Parks in the afternoon only?

[Aliceacc]

Make very good use of FP+ and make this work for you!

Or get up and enjoy rope drop alone, and have him text you when he's ready to meet you at the park.

 

[KenHutch]

While my daughter, god daughter and I are rope drop commando's and arrive early many of their maternal relatives think that vacation is for sleeping. So we would get there early and I booked all of the fast pass's for 11:00 hours or later. It worked pretty well. Can't figure it out but we actually got FoP on 60+2 during the afternoon.

 

[rwdavis2]

With FP+ sleeping in is not as costly as it used to be in terms of popular attractions. We only rope dropped 3-4 days of the 8 day trip we took in 2016.

 

[MomOTwins]

Just to sort of spell this out though -- the reason people are saying to have a good FP strategy is that the first two hours of the day are the only time to ride rides standby without long waits. If you are there for a long trip, this is not as critical because you will be going to the parks more than once so can get 6 advance fastpasses over two days for MK. But if, like us, you only do one day in each park, rope drop is in my view essential.

 

[ELLH]

You'll be where you want to be so no matter what time you're there, you'll be happy, right? Just book the FP+ options you want and enjoy.


We don't always do RD and I do prefer to sleep in now and again but there's absolutely no doubt: doing RD is the best way to maximize the number of rides you can do in a single day. If you're a family who enjoys rides and/or you have little time to ride certain ones, RD is the best way to achieve this because there's a dramatic shift in ride wait times within the first hour or two of park opening. If you do RD you see this occur in person. Doing RD for us adds as many as 4-5 extra rides, depending on the park opening time and crowd levels that day. Even as passholders, we see the value in RD because we like ride attractions. But that's my family. Obviously not everyone does Disney the same way and even we don't do it the same way between trips. To say that RD isn't useful is a stretch. However, if you're not concerned with riding as many rides as you can and you just want to *be* there then RD isn't a necessity. It just depends on what your personal goals are.


(BTW, just because you RD doesn't mean you can't also stay out late and enjoy low crowds then as well, contrary to apparent assumptions)

 

[Klayfish]

Just to sort of spell this out though -- the reason people are saying to have a good FP strategy is that the first two hours of the day are the only time to ride rides standby without long waits. If you are there for a long trip, this is not as critical because you will be going to the parks more than once so can get 6 advance fastpasses over two days for MK. But if, like us, you only do one day in each park, rope drop is in my view essential.

Nope, definitely not just the mornings. The last hour the park is open is a great time to do rides. Many of the popular ones are either straight walk on or less than 15 minute wait. I haven't rope dropped in years, but I can tell you we get a ton done on the nights when we're there near park close. We walk right on just about anything.

 

[gharter]

The only downside is it will be hotter and the parks are much more crowded by afternoon than first thing in the morning.
When my wife wanted to sleep in, I let her sleep, and the kids and I would get up and hit the parks at RD and she would catch up when she wanted.

 

[ArwenMarie]

Sleeping in is always awesome, but there is a disadvantage to missing rope drop in August. You miss the best weather hours of the day.

Not saying it's not worth it, but it is different than traveling at other calmer, cooler times of the year in terms of weather.

And the storms that roll in are no joke some days!

 

[clutter]

Nope, definitely not just the mornings. The last hour the park is open is a great time to do rides. Many of the popular ones are either straight walk on or less than 15 minute wait. I haven't rope dropped in years, but I can tell you we get a ton done on the nights when we're there near park close. We walk right on just about anything.

Except FoP. And now, SDD most likely.

We (dd and I) used to sleep in during late August trip in the old paper FP days. Some days we'd go in the afternoon, some times late morning. We found that lines for everything but the big headliners would go down around dinnertime, then stay down in the evenings. The last hour of park time was always the best hour! I remember one year riding Space Mountain at closing, and when we finished it wasn't closed yet, so we went running back in for one last time. We were the second to the last group that night.

It really depends on why you are going. If it's all about the rides, getting in as many as you can, you won't like it as much. For us, we really took it as vacation. We'd have a dinner reservation somewhere, and that was our only structure (so hoppers served us well). The rest of the time we'd just kind of go as the mood struck and see where it led us.

As for rain, we really didn't hit it ALL that much. I have some awesome pics of us on Splash right after some rain storms where we had logs to ourselves. A lot of people leave with the rain, so when it was over - low crowds. We also found that just because it was raining in one park, it didn't mean it was raining everywhere at WDW. So we could hop somewhere else.

 

[Sparkly]

Rope drop? What's a rope drop?

I don't want to wake up before 7am on holiday, even for Disney World.

 

[rchampagne]

This August will be our 1st trip (out of 5) where we have the same strategy: sleeping late, and enjoy the parks in the afternoon and evening. Previously, we've always done rope drop, but I find there's too much stress on vacation when you try to do rope drop every morning.... rushing to get ready, hoping we didn't just miss the bus, etc. People say mornings are better due to the temps, but it's still damn hot in the morning, too. I don't feel too much of a difference, in all honesty. Hot is hot.

 

[Iowamomof4]

This August will be our 1st trip (out of 5) where we have the same strategy: sleeping late, and enjoy the parks in the afternoon and evening. Previously, we've always done rope drop, but I find there's too much stress on vacation when you try to do rope drop every morning.... rushing to get ready, hoping we didn't just miss the bus, etc. People say mornings are better due to the temps, but it's still damn hot in the morning, too. I don't feel too much of a difference, in all honesty. Hot is hot.

I was just thinking, maybe it'd be better to go swimming before lunch then eat, then head out to a park or whatever for the rest of the day. Seems like we often save swimming for the afternoon but then can't because of thunderstorms or whatever.

 

[Summer2018]

This how a lot of people like to travel. Enjoy.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Just to sort of spell this out though -- the reason people are saying to have a good FP strategy is that the first two hours of the day are the only time to ride rides standby without long waits.

This is simply not true. If you know how the crowd patterns flow and how the wait times are manipulated, the evening can be a much more efficient time to tour the parks with very short standby waits.


Here's 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.

 

[rchampagne]

I was just thinking, maybe it'd be better to go swimming before lunch then eat, then head out to a park or whatever for the rest of the day. Seems like we often save swimming for the afternoon but then can't because of thunderstorms or whatever.

We did that one morning during our last trip, and it was fantastic. Woke up naturally around 9 am. by 10 am, we were in the pool, and there was only 1 other family there. That day was what inspired us to change our strategy for this next trip.

 

[maryj11]

The only downside is it will be hotter and the parks are much more crowded by afternoon than first thing in the morning.
When my wife wanted to sleep in, I let her sleep, and the kids and I would get up and hit the parks at RD and she would catch up when she wanted.

This is the biggest problem we come across. High Temps + more people = melt downs, frustration, and irritation. We do it though sometimes and manage. It's that dang heat and humidity that is the worst to me.

 

[monkyby87]

Nope, definitely not just the mornings. The last hour the park is open is a great time to do rides. Many of the popular ones are either straight walk on or less than 15 minute wait. I haven't rope dropped in years, but I can tell you we get a ton done on the nights when we're there near park close. We walk right on just about anything.

Agreed. Rope Drop, in my opinion, is a little more reliable in terms of having good standby times, but it's by no means the only way to have good stand by experience. Some days are better than others.

 

[maryj11]

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

Shhh don't tell everyone.

 

[maryj11]

This August will be our 1st trip (out of 5) where we have the same strategy: sleeping late, and enjoy the parks in the afternoon and evening. Previously, we've always done rope drop, but I find there's too much stress on vacation when you try to do rope drop every morning.... rushing to get ready, hoping we didn't just miss the bus, etc. People say mornings are better due to the temps, but it's still damn hot in the morning, too. I don't feel too much of a difference, in all honesty. Hot is hot.

I have been debating on if we should do rope drop at MK. The only reason I keep changing my mind is the very things you mentioned. Having to get up early and rush to not miss the bus etc.. just seems stressful.

 

[maryj11]

I was just thinking, maybe it'd be better to go swimming before lunch then eat, then head out to a park or whatever for the rest of the day. Seems like we often save swimming for the afternoon but then can't because of thunderstorms or whatever.

That is what happens to us. We go back to resort to swim and the lightening starts, they close the pool if it is within 5 miles I think. We end up sitting in the room waiting for the storms and lightening to go past. That usually takes at least an hour or more.