In this post we discuss rope drop strategy and Early Entry strategy at Animal Kingdom. We cover everything you need to know to start your day right at Animal Kingdom, including where to start at Animal Kingdom with and without Genie+, planning to get on Avatar Flight of Passage, and how to make the most of the Early Entry perk if you have it.
Related Posts
Here is some of the related content you want to be familiar with as part of planning your park strategy.
First, Early Theme Park Entry. This perk of staying at a Disney hotel (or select partner hotels) grants these guests early access to each park at Disney World for 30 minutes before other guests, every day. The post you are reading now discusses rope drop for guests both with and without Early Entry.
Second, Genie+ and Lightning Lanes give guests who are willing to pay the chance to “skip the line” at Walt Disney World while everyone else lives with old fashioned standby lines (or virtual queues at select attractions). This post discusses how Lightning Lanes can impact your rope drop strategy.
With those topics on your mind, let’s talk about rope drop at Animal Kingdom, starting with the basics. Click here to skip the basics if you want to get straight to strategy.
Basics of Rope Drop at Animal Kingdom
Let’s start with some basic information before diving into the more complex aspects of strategy.
What Is “Rope Drop”?
If a theme park opens at, say, 9AM, it’s rare that they actually just keep everyone outside at 9AM and then open the gates and all the rides right at 9AM. Instead, they have various procedures in place to try and avoid chaos. “Rope drop” refers to this process—the actual opening time and steps involved if you arrive early enough at the park. Depending on the precise protocols at a park on a day, Cast Members may actually have a rope up cutting off people from the park which is dropped when the park opens.
On our site, we typically use the term “rope drop” to more or less mean “the hustle that starts when you wake up and until you take your first breath and riding a few rides.” The idea is that you want to be one of the first people at the park to be one of the first people on the most important ride and off that ride quickly to have a short wait for a second ride and a third and so on, until there are no short waits left for good rides and it’s time to take a breath.
Rope drop strategy, then, is the plan you put together to get you through that hustle with the lowest waits on the best rides possible. This starts with waking up and includes anything preparation you have to do on your My Disney Experience app for your visit, how you should get to the park, when you should arrive at the park, where to go when you arrive, and what rides to attempt in which order.
Finally, rope drop strategy is only one part of your overall park strategy. Rope drop only covers the start of the day, and the rest of the day, including the major entertainment you’ll want to watch, is the subject of our Animal Kingdom One Day Itinerary post.
If you pay for Genie+ or Lightning Lanes, you’ll need a good Animal Kingdom Genie+ and Lightning Lanes strategy (these offerings inevitable come up in this post, too).
Then there is access to extra park hours. If Animal Kingdom participates in Extended Evening Hours during your trip or Animal Kingdom After Hours returns and you get a ticket, these will be a part of your park strategy.
What Is The Best Way To Get To Animal Kingdom?
Animal Kingdom is the most isolated of the Disney World theme parks. There are two ways to get to Animal Kingdom, by bus and by car (including Uber/Lyft/Minnie Vans). While we’re not huge fans of the Disney bus system, we’re fine taking the bus to Animal Kingdom for rope drop. It’s worked for us recently.
If you want a little bit of an edge or to at least have more certainty about how your day will go, Uber (or Lyft) or driving (read about Driving and Parking at Disney World) remain the best options. Minnie Vans are usually unnecessary, but can be useful depending on your car seat needs.
What time does Animal Kingdom open?
Animal Kingdom opening times vary on a day-to-day basis, with openings of 8AM or 9AM being most common these days. You should check the Disney World website or My Disney Experience app for the scheduled opening times for your visit. But also keep reading…
What Is Early Entry at Animal Kingdom?
Guests of Disney hotels and select partner hotels have access to each of the four Disney theme parks—including Animal Kingdom—every day, 30 minutes before the scheduled opening.
Who gets Early Entry at Animal Kingdom?
Early Entry is available to guests of Disney hotels and select partner hotels. The full list is here. Guests have access including the day they check-in and the day they check-out. I have heard from people that checking into the hotel online before you arrive helps make sure you are allowed in the day you check in.
I recommend having your reservation pulled up in the My Disney Experience app as you enter the park. My MagicBand somewhat notoriously basically never works for Early Entry. I’ve been told that showing the reservation in my app should always get me access to Early Entry, and so far that’s been my experience.
What Time is rope drop at Animal Kingdom?
The parking lot for Animal Kingdom usually opens an hour before the start of Early Entry. The first Disney buses of the morning are often set to arrive at this time, but your experience at specific resorts may vary. The exact opening time of the park entrance will vary, but it will typically be at least 15 minutes before guests are allowed onto any rides.
While your experience can vary, on a good day guests at Animal Kingdom are led onto Avatar Flight of Passage (the ride most guests are going to) around 45 minutes before the park opens (so 15 minutes before Early Entry) so that the first guests board roughly at the start of Early Entry.
Other Early Entry attractions open at the start of Early Entry. All of this is flexible—some days they might not start walking guests to the ride until the start of Early Entry, meaning the first guests will be off Flight of Passage after the park opens to other guests.
Guests without Early Entry are held within the gates but before the hub until the park opens.
What time should I get to Animal Kingdom?
The times given in this section are based on our personal experiences and our moderately intense approach to theme park touring. You might like to sleep in. You might like to drive around super early until they open the parking lot so you can be the first one in line for a ride. Here’s our reasonable advice…
If you have Early Entry and are starting with Avatar Flight of Passage, arrive 30 to 60 minutes before the start of Early Entry. I’ve trended more toward 30 minutes recently and been fine with that approach. It typically involves a wait for Flight of Passage, but I’m typically visiting with Genie+, so I don’t need a perfect morning.
If you have Early Entry and are starting with something other than Avatar Flight of Passage, arrive 15 to 30 minutes before the start of Early Entry. You should expect only a short wait, but your hope is to be off your first ride in time to get on a second ride during Early Entry.
If you don’t have Early Entry, arrive 30 to 15 minutes before the park opens. The bulk of the crowds ahead of you are going to be resort guests. You can’t get in before them anyways, so there isn’t much to stress about.
With any of these guidelines, you won’t necessarily be at the front of the line, but outside of the busiest days, Animal Kingdom crowds simply aren’t heavy enough that a slow morning will be problematic. If you have Early Entry and want great positioning at rope drop, arrive 45 minutes before Early Entry.
If the park has an absurdly early opening (7AM, for example), consider skipping rope drop and buying Genie+ or at least the Individual Lightning Lane for Flight of Passage. We won’t wake up our toddler for such an early opening, but we’ll almost always buy Genie+.
Breaking Down Animal Kingdom Rope Drop
Like all the parks, your morning at Animal Kingdom may start well before the park opens, just before 7AM when you have to start making Lightning Lane decisions, if you’ve decided to go the paid route. We’ll start with a discussion of those before covering four rope drops:
Flight of Passage Rope Drop (Early Entry Only)
Na’vi River Journey (Early Entry Preferred)
Kilimanjaro Safaris (Guests Without Early Entry)
Expedition Everest (Guests Without Early Entry)
“Rope Drop” Goes Digital at 7AM
First there was an actual rope they’d keep guests behind and walk you down the main part of the park. Then they replaced the rope with Cast Members who just stand in front of you. Now, “rope drop” doesn’t even start in the park—it starts on your phone.
At 7AM the day of your visit to Animal Kingdom , you’ll have up to two responsibilities, all on your My Disney Experience app:
Secure your first Genie+ reservations (all guests with Genie+)
Buy Lightning Lane access to Flight of Passage (Disney resort guests)
If you’re not a guest of a Disney resort, you’ll have your chance to buy Lightning Lane access to Flight of Passage at the time the park opens (subject to availability).
As we discuss in our Genie+ at Animal Kingdom post, that’s the order we recommend prioritizing these tasks, too. If two members of your party can be on their phones at the same time, one of you can handle each of the two tasks.
At this point, we consider the Avatar Flight of Passage Lightning Lane to be much more of a splurge than a necessity. If you don’t have Early Entry, Flight of Passage is an okay option, but even then there are better options at the other three parks if you’re on a budget.
Our recommended first Genie+ selections, discussed in greater detail in that post, are Kilimanjaro Safaris if you have Early Entry and Na’vi River Journey if you don’t have Early Entry.
Animal Kingdom Rope Drops With Early Entry
The advantage to having Early Entry is that you’ll be able to start your morning with short waits in Pandora. How short? Which Pandora ride? Well that depends how early you want to arrive…
Animal Kingdom Avatar Flight of Passage Rope Drop
If you have Early Entry, this is the most strategic rope drop, but it requires the earliest arrival. Arriving 30 to 60 minutes before the start of Early Entry will position you to be among the first people off Flight of Passage.
Since most guests arriving early are headed to Flight of Passage, that’s where the bulk of the crowds and Cast Members will go. Follow these crowds into the hub and then into Pandora and you’ll be led into the Flight of Passage queue. A good morning will have you off before the park opens to other guests.
It’s good to consider Na’vi River Journey for your second ride. If the wait is 15 minutes or less, I’d say you should basically always ride it now (unless you have a reservation or Lightning Lane conflict at this time). Since Pandora is isolated from the rest of the park, it takes time to walk here from anywhere else. A 15 minute wait now is as good as a 0 minute wait any other time of day. (In any case, you hope to make it back to Pandora to explore later in the day—but you’d prefer to do it at your convenience, not from the other side fo the park just because the Na’vi wait looks short.)
If Na’vi isn’t your second ride, you’ll be trying to get into the rest of the park before it opens to all guests. Our preference is to tackle a short wait like Expedition Everest or DINOSAUR, but you may want to head straight to the queue for Kilimanjaro Safaris. Doing Kilimanjaro Safaris early means other waits may go up (it’s a long ride), but you’re also getting a short wait on one of the park’s best rides.
This sort of route requires a ton of walking early on. DINOSAUR and Expedition Everest are far out of the way for a morning that prioritizes Pandora and Kilimanjaro Safaris.
If you have Genie+, we recommend Kilimanjaro Safaris as a first Lightning Lane in this case. This allows you the flexibility of visiting either Na’vi River Journey, Expedition Everest, or DINOSAUR after Flight of Passage.
Here’s an example of a Flight of Passage rope drop with Na’vi River Journey done early, too:
6:45 - Arrive
7:17 - Gates Open, Walk to Flight of Passage
7:30 - Official start of Early Entry
7:40 - Flight of Passage
7:52 - Na’vi River Journey
(Head toward queue for Kilimanjaro Safaris)
8AM - Park Opens
8:08 - Kilimanjaro Safaris
8:40 - Expedition Everest
Animal Kingdom Na’vi River Journey Rope Drop
Since Animal Kingdom is a low-pressure park these days, you can mix this up a bit if you want. If you don’t want to arrive so early, you can arrive at the start of Early Entry and visit Na’vi River Journey first. Follow the crowds heading into Pandora, but instead of going right to Flight of Passage, go left to Na’vi River Journey.
This leaves Avatar Flight of Passage incomplete, but getting off Na’vi River Journey quickly allows you to possibly visit other rides—like DINOSAUR or Everest—during Early Entry. And you might be able to get to Kilimanjaro Safaris right when it opens at the park’s scheduled opening time. With all of these handled, the long wait for Flight of Passage later in the day isn’t a huge problem (strategically, at least). Here’s an example of timing for a Na’vi River Journey rope drop:
8:13AM Arrive at Animal Kingdom
8:28AM Enter Na’vi River Journey queue
8:30AM Official start of Early Entry
8:35AM Board Na’vi River Journey
8:42AM Back in Pandora
The risk here—the same risk any time you arrive “late”—is that the park happens to be busier than expected. You arrive and Na’vi is already at a 20 minute wait, then so is Everest, by the time you get to Kilimanjaro Safaris it’s 60 minutes…you get the picture. I recommend checking in on recent wait times at a site like Thrill Data before your visit if you’re considering this approach.
Finally, remember Flight of Passage is a paid individual Lightning Lane. It hasn’t been selling out too quickly, so you can keep that in your back pocket as an option if things start to get tricky.
Animal Kingdom Rope Drops Without Early Entry
If you don’t have Early Entry you can, of course, start with Avatar Flight of Passage or Na’vi River Journey if you want, but you’ll likely miss out on some really short waits in the rest of the park to wait in some long lines that probably won’t be too much longer the rest of the day.
If Na’vi River Journey is posted at 15 minutes or less when you’re inside the park, it’s maybe worth starting there and following the above “Na’vi River Journey” rope drop, but there’s still risk that the wait will jump by the time you get there. Otherwise…
Animal Kingdom Kilimanjaro Safaris Rope Drop
Starting with Kilimanjaro Safaris makes sense if you have Genie+. The ride is about 20 minutes long, which means by the time you’re off you can expect waits at Everest and DINOSAUR to have gone up a bit (though many days they won’t, to be clear). With Genie+, though, you don’t have to stress about those. Now that you’ve gotten Kilimanjaro Safaris done you also won’t have to stress about that one either.
Animal Kingdom Expedition Everest Rope Drop
If you don’t have Genie+, you can’t afford to skip short waits in the morning. This means saving Kilimanjaro Safaris for later and tackling short waits, starting with Everest. Ideally you’ll ride Everest, DINOSAUR, and Kali River Rapids relatively quickly. Besides tackling three rides, this narrows down the geography of the park so you aren’t running around later in the day (not for the sake of rides, at least).
As long as Everest has a short wait (under 15 minutes), it’s a fine place to go first. The Expedition Everest rope drop is a drag because it involves a ton of walking, but it makes sense if you don’t have Early Entry and you’re walking into a park with long lines in Pandora. You knock out a popular ride (Expedition Everest) with essentially no wait. Then you knock out the second or third most popular ride in the park, Kilimanjaro Safaris, with a short—or at least not too long—wait.
Might you get to Kilimanjaro Safaris and see a long wait? On busy days, sure. But if that’s the case then you probably would have done even worse starting there and then heading to Expedition Everest.
Continuing Your Day At Animal Kingdom
As you saw, at the core of rope drop strategy at Animal Kingdom are Avatar Flight of Passage, Na’vi River Journey, Expedition Everest, and Kilimanjaro Safaris. After rope drop, you might still have some of those to go wait on, but if waits are looking nice over at DINOSAUR and TriceraTop Spin you can head to Dinoland, USA.
Finally, remember that Kali River Rapids often opens an hour after the rest of the park, giving you a chance to “rope drop” that ride, too. We have a post that covers how you can put together a full day at Animal Kingdom.
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