With TRON Lightcycle Run now operating with a traditional standby queue, we wanted to head out to Magic Kingdom to take a look at the rope drop crowd flow given a new option. Of course, TRON Lightcycle Run is not officially open during the Early Entry period right now, but that isn’t going to deter hundreds of guests from forgoing other attractions during the 30-minute head start and simply standing in line for TRON, waiting until 9am to ride. We were curious to see what guest behavior would look like, so we made our way out to Magic Kingdom to observe. Here’s what we saw.
TRON Lightcycle Run Crowds During Early Entry
As you may know, Early Entry allows guests staying at an eligible Walt Disney World Resort the opportunity to get a head start on the day. Early Entry opens to guests 30 minutes before the park officially opens to regular guests, allowing a 1 or 2-attraction head start on the morning. Typically, the top option at Magic Kingdom is Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. However, with TRON Lightcycle Run now offering standby, we assumed that guests would simply forego other attractions and get into line at TRON Lightcycle Run to wait for it to open to all guests.
We’ll start with a look at the crowd distribution just minutes before Early Entry officially begins. The Tomorrowland bridge is now more popular than it has maybe ever been, with many guests using this entrance as the shortest route to get in line for TRON Lightcycle Run. Again, TRON is not currently operating during Early Entry, but as we’ll soon see, Disney is allowing guests to queue up ahead of time.
Now, just because the Tomorrowland option is popular doesn’t mean that Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is a ghost town. It’s still a very popular attraction, and the most popular attraction currently operating during Early Entry. The crowds here are almost exclusively focused on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and a smaller portion headed to Peter Pan’s Flight.
Once Early Entry officially began, crowds began moving and the race was on for guests to try and maximize their 30-minute head start. As you can see below, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was an extremely popular first choice. It appeared that the ride wasn’t 100% ready to accept guests right at 8:30am. Instead, the queue started to wrap around the exterior of the attraction, with the mass of people starting to head back towards Storybook Circus to find the end of the line by the time I had caught up with them. The point of this article is not to actually ride anything (we’ll do that sometime soon though), but rather to observe and see what guests are doing now that TRON Lightcycle Run is a standby option.
Interestingly, there was a secondary hold point near Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe where guests who entered from the Fantasyland entrance were prevented from walking into Tomorrowland. As you can see in our photo below, the Tomorrowland bridge hadn’t made its way into the center of Tomorrowland yet, so this hold point is likey to prevent Fantasyland entrance guests from getting ahead of the Tomorrowland bridge mass of people. This hold point was gone two minutes after I took the photo.
A small but mighty contingent of guests decided to rope drop the Tomorrowland Speedway, perhaps not knowing that the attraction wouldn’t be ready to operate right away. I snapped a photo and kept moving because I could already start to see a decent queue forming in the distance for the Tomorrowland headliners.
Once in Tomorrowland, there were two distinct lines of guests. One line led into Space Mountain, which does participate in Early Entry, and the other was a queue for TRON Lightcycle Run and guests that had no problem waiting the full 30 minutes to be first in line when the attraction opened at 9am.
Within just a few minutes, the line for Space Mountain was completely indoors, and the only visible line left was the guests waiting for TRON.
With roughly 20 minutes left until the park opened to all guests, I decided to double back into Fantasyland to see what lines for other attractions looked like during the Early Entry period. I found that the line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train had opened up and the long line wrapping around the attraction was mostly in the queue.
Across the walkway from Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was a moderately popular choice with a posted wait time of 20 minutes and an actual wait probably closer to 10 minutes.
Over at Peter Pan’s Flight, I caught the last of the extended queue starting to make their way into the attraction’s entrance. In terms of raw numbers of guests, I’d say Peter Pan’s Flight was in third place behind Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and the TRON Lightcycle Run queue.
The Tangled-themed restrooms were a more popular Early Entry choice than lining up for The Haunted Mansion to open at 9am.
Making my way back over to Tomorrowland, I found that Cast Members had moved the queue from holding at the PeopleMover track to starting to load into the attraction queue. I didn’t see any vehicles with guests before 9am, but Cast Members certainly started loading the queue during the Early Entry period. Here’s a look at the queue from roughly 10 minutes before official park opening down to around 3 minutes before park opening by the time I made it to the attraction entrance. Note that the vehicles are cycling, but empty before official park opening.
There was no notable 9am rush this morning, and it’s possible that the average guest knows to avoid TRON Lightcycle Run at rope drop due to the Early Entry crowd already in line. That said, it’s also entirely possible that the average guest doesn’t know that TRON Lightcycle Run is offering a traditional standby queue as well. Either way, no huge rope drop rush to report of this morning.
We’ll be back sometime this month or next to test some Early Entry strategy theories to see if we can try to optimize your time. Of course, it’s always hard coming up with something actionable to write about during the slowest month of the year, but maybe it’ll be fun just to take you along for the ride!
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
Sorry…. Kinda a useless blurb. Knowing how early entry works and where people dash to, this doesn’t really help with me or others at rop drop.
What do you need help with?