What Happens When You Try to Rope Drop Space Mountain in Magic Kingdom Without Early Entry?

Rope dropping in Disney World can be finicky, especially if you’re in Magic Kingdom, which is arguably the busiest park of them all.

If you’re staying at a Disney World hotel, you can use Early Entry to hop on some of the most popular attractions in Tomorrowland and Fantasyland 30 minutes earlier than everyone else, and you may be surprised at just how much time that can save you if you choose your ride(s) right. But what should you rope drop if you DON’T have Early Entry? In our latest experiment, we had one reporter head over to Tomorrowland straight away to get on Space Mountain, and another one rope drop in Adventureland, and you may be VERY surprised at what the results were!

For our first reporter, they headed over to Tomorrowland and got in line for Space Mountain right at 9 AM. While the line was moving quickly, it was still pretty sizable, and took us about 20 minutes to get through and get off the ride (which felt pretty great since it was a posted 30-minute wait). While that’s great compared to some of the wait times we see later on in the day, this is NOT the best way to spend your rope drop!

Instead, we recommend doing what our second reporter did, which was to head over to Adventureland and get in line for Jungle Cruise right at rope drop, which again was 9 AM. Jungle Cruise also often gets LONG lines later in the day, and if you have Lightning Lane Multi Pass, it’s one of the quickest to sell out. In this case, our reporter waited 5 minutes, was on the boat by 9:10 AM, and was off the ride right before our first reporter had even gotten on the Space Mountain ride vehicle!

While Tomorrowland does have more rides than Adventureland, so you may think Tomorrowland is the way to go to get more rides in that rope drop timeframe, the truth is that both Tomorrowland AND Fantasyland are already going to be filled with Early Entry guests. For Adventureland and Frontierland, they’re not included with Early Entry, so the people rope dropping these rides are GENUINELY the first people to get in line. That may not sound like it would make much of a difference, or you may feel intimidated looking at the big group of people waiting to rope drop the land, but if you’re genuinely rope dropping (meaning you’re there when they drop that rope physically), these lands are your best bets!

If you’re planning to purchase Lightning Lane for your trip, we recommend booking some return times for Tomorrowland or Fantasyland attractions, especially ones like Peter Pan’s Flight, Space Mountain, and if you’re grabbing Lightning Lane Single Pass, snagging them for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and/or TRON Lightcycle / Run will save you lots of time. Just remember that you can only hold two Single Passes a day, so if you get both, you won’t be able to grab another Single Pass for an attraction in another park!

If you’re looking for a travel agent to help with your vacation, we recommend our friends at Mouse Fan Travel. They’re experts in the field with over 20 years of vacation planning experience, and they can help take a bunch of the stress out of the entire booking process for you!

We’ll be sure to keep you updated with all the latest tips and tricks to help make your trip the best it can be, so stay tuned to AllEars!

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What do you choose to rope drop in Magic Kingdom? Tell us in the comments!