Guests visiting EPCOT will find a new rope drop procedure for Early Entry and regular rope drop ahead of the debut of a traditional standby queue at Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. As you may know, Cosmic Rewind opens up its traditional standby queue on February 25th after more than 1,000 days with a Virtual Queue. To say that it’ll change the center of gravity of EPCOT is probably an understatement, but we’ll know more in just a couple of days. Ahead of the standby queue debut, EPCOT’s operational team has adjusted the rope drop procedure to allow for anticipated larger rope drop crowds. Here’s what we saw.
EPCOT Modifies Rope Drop Procedure
We’ll start at the beginning. For our visit today, arrival times were a little bit skewed because it is the final day of the Princess Half Marathon, which means that the EPCOT parking lot was open much, much earlier than normal to allow runners to park. Typically, you can plan on the parking plazas opening to day guests around 1 hour prior to the start of Early Entry. For a normal operating day at EPCOT, that means a 7:30am parking plaza open for a 9am park open.
All guests can tap into the park at the same time, regardless of Early Entry status. Once you’re inside the park, the changes begin in terms of splitting up guests who have Early Entry status and those who do not. Here’s the view of Spaceship Earth about 75 minutes prior to park open. The first guests have stepped inside the park, and you’ll want to know where to go next to wait until you can start to enjoy the park!
[NEW] EPCOT Early Entry Procedure (Feb. 2025)
For guests who are staying at a Walt Disney World Resort hotel, they can utilize something called Early Entry. Early Entry is a perk included at no additional cost with your hotel room, allowing you to get a 30-minute head start on regular guests. A number of attractions will open early for guests taking advantage of Early Entry, and it’s a good way to get a jump start on your day with lower crowd levels.
If you’ve done Early Entry at EPCOT before, the first part of the process will look familiar. In fact, much of the process will be familiar. We’ll start at the check-in, which can be found to the right of Spaceship Earth. Signage around the entrance plaza will direct guests to the Early Entry check-in point. Like always, you should keep your entire traveling party together. To speed up the process, Cast Members only need to validate Early Entry entitlements for one person in your traveling party. A tap of the MagicBand, admission card, or MagicMobile device will unlock your Early Entry admission.
Here’s a look at some of the signage and the check-in area to the right of Spaceship Earth.
The line for early arrivals to Early Entry will start to grow a bit as Cast Members wait for the all-clear from park operations. Typically, you’ll be held here until around 30 minutes prior to the start of Early Entry (or 60 minutes before official park open).
[NEW] EPCOT Rope Drop Holding Area (Feb. 2025)
At the same time, guests who do not have the Early Entry perk are also allowed into the park, but they’ll be held in a new spot that debuted this weekend. Typically, day guests without the Early Entry perk have been held near the fountain under Spaceship Earth. This has been a traditional holding spot for years and served EPCOT well up until now. With expected large crowds soon rope dropping the front of the park for Cosmic Rewind, EPCOT will simply need more space.
To allow for a more comfortable rope drop experience, day guests without the Early Entry perk are now being held toward the back of Spaceship Earth, just past the Guest Relations location. This means that Early Entry guests will go to the right (West) of Spaceship Earth, while regular rope drop guests will go to the left (East) of Spaceship Earth. Here’s a look at what that looks like.
Initially, guests are held under Spaceship Earth, but that’ll change in a few minutes.
At 60 minutes prior to park opening, not only do Early Entry guests get to tap in and enter the World Celebration Gardens, but the holding area for regular rope drop guests also moves to its new position. Here’s a look at Early Entry guests entering EPCOT (right), and regular rope drop guests moving to the new holding area (left). This happens 60 minutes prior to the park’s official opening time (or 30 minutes prior to the official start of Early Entry).
Here’s a look at the holding area near Guest Relations toward the back of Spaceship Earth. This is where guests will be held until official park opening when they’ll be released into EPCOT. In terms of the Early Entry procedure once you’re in World Celebration Gardens, that was modified today due to the Princess Half Marathon and it’ll likely change again in a few days when the Cosmic Rewind standby queue opens. We’ll circle back on that later this week.
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!
Do you know for those entering from the World Showcase Entrance, where they direct people who are rope dropping for Guardians?