Rope Drop two Pandora rides w/o FP

[ghtx]

Any ideas of what it would be like to try to hit the two Pandora rides at rope drop without fastpasses (saving fastpasses for afternoon at a different park)? In particular on a Saturday with AM EMH (8am opening) on Labor Day weekend? Touring plans estimates a 23-minute wait for FoP then just a 4-minute wait for Navi River. Does that seem right or too optimistic?

 

[CAS239]

Don't listen to touring plans, their estimated waits are not correct at all for Pandora.

With 8am emh opening I'd get to AK by 7am. Be near the front and go straight to FoP. It's a 8.5 min walk through the queue, then you have the ride, not to mention if you have any wait in the line. So by the time you get to river journey there will probably be a decent amount of people in front of you but your wait shouldn't be too bad.

If you get to FoP quickly then I'd estimate your river journey wait to be 20-60 min

 

[Disney_and_Wine]

Touring Plans, through no fault of its own, has always had a difficult time predicting wait times at rope drop. The program does not know whether your arrival at rope drop means that you will be the first person through the turnstile or the 1000th. Logically, on any given day, some person is going to be the first person to ride a particular ride. That person is not going to have a 23 minute wait. However, the 1000th person through the turnstile might very well have that kind of wait. If you commit to being among the very first people through the gate on the day you go, you will certainly beat the 23 minute wait estimate. However, I don't see any chance that you would have a four minute wait at your second attraction no matter how early you arrive.

 

[mousehockey37]

Touring Plans, through no fault of its own, has always had a difficult time predicting wait times at rope drop. The program does not know whether your arrival at rope drop means that you will be the first person through the turnstile or the 1000th. Logically, on any given day, some person is going to be the first person to ride a particular ride. That person is not going to have a 23 minute wait. However, the 1000th person through the turnstile might very well have that kind of wait. If you commit to being among the very first people through the gate on the day you go, you will certainly beat the 23 minute wait estimate. However, I don't see any chance that you would have a four minute wait at your second attraction no matter how early you arrive.

Factor in their vacation time and day of the week.... I say this is not humanly possible at all.

 

[Hopefully]

I just read a post by Josh of easywdw. He states in order to minimize morning wait times arrive at AK no later than 6:30 AM for an 8 AM opening head straight to FoP. Your wait will be under an hour depending on where you are in line. Either that or go between 2-4PM or late night. Rope drop on in the morning has the longest lines of the day right now

 

[Polybound]

I just read a post by Josh of easywdw. He states in order to minimize morning wait times arrive at AK no later than 6:30 AM for an 8 AM opening head straight to FoP. Your wait will be under an hour depending on where you are in line. Either that or go between 2-4PM or late night. Rope drop on in the morning has the longest lines of the day right now

Yep, need to arrive at the gate no later then 6:30.

 

[Disney_and_Wine]

arrive at AK no later than 6:30 AM for an 8 AM opening head straight to FoP.

I am always amused when people do something like this and then report that they only had a 5 minute wait. No...they had a 95 minute wait. Waiting outside the park for 90 minutes and then waiting in the attraction line for 5

 

[pitpat]

I am always amused when people do something like this and then report that they only had a 5 minute wait. No...they had a 95 minute wait. Waiting outside the park for 90 minutes and then waiting in the attraction line for 5

that's fine, but it's better than wasting 90 minutes of morning park time. If you do it this way, you can hit Na'vi river with little wait, then Safari, Everest, etc.

 

[Disney_and_Wine]

I totally agree that arriving early is the better strategy and would never suggest otherwise. But one has to be honest with how they calculate their time waiting.

 

[mousehockey37]

I think it's odd people believe that on SATURDAY of LABOR DAY WEEKEND, this person is going to have minimal ANYTHING at RD at AK.

I'd tell him to wait til Tuesday, the day after Labor Day and then try... if they're still there.

But yes, being at the gate at 6:30 for an 8 opening, do the buses even run that early? Or are you Ubering it... Unless you drive yourself there.

 

[skaarupjac]

What if EMH is at 7 am? What time should we arrive, and how early would the bus run?

 

[CAS239]

What if EMH is at 7 am? What time should we arrive, and how early would the bus run?

Then I'd be there by 6am. For Pandora you want to be at the park 60-90 min prior to opening.

Buses start daily at 6:30am. When a park opens early like say 7am, then buses will start running earlier..5:30/6am they'll start

 

[barbliny]

Any ideas of what it would be like to try to hit the two Pandora rides at rope drop without fastpasses (saving fastpasses for afternoon at a different park)? In particular on a Saturday with AM EMH (8am opening) on Labor Day weekend? Touring plans estimates a 23-minute wait for FoP then just a 4-minute wait for Navi River. Does that seem right or too optimistic?

Below is my exact experience from a couple of weeks ago - I posted on the official Pandora thread. I'm going to paste it here.

Short answer - ropedrop on EMH morning worked out well for us on a Saturday in June. EMH was at 7:00 - I would make the assumption that 8:00 am EMH will be more crowded since it is much easier to rally the troops for an 8:00 start than 7:00. I also don't know if Labor Day weekend might make crowds higher? I would also suggest getting there earlier than we did - we tried ...

My experience - possibly to help others plan - Monday 6/5 and Saturday 6/10

Rode FoP twice - once with a 9:30 pm fp+ on Monday night, once standby on EMH morning, Saturday.

First - FoP has become a favorite!! I do not do Star Tours, the thought of Tea Cups makes me woozy, I don't do well in Imax movies - I ride Soarin' without a problem, I can ride all of the coasters - none bother me, including Everest. One of my daughters is very prone to car sickness. My husband, older daughter, and I all had no issues with the ride. My younger daughter was a little bit queasy after. (She had just started an antibiotic that had to be taken with food, so it might have been a contributing factor). We all rode it a second time later in the week - she loved it, no problems. Both daughters agreed that they did not lean as far forward for the closing of the mechanism the 2nd time they rode, and it was more comfortable. The film in the France pavilion made 3 of us more queasy on Friday, than FoP did.

Na'vi - we rode it once standby on EMH morning (6/10) - and we all agreed, we released the fastpass we had scheduled for it late at night, it wasn't worth doing again.

Monday night fastpass for FoP - wait was around 10 minutes, there were 4 chairs out in our room alone.

Saturday morning EMH ...
We drove to the park, got there around 6:30, parking was easy and close, got on the back of the line at 6:35 - there were 2 lines, one on the right side and one on the left - we obviously chose the left (both were about same length) since that's Pandora's side. At that point we were a few people from being even with the ticket windows.
They made the welcome announcement and started letting people tap in around 6:40 (why do I have such bad karma and get the line where everyone's bands spin blue??? Hint - move to the middle lines when they open the tap stiles, if we had stayed on the original left side lines it would have taken us much longer to get through.
We were held at the 'turn' by the bridge for about 5 minutes. Ropes were dropped at around 6:45. Somewhat controlled walk into Pandora - so, I think we probably started walking the queue around 6:50. When we were approaching FoP posted wait was 5 minutes, as we started the winding through the outside queue wait jumped to 30 minutes. The walk through the queue at a fast pace is more dizzying than the ride!!! Look down if you're prone to motion sickness. By the time you got to the CMs assigning rooms it was immediate loading - they were actually waiting for people to fill rooms. We did not see a film in the first room as in the previous ride - we were in there for maybe 30 seconds before moving to the 2nd room.
All of the seats were in working order this ride. The 2 people sitting next to me had to do a little bit of adjusting to get the green light to come up when their seat 'closed' - they were not big people, just sitting incorrectly. I think they really should change that pre-film to show your feet in a 'tippy-toe' position instead of flat on the floor - it seems to put you in a better position.
We were off the ride at 7:15 am. When we got off, the posted wait time was 70 minutes and jumped up to over 100 in the next 10 minutes.
We walked on Navi with a posted 5 minute wait, walked right on a boat - again with the dizzying queue.

We all agreed that while it is beautiful at night it is very, very hard to see in Pandora at night.
The walk through the back way past the Lion King is empty and much more enjoyable than the crowded walk through the front entrance.

Everyone really enjoyed the food at Satu'li.

Banshees were sold out on Monday. There were a couple of colors available first thing Saturday morning. Saw lots of people walking around with them on Saturday - particularly blue ones. So, I'm guessing it's just luck if they are available for sale on the day you are there.

Also, Pandora has made the rest of AK empty - almost deserted on EMH mornings. Everything was 5 minute waits or less. After Pandora we were on Safari at 7:30 - no wait, Everest 3 times in a row with absolutely no waits, Dinosaur - no wait - cars were going out with 3 people in them in some cases, Primeval Whirl. We would have been ready to leave AK at 9:00 am if it had not been for a Tusker House ADR. It would have been a great time to walk some of the trails, but it was the last full day of our vacation and we were all over the walking thing!! I wish Disney would consider adding an earlier showing of Lion King