The general strategy is do one of the big rides at rope drop, but maybe do the worst one at closing. Disney lies about the wait times so that CMs can go home at a reasonable hour, so if you enter the queue that late, your wait isn't that long even for the biggies because a bunch of people got too tired and had to call it a day. That's how we did Slinky Dog the first time. Being able to visit a park multiple times helps too. So if you didn't get FP, you can do Peter Pan first/ Mine Train last and then on another day do something else first/ Space Mountain last. SDMT we usually did as the last ride during party night to make the wait 15-20 minutes. You schedule your FP for a couple hours after opening, when the lines have built up. Like I said we only had 7 day FP booking window, so the FP were always the "2nd and 3rd choice options, not the good ones". Do those, have lunch, take a mid day break or just a leisurely trip on CoP, Country Bears, and be recharged to hit the rides hard again during the last hour. Also, people usually try to follow a certain flow, around the park without too much back tracking. So if most people head to Tomorrowland, then you start in Frontierland. If people head to Africa/Pandora, you go to Asia, so you are out of sync with the opening crowd. You end up hitting those random low points than peak points.
I can't say I never waited more than 45 minutes. But the only ride I know, for sure, was over is FOP. Which was okay because we waited 10 minutes or less for everything else. So one 75-90 minute FOP ride was okay. Wait all at once, instead of getting stuck in 30 - 45 minute lines elsewhere. But I've gone so many times since my parents have lived in FL for 16 years, it wasn't the same pressure to do everything. If one or two things didn't work out, skipping instead of waiting wasn't the big disappointment. If something got skipped, it would be prioritized next visit. The only really "every time" basically became HM, Spaceship Earth and Kilimanjaro Safaris.
You know that scene in Apollo 13 when Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinese) says the key is turning things on in the right order? Same sort of principle, do things out of sequence and it blows the meter.