bobbyc1111
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2009
Prior to my recent trip I read a number of posts about rope drop at Animal Kingdom to get a feel for timing. They were quite helpful so I thought I'd pass along my experience:
We went to AK 11/7/17 which is typically rated 5 out of 10 in terms of crowd size. Our goal was to ride Avatar FOP without too much of a wait but also not getting to the park crazy early. The park open time was 9am. We drove from our hotel and paid for parking at exactly 7:59a (looking at the receipt now). We opted to pay for preferred parking in the hopes that would save some time. I think it helped. We got to the tap machines by 8:10a and all the lines were about 15 deep. There was a group of people that had already gone through and were waiting up to the left. Some people chose to take the path on the right which I suppose could be quicker since they both lead to the main bridge by the Tree of Life, but we went left with the masses. Moments after we got through the tap scans the people on the left started moving forward, that was about 8:20a. We walked for a few minutes and they held us right by Tiffin's until about 8:35a. We then were let into the Pandora land, followed the crowd and wound up on the path toward Africa. I'd say we were about halfway between the entrance to Avatar and Festival of the Lion King in Africa. While it seemed like we were pretty far from the entrance, the line was basically a slow but consistent walk to the main entrance of the Avatar ride. We then continued this slow, meandering walk through the queue right up to the cast members asking for you party size. That was exactly 9am. We went through the pre-room and the ride (which was awesome) and we were back outside by 9:20a.
All in all I'd say this was a great experience. We got to the park one hour prior to "opening" but we never felt like we were waiting around. It was constant motion the whole time which definitely seems to make the time go by faster.
We went to AK 11/7/17 which is typically rated 5 out of 10 in terms of crowd size. Our goal was to ride Avatar FOP without too much of a wait but also not getting to the park crazy early. The park open time was 9am. We drove from our hotel and paid for parking at exactly 7:59a (looking at the receipt now). We opted to pay for preferred parking in the hopes that would save some time. I think it helped. We got to the tap machines by 8:10a and all the lines were about 15 deep. There was a group of people that had already gone through and were waiting up to the left. Some people chose to take the path on the right which I suppose could be quicker since they both lead to the main bridge by the Tree of Life, but we went left with the masses. Moments after we got through the tap scans the people on the left started moving forward, that was about 8:20a. We walked for a few minutes and they held us right by Tiffin's until about 8:35a. We then were let into the Pandora land, followed the crowd and wound up on the path toward Africa. I'd say we were about halfway between the entrance to Avatar and Festival of the Lion King in Africa. While it seemed like we were pretty far from the entrance, the line was basically a slow but consistent walk to the main entrance of the Avatar ride. We then continued this slow, meandering walk through the queue right up to the cast members asking for you party size. That was exactly 9am. We went through the pre-room and the ride (which was awesome) and we were back outside by 9:20a.
All in all I'd say this was a great experience. We got to the park one hour prior to "opening" but we never felt like we were waiting around. It was constant motion the whole time which definitely seems to make the time go by faster.
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