New Rope Drop Procedures in Place Around Disney’s Hollywood Studios and a Look at Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway Crowds

    It’s hard to believe, but we’re out at Disney’s Hollywood Studios again to help you plan your visit to the park. It’s day two of operation for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway and we wanted to see what kind of impact the ride would have on the rope drop procedures and early morning touring. The plan for today is to arrive around 6am and head straight to Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway to knock out the newest attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Let’s turn off the alarm and head to the park!

    Our typical touring advice is to arrive about 30-45 minutes before park opening to try and secure a Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group. Of course, our goals are a little bit different today, trying to rope drop an attraction instead of just getting into the park for a boarding group.

    We arrived at the Disney’s Hollywood Studios parking lot at 6:01am, and started making our way to bag check. As you can see in the photos below, bag check was open when we arrived at 6:04am. We spoke with some Cast Members and guests to determine that bag check opened up at around 6am. There is no discernible advantage to showing up before bag check, unless you need your camera lens to adjust to the 80% humidity in the air before you start taking photos.

    We’ll try to come up with a sweet spot time to arrive in the coming week or so as we adjust our sleep schedule to a more normal pattern. For now, we’ll examine crowds from our perspective of getting in line at the tappoints at 6:07am. It’s probably earlier than you need to arrive, but we hope to take advantage of low crowds around the park if we’re near the front of a growing rope drop line for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

    Here are a few photos of the crowd building progression.

    6:07am
    6:20am
    6:30am

    We didn’t leave the line, but we were able to see it build past the ticket booths. Here’s a look at some of our tweets from March 1st, before Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened. Crowds were very, very similar today (March 5th) as they were before Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened. We anticipate seeing crowds build naturally over the next few weeks as we get closer to Spring Break. The big changes happen once we step into the park.

    The park opened a minute or two after 7am, which is considered normal opening procedure as of late. While Disney did open the park about 15-20 minutes earlier yesterday for the grand opening of Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, we’re seemingly back to normal as of today, March 5th.

    When you get into the park, there are four places to go:

    • Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway
    • Grand Avenue (Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge)
    • Toy Story Land
    • Sunset Blvd (Tower of Terror/Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster)

    The most obvious choice when walking down Hollywood Blvd is Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, straight ahead.

    We decided to get in line for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway in the hopes that it would open before the park like it did on opening day. The idea heading in was that the park would open around 7am and we’d find that the attraction was open like it was on opening day. If it was open, we’d likely be able to knock out the attraction before 7:40ish and head over to Toy Story Land or Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge to get in line for our next ride of the day. Unfortunately, that all fell apart quite quickly.

    Disney did not have the attraction open when they let guests into the park. Instead, they started to fill the outdoor, overflow portion of the queue while keeping the doors to the ride closed. Here are a few photos.

    Guests who want to go to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will make a left as they approach the Chinese Theater, taking them past Echo Lake and on towards Grand Avenue. We’ll explore that option a little later in this post.

    Continuing on towards Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, you’ll want to enter the queue from the left side of Center Stage. There are plenty of Cast Members directing guests to the proper entrance.

    We’ll walk past the entrance and continue towards the overflow queue.

    Disney would try to fill in all the available space by filling the courtyard, but still keeping the doors closed.

    We realized our plan of getting on the ride quickly wouldn’t be possible, so we decided to check up on other rope drop crowds around the park.

    Before we head over to Grand Avenue, let’s take a look at how the crowds have built up in the 20 minutes or so that the park has been open.

    Disney calls this a 120-minute wait at official park open.

    Ok, let’s check in on Grand Avenue and the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge crowd.

    Walking over to Grand Avenue, we were told by Cast Members that guests were free to start lining up for Star Tours should they desire.

    Turning the corner, we were quite encouraged by what we saw around 7:30am.

    Compare this to a pre-rope drop crowd before the opening of Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

    Back to today, we see that Grand Avenue isn’t too full right now. Of course, it’s still not an insignificant amount of guests, but Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway has soaked up a lot of guests.

    Now let’s head over to Toy Story Land where we see the Slinky Dog Dash rope drop procedure change again.

    Guests are still routed through the Hollywood Studios archway as they make their way to Toy Story Land. In the background, we can see the queue for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway building.

    A very calm walk can be had back to Toy Story Land. This was at about 7:15am.

    Again, we see that Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway being open is helping some of the other rope drop points in terms of crowds.

    Disney is no longer pre-filling the Slinky Dog Dash queue. Instead, guests are corralled into a holding area at the entrance to the land. Guests wanting to ride Slinky Dog Dash were asked to stay on the right side of the crowd, but there is really no way to enforce that once the crowds start moving.

    Cast Members stationed further into the land will assist with crowd flow once the park officially opens.

    Let’s head over to Sunset Blvd now and check out the rope drop scene there. At park opening, there wasn’t enough guest interest in Sunset Blvd to warrant proper lines, but when we returned around 7:40am, we were happy to see that they were the most organized rope drop anywhere in the park.

    Guests who wanted to ride Tower of Terror at rope drop were asked to stay to the right, and guests who wanted to ride Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster were asked to stay to the left. Signage and well defined lines made it extremely easy for guests to know what line they were in.

    In the past, we’ve seen Sunset Blvd act as kind of a catch-all for guests who wanted to ride either attraction, but well defined queues seem to be better for guests.

    Keep in mind too that all of the people we’re seeing in these photos are in the park before park open. If you want to go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, know that there will be 10’s of thousands of guests inside the park before it officially opens, and those guests will already be in line for some of the highest demand attractions at the park.

    We’ll finish this post with an attempt at creating actionable intelligence.

    First, if you want to ride Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway with little to no wait (besides the hours you’ll have to dedicate before the ride opens), you should probably show up around 6am. The crowds will build up to the ticket booths by about 6:30am and the park should open around 7am. Depending on how quickly your party moves, you should be able to get into the Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway queue by 7:10-7:15am and have less than an hour wait once the attraction starts operating.

    One more thing. While Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway didn’t open right when guests were let into the park, it did open around 7:45am. If you’re one of the first hundred or so guests into the attraction, it’s worth noting that you might not have your phone at your side for a Rise of the Resistance boarding group. Thankfully, backup boarding groups have been lasting much longer than usual (up to an hour), so if you’re on the attraction at 8am, and you don’t care too much about Rise of the Resistance, you’ll be ok.

    We’ll continue to monitor the operational changes and adjustments at Disney’s Hollywood Studios over the next week or so to see how Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway settles into the landscape of attractions. It might end up being true that jumping in line while everyone else is eating lunch or dinner might result in lower waits than rope drop. We’ll keep an eye on it.

    As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest Disney Parks news and photos.

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    6 COMMENTS

    1. How much of a difference does it make if you come into the park without a bag? As far as, how much faster can we get in? Someone suggested this to me. This is our first time and I’m need help! Thanks for your post.

    2. It still seems like a two hour wait showing up early as your waiting to get in to the park and in line. Is that accurate?

    3. Made my 5th attempt yesterday to ride ROTR. Got there at opening and punched the button…. Group 107. No luck yet again. Got to ride Mickey and Minnies Railway though. Cute and noticed a few technical glitches on some of the electronics but all in all it was fun.

    4. [email protected]
      This is one of the best blog posts I’ve read regarding HS early morning plans as they pertain to all the latest changes (MMRR, ROTR, etc). Will you be updating your experience this/next week? We are headed to HS on Thurs 3/19; we have a FP for MMRR and plan to arrive early to get a Boarding Pass for ROTR. Beyond that, we’re trying to decide the best approach for rope-drop as it relates to attempting to get Boarding Passes for the first minute the park is open (instead of running to a Stand-By line) and then which ride to run to–Sumggler’s Run or Slinky Dog (and then how long to expect to have to wait in line for whichever one we don’t Rope Drop). Up until this last week or so, the line for Smuggler’s Run was hovering around an hour but now I see that it’s up to 90-120 minutes, ugh. Anyway, any updates this and next week with various strategies would be appreciated! Thanks!
      -Allie in Chicago

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