I may have asked before, so forgive me. What's your family size? It's pretty cool to hear you say rope drop is not your thing and you've still done well on rides and FPs. Do you do standby lines at all or are you just lucky enough to really know how to utilize fastpass where you don't have to do standby?
We're a party of 5. DW, me, DS14, DD11, DS11 (twins). We used to rope drop in the old paper fast pass days, but with the current system it's unnecessary. If you're up early or want to rope drop, there's nothing wrong with it. The parks are less crowded in the first hour, there's no doubt. However if you know how to use MDE and refresh, you can be every bit as "productive" as a rope dropper, even if you show up at noon.
RnR is my favorite ride in WDW, I bet I've been on it at least 100 times. I honestly don't think I've ever ridden it standby, certainly not since the current system came out. Same with 7DMT, I don't think we've ever been in standby. Ditto for Test Track, PP, Na'vi and Space Mountain...can't remember last time we did those standby. For other popular rides such as TSMM, Splash, BTMRR, FEA, Soarin', ToT, etc...we ride them using FP+ probably 90% of the time, but there are times in the day when you can do them standby with a 10 minute wait. TSMM and Soarin' are straight walk on rides in the last 30 minutes before park closing. FEA is the same in the first hour (but you don't need to show up at 8:15am for a 9am park open), BTMRR and Splash are walk ons during fireworks.
Here's an example of how we'll set up our FP+. We'll set them back to back to back. So let's say we pick times of 10am-11am, 11am to noon, noon to 1pm. We show up in the parks at 10:50am. So we're at the back of our first FP+ window. We go do that ride, and when we get off, it's already time for FP+ #2. Let's say it's now 11:10am. We tap into that, and as soon as we do, I jump on MDE and modify FP+ #3. I move the time to 11:15am, so that when we get off FP+ #2, it's time for FP+ #3. Doing that, we'll have all 3 initial FP+ done within the first 45-60 minutes we're in the park. Then we start grabbing more...if we want. Some days we just go ride to ride to ride, some days we take a more leisurely pace and may go do things like Pixar or CoP or Laugh Floor.
Don't worry, even if you don't do the things we do, if you have a basic understanding of the system you'll be fine at 30 days. Since we're offsite people AND have APs when we go, we're also limited to having only 7 days of FP+ in any 30 day period. Our summer trips are over 2 weeks long, so that means days 8 and beyond can't be booked until we've used day 1 on our trip and so on. In other words, we can only book them 7 days in advance. We still do just fine.
I can do it easily! 
But not my 11 year old. Even when he's sick, he'll wake up around 7 or so and maybe just lay on the futon and rest most of the day and get a nap in, but his little body "allows" him to rise and shine earlier than most like to do so! 
I guess it's so easy for him because he goes to an early start school, and has been for the last 6 years. It starts at 7:30. He's up by 5:15 so he can get everything done before getting on the 6:30am bus for school. Klayfish swears by that 9am or 9:30 FP! Says RD just isn't necessary if you utilize your FPs correctly. I guess because the rides I'm really interested in are all tier 3s...Soaring, TT, and FEA....that's my reason for doing rope drop at EPCOT. I'm going to RD FEA then go to the Elsa & Anna meet and greet. Use my TT FP and then walk over to Soarin standby. I'll probably do Figment and Living with the Land as my 2nd and 3rd and then look to get the Character Meet with Mickey and gang as my 4th. While in line for Soarin' I'll see about moving my other two FPs up. Hope I'm successful!
