Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
Your hunch is probably correct for Thursday, but one thing that's worth noting is that at some point, Early Entry will move from being at both parks every day to once again being limited to only one park per day. The EE pool is much smaller than it used to be, now that there are no day guests roped in at all, to the point that for most attractions, it probably doesn't make a significant difference. But if you're going to try to rope drop something like PPF or the other big ticket items, it makes a small but noticeable dent at the start of the day.
DCA: My big takeaway from my last visit is this: don't bother trying to rope drop RSR. Everyone else has the same idea, especially since it's an ILL, and if you're not perfectly positioned for every step of the process, you're locking yourself into a very long wait, especially if (as happened to me) the ride isn't quite ready to go at rope drop. My mother and I ended up ditching the standby and getting on pretty immediately via single rider instead.
Otherwise, I don't know that there's a strictly right/wrong way to rope drop DCA if you're using basic touring instincts, because nothing else at DCA is a draw that's remotely in conversation with Racers at the start of the day. Probably the closest thing to an objective "best" way to do things is to start with Webslingers, then Guardians, then MI, then Soarin, and then head to the back and do Mickey's Death Wheel/Pixar Pal Around if desired, followed by TSMM and TCFKACA before the crowds arrive. But since basically everything's on Genie anyway, you can sort of discard that and do things in any order you please if a different strategy would be preferable.
DL: I always start with Fantasyland because it's easy to do a bunch of rides really quickly and there's little Genie+ to be found. It's particularly advantageous if you're able to knock out PPF immediately, but you have to be ready and quick at rope drop to make PPF worth it, because people have figured out that PPF is the best ride in FL to hit first. From there, do Alice, Toad, Snow White, Pinocchio, Storybook, and things of that nature for your first hour. From there, you can try to catch Space or the subs on standby before the line builds in the way they will later (though this isn't what I'd personally do most of the time: the Subs take a lot of valuable time and might be better ridden in the evening, when wait times drop off. Space is really only worth considering here if you think you might want to ride it more than once a day), OR you can try to hit Car Toon Spin and Runaway Railway before the public remembers that Toontown exists (while TT now opens with the park, it seems like the public still doesn't really think about it until after an hour or two), OR head to the west side of the park, which mostly takes a while to fill up with people.
I wouldn't start with Indy (an obvious draw close to the entrance, takes awhile to get out to the show building and back, and one prone to breakdowns) or Rise (another popular rope drop destination, also prone to breakdowns and one that takes quite a long time to finish-time best not wasted in the first few hours of the day IMO, and close to little else apart from Smuggler's).
Booking things with Genie/ILL/whatever:
Go to the tip board in the app and toggle it so that it only shows Genie rides. That's the most direct way to make bookings.
Note that with Genie+/LL/ILL, it will not prevent overlapping plans. So you will need to make sure that, say, if you buy an ILL it doesn't overlap with a regular G+ time or a restarant reservation, or that if you book two regular Genie+'s during the same time frame that it's doable. If all else fails, and you don't like or need to change your G+ time, there is a modify button, which I found to be a huge help. I'm not sure if you can modify ILL times on the app or not.
LL order: Not much to say on the DCA front here, so this will be entirely DL focused. Indy and Space are the two that go first. Matterhorn and Runaway Railway (and remember that TT-as well as much of FL, though notably Matterhorn remains open-is closed from ~8:15-10:15 every night for fireworks, so there's two fewer hours to book MMRR vs everything else that's a big ticket item on Genie) are the next tier, followed by everything else. Not sure how Pirates on Genie will impact things. There seemed very little interest comparatively in IASW, ST, BLAB Lightning Lanes during my visits this year (side note: one of the biggest changes I've noticed compared to my visits 10 years ago or so is that Star Tours has had a noticeable drop off in popularity post-GE, though the ride may be reinvigorated somewhat with the new scenes coming), so you can count on those being available late into the day. Remember that you can only do each attraction once-it'll look like you can book things again, but when you actually try to do so, it'll block you.
Exception: If you book a ride that breaks down during your window, that LL will turn into a Multi Experience Pass, and you can then book that attraction again.
Individual Lightning Lanes: I wouldn't bother with doing this for RSR unless you are dead set on riding together once, in which case it is certainly a lot easier than waiting in standby. But truly, I was stunned by just how many people were willing to buy ILL for Racers.
Rise to me makes more sense as an ILL purchase, and I've done it a few times. If you'd rather not do ILL, I'd wait until closer to the end of the day. For a shorter wait. Note, however, that Rise closes at 10 PM every night.
Your experience and advice is so valuable - thank you!
but thank you for your previous advice! You are the reason I went with mid-June.
We will likely be spending a few days either before or after our DL stint exploring other parts of Southern CA.