Neither, perhaps.
Rope-dropping it has been a very unpleasant experience the last couple times I attempted. First of all, you really have to arrive at 6:30 or so to be sure you are at the front on a day that AK opens at 9. That means you can't take the disney transportation, but have to either drive or get an uber or lyft. Then, if you have anything holding you back, slow person in your party, stroller or you just aren't aggressive, people will push past you and you will still have an hour wait. Now, an hour wait doesn't sound bad, but, you have to add that extra 2.5 hours early that you were there, making your wait 3.5 hours. Granted, you weren't paying for that park time, but, time isn't free either.
Okay, so I didn't even really mind that I had an hour wait. I was one of the first people there and ended up an hour behind the front in the stampede BUT I was stuck listening to this really aggressive guy complain and threaten people. He kept trying to start physical confrontations and it was over a half hour of that before Disney removed the guy. He had shown up right before the park opened and bullied his way up a lot farther than he should have been and was still threatening people ahead of him. If I'm being honest, that ruined my morning. It made the people around me anxious, it made me anxious and it just really took away from the whole experience. My spouse though doesn't have anxiety and he wouldn't care at all about that sort of interaction. He would forget it 15 minutes later and it wouldn't ruin his day. If you're more like that, maybe ropedropping FOP is your thing.
I passed the ride again around 2 pm and the end of the line was way up in the normal queue, probably less than a 2 hour wait. The better strategy that day would have been to arrive for rope drop and head straight back to the safari, enjoy the Gorilla Falls trail, ride everest, possibly even do the Dinosaur area and then wander back over and wait in the FOP queue later when it was less hectic. In the afternoon, people expect to wait and you get a bit less of that pushing ahead headache that's so unpleasant to deal with. The wait times for FOP are often quite overstated. If you walk up the queue and the line end is near the painted caves, you likely have around or possible less than a 2 hour wait. The queue is themed very nicely too and really pleasant to stand in as far as lines go.
My best wait there was around an hour and a half right in the middle of the afternoon. It was raining anyways and I had stopped and gotten an adult beverage first which I put in my travel mug. The people waiting around me had also expected it to be a long wait and I chatted with some other people it turned out I was familiar with from another Disney forum and overall it was just a nice, chill experience.
I can't offer an opinion on the line at closing, I have yet to do that. I've done rope drop and I've caught it again later in the day, I just loop through there a couple times and as soon as the line is up high where I can't see it from the line entrance, I go ahead and line up.
