you're not going for one of the more popular attractions at RD, you can go on quite a few rides as walk ons.

 

[ppjluvsdvc]

Maybe I missed it but it also depends on what time of year you are going to be there. This summer crowds have been lower than expected but I am thinking that the fall and Christmas time maybe a different story. Most rooms sold out and Food and Wine. I know the Food and Wine crowd tend to be later in the day.

 

[ucfknight]

In my experience you don't need to be a full hour early. 30-40 should be sufficient to ride any e-ticket attraction with minimal wait.

Not FOP.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

That particular ride is much easier than it used to be since they added capacity. It would be a 90-120 wait 15 minutes after opening. And you can't count on short waits even at night (if you even plan on being there or don't have other plans). I don't fault your friends strategy.

They rode a tier one attraction without using up too much valuable early morning touring hours and they were free to a lot of stuff in the next hour or two.

That was just one example. If you know how the system works, you can use your time much more efficiently than waiting outside a locked gate.

 

[Beer Me]

Not FOP.

Yeah it's an exception. My one experience with rope dropping FoP wasn't quite typical as it was early morning emh with an 8am open. We got there at 7am and they didn't start bag checks until 7:30. The gates didn't open until about 7:50am. We got right on the ride about 8 but I think we would have been ok arriving a bit later.

 

[Klayfish]

That was just one example. If you know how the system works, you can use your time much more efficiently than waiting outside a locked gate.

Yep, totally agree. No reason to stand outside (with the one possible exception of FOP, but I'll bet that'll change eventually).

I am not seeing very short wait times around closing either. Again it's because crowds are high yet the parks are closing so early that guests are not ready to go home. It's a disappointing situation.

That hasn't necessarily been our experience. Some rides, yes. RnR, FOP, Na'vi, 7DMT all maintain long lines even at closing. But so many others that have very long lines during the day have almost zero lines near closing. Splash, TSMM, Soarin', PP, Kali, Everest, ToT, Star Tours just to name a few. Many of those are complete walk ons, but have 60+ minute waits almost all day.

 

[srauseo]

I often hear people reporting success with late nights. I've had some success there as well but it's been hit or miss. The week after Thanksgiving I was in MK one night and rode Space Mountain repeatedly with almost no wait just before Wishes started. But there have been other times I have been walking around a park at closing and the lines have been long - at least - for what I wanted to ride. Plus, as PP stated, closing times are somewhat earlier than they used to be. I know that it "feels" crowded at rope drop but I think most people don't do it and the wait times bear that out. You see more people coming in between 10-11 because they don't want to get up early while on vacation or they don't get out the door quick enough or they don't understand that 9:00am really means 8:45am and you need to allow time for security, etc.

 

[Robo]

The suggestions are always to arrive 1 hour before park opening. How about for 9am openings? I am going to assume that more people arrive early because its later in the morning. Should the arrival time be 1.5 hours before for the later openings? We are late risers, and the two times we have been to WDW, we usually get to the parks around 10am. On this trip we are planning to get to the parks before opening.

Thanks in advance for the guidance.

To answer this specific question, in general:
The earlier an opening time, the fewer guests will be there waiting.

The converse is also true:
The later the closing time, the fewer guests will be in/stay in the park.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I often hear people reporting success with late nights. I've had some success there as well but it's been hit or miss. The week after Thanksgiving I was in MK one night and rode Space Mountain repeatedly with almost no wait just before Wishes started. But there have been other times I have been walking around a park at closing and the lines have been long - at least - for what I wanted to ride. Plus, as PP stated, closing times are somewhat earlier than they used to be. I know that it "feels" crowded at rope drop but I think most people don't do it and the wait times bear that out. You see more people coming in between 10-11 because they don't want to get up early while on vacation or they don't get out the door quick enough or they don't understand that 9:00am really means 8:45am and you need to allow time for security, etc.

Keep in mind that the posted wait times are intentionally exaggerated late at night to discourage riders. We've often found the posted time on some headliners to be 4x the actual wait. This works best on rides where you can't see the line. A good example was Midway Mania before the recent expansion. Disney uses a technique known as "line stacking" to give the appearance of a longer line. They would close off almost all of the queue area and let the short line spill out into the court yard. Then they would post a 50-60 minute wait time which caused most guests to just turn around and leave. In reality, you could get in line and go straight to the 3D glasses pick up spot and be on the ride in about 10 minutes.