In this post we discuss rope drop strategy and Early Entry strategy at Epcot. We cover everything you need to know to start your day right at Epcot, including where to start at Epcot with and without Multi Pass, planning to get on Cosmic Rewind and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, and how to make the most of the Early Entry perk if you have it.

Basics of Rope Drop at Epcot

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 after 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 Epcot One Day Itinerary post.

If you pay for Lightning Lanes, you’ll need a good Epcot Lightning Lanes strategy (these offerings inevitably come up in this post, too).

Then there is access to extra park hours. This post includes discussion of Early Theme Park Entry. If you have access to Extended Evening Hours and Epcot has those hours, for example, that will be a part of your park strategy.

What time does Epcot open?

Epcot opening times vary on a day-to-day basis, with openings of 9AM being most common. You should check the Disney World website or My Disney Experience app for the scheduled opening times for your visit. Guests with Early Entry will have access 30 minutes before the scheduled open, but keep reading for the important details…

What Is Early Entry at Epcot?

Guests of Disney hotels and select partner hotels have access to each of the four Disney theme parks—including Epcot—every day, 30 minutes before the scheduled opening.

Who gets Early Entry at Epcot?

Early Entry is available to guests of Disney hotels and select partner hotels. The full list is here. Guests have access to the perk all days of their stay, including check-in and check-out. I’ve had some technical issues with my MagicBand but have always been able to show my reservation in the My Disney Experience app at the appropriate time to get into Early Entry. 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.

What Time is rope drop at Epcot?

Rope drop at Epcot occurs on a pretty precise schedule. Guests with Early Entry are allowed on to rides basically right at the start of Early Entry. Guests without Early Entry are allowed into the park at its scheduled opening time.

What Is The Best Way To Get To Epcot?

This will be more important later, but Epcot has two entrances on opposite sides of the park. Which of these entrances you have access to will impact your rope drop strategy, so how you get to Epcot will impact that strategy. We’ll discuss the details of this more when we discuss strategy below, but since it is obviously relevant to this question, we wanted to flag it.

If you can walk to Epcot’s World Showcase entrance from a nearby hotel (Yacht Club, Beach Club, BoardWalk Inn, Swan & Dolphin), that’s the best option. The Skyliner, which guests of Pop Century, Art of Animation, Caribbean Beach, and Riviera Resort can use to get to Epcot also drops you off at the World Showcase entrance.

Disney buses will drop you off at the main entrance. The problem with buses is that while I want to say, in general, that you can be pretty chill about getting to Epcot, being chill with the buses might mean you miss one and wait 20 minutes for another one, and now all of a sudden you’re way late.

Personally, I try to aim to be on a bus no later than 30 minutes before I want to be at the park. Up to 15 minutes of system delays in that case won’t have much of an impact on your day. Buses are probably the worst option, but we don’t actively avoid them unless we have a car.

Uber/Lyft will also drop you off at the Main entrance. Since you don’t need to be arriving right when the parking lot opens, you don’t have to worry about problems with your driver dropping you off.

Finally, if you drive your own car, you’ll park near the Main entrance. It’s worth mentioning that you might be heading to Epcot with goals of enjoying the beverages of the festivals or drinking around the world. In this case, don’t drive.

What time should I get to Epcot?

We generally recommend arriving at Epcot 30 minutes before you’re allowed in the park. That’s an hour before the scheduled open if you have Early Entry or 30 minutes before scheduled entry if you don’t have Early Entry. If you are rope dropping Cosmic Rewind and aren’t buying Multi Pass, I think it’s worth arriving 45 minutes early, if possible.

As always, feel free to arrive earlier if you wish to be on the safer side. Typical protocols have the parking lots and security lines opening around an hour before the start of Early Entry. This means the first resort buses will usually make pickups around 80 minutes before the start of Early Entry.

Epcot Rope Drop Strategy

At every Disney World park now, there are a ton of possible scenarios you might find yourself in based on whether or not you have Early Entry, Lightning Lane Multi Pass, and Lightning Lane Single Pass. At Epcot, there’s also the fact that there are two entrances, which means even more possibilities to worry about. Luckily, the park isn’t particularly challenging, so we don’t have to stress much about rope drop. There is some stress involved just before rope drop, though…

“Rope Drop” Goes Digital

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, days before your trip.

Days in advance of your visit, you can purchase and book Lightning Lanes. For more detailed information, timeline, and strategy, check out our Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy post. Your Lightning Lane strategy and rope drop strategy should work together, so you should check that post out, too. But in summary…

We generally advise buying Multi Pass for a day at Epcot if you have small children. Eight of the eleven attractions available on the service have no height requirement, including the exceedingly popular Frozen Ever After and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. To that end, we also typically recommend grabbing one of those two with your Tier 1 pick (the choice between these two, both for rope drop and Lightning Lane strategy, is a huge component of this post, so read on).

🚨Important Update: Test Track Closed, Cosmic Rewind Joins Early Entry 🚨

Test Track is now closed (set to reopen Late 2025) for an extended reimagining that began June 17, 2024. In the meantime, Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind has also dropped its virtual queue and switched to a standby queue, joining Early Entry. As it’s usually the most popular ride in the park, it has become a very popular rope drop candidate.

This post has been updated to account for these changes., but some Test Track mentions remain in this post. Once it reopens, we’ll have to see how popular it is and we’ll rework this post entirely.

What To Rope Drop at Epcot WITHOUT Early Entry

We’re going to quickly cover rope drop without Early Entry before moving onto the more complicated situation of rope drop with Early Entry.

Rope drop is more straightforward without Early Entry because, well, it isn’t really rope drop. The major rides at Epcot are all a part of Early Entry, so plenty of guests will be in line ahead of you no matter what you do. Generally, it will be best to start with either Cosmic Rewind or Frozen.

Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure has typically had too long waits early in the day, and they’ll be even longer by the time you get all the way back there.

(Note for when Test Track reopens: If you’re willing to use the single rider line on Test Track, you can deprioritize that early in the day.)

What To Rope Drop at Epcot WITH Early Entry - Intro

With Early Entry, Epcot remains fairly easy to tour, particularly if you have Lightning Lane Multi Pass. It’s nice things aren’t too challenging generally, because Epcot rope drop is more complicated than the other three parks because Epcot has two different entrances.

Guests arriving via Skyliner (Pop Century, Riviera Resort, Caribbean Beach Resort, Art of Animation) or walking from the Boardwalk area hotels (Yacht Club, Beach Club, Swan / Dolphin, Boardwalk Inn) will use the World Showcase entrance (technically called the “International Gateway”).

Other guests, including all those arriving by rideshare, their own car, or bus, will use the main entrance.

If you want to use the World Showcase entrance but you don’t fall into one of those categories, you can maybe first go to Hollywood Studios and then walk / take the Friendship Boat / take the Skyliner to Epcot. This makes most sense if you want to rope drop Remy, and it basically only works if Hollywood Studios is opening at least an hour before Epcot (because it will take about 20-30 minutes to get between the two parks).

There are three rides worth starting with at Epcot—Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Frozen Ever After, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. These are the best rides in EPCOT and three you must have a plan for.

Two things are going to determine your rope drop strategy: the entrance you use, and your Lightning Lanes.

The Lightning Lane issue is somewhat straightforward. Frozen Ever After, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, and Test Track are all Tier 1 rides on Multi Pass. Obviously you don’t need to start your day at the one you wind up booking with your initial Tier 1 pick. Cosmic Rewind is a Lightning Lane Single Pass—no need to rope drop it if you bought the Lightning Lane.

But while you can choose and modify your Lightning Lanes, it’s the entrance that you’ll use that sort of gets the ball rolling on planning your Epcot rope drop. From there, you can sort out how your Lightning Lane strategy should look.

The final caveat is that if you’re willing to use the single rider line on Test Track, then it doesn’t have to be a priority at rope drop. If the Test Track wait is low enough for you later in the day, ride it as a family, otherwise use the single rider line.

What To Rope Drop at Epcot (With Early Entry) - Main Entrance

Note: With Cosmic Rewind joining Early Entry, specific rope drop procedures are in flux (as they sort of always are). BlogMickey reports that, at the Main Entrance, Early Entry guests are being let into the park and held in World Celebration (pictured below) prior to the start of Early Entry.

Let’s start with the main entrance. From the main entrance, once you’re let inside the park you’ll walk toward Spaceship Earth (the ball) and go left or right. Left is where the direction to Cosmic Rewind, Frozen, or Mission Space. Everything else is right.

The best rope drop option from the main entrance is generally going to be Cosmic Rewind. While Frozen Ever After, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, and Cosmic Rewind can see similar wait time profiles some days, if any of them really breaks out, it’ll probably be Cosmic Rewind. Cosmic Rewind is also not on Multi Pass (so if you have Multi Pass it’s the only major ride you need to plan to wait in line for).

Cosmic Rewind’s location also makes it inconvenient to navigate back to later in the day. Sure, you might need to come back later for things like Soarin’ and Spaceship Earth later, but when you do it might very well be that Cosmic Rewind has a 2-hour wait. If you’re scarfing down funnel cake at The American Adventure and see Cosmic Rewind has a wait of “only” 45 minutes, you’re still a 16-minute walk from it, and the wait probably won’t be the same by the time you get there (even if it was, that roundtrip costs you 77 minutes!).

The downside to Cosmic Rewind rope drop is that you probably want to arrive a little extra early. If I have Multi Pass at Epcot, arriving 30 minutes before Early Entry is always going to be enough. But without Multi Pass, I need to get my day rolling a little faster, and I’d really prefer to be there 45 minutes before Early Entry begins.

The second best option from the Main Entrance is Frozen Ever After. Guests coming from the World Showcase entrance may beat you there, but if you walk at a brisk pace you’ll still only have a short wait.

The walk to Frozen can a bit confusing. Historically, the best route was to pass near Test Track and then walk around the Odyssey building (right route below). If Test Track construction or other operational concerns impact that route, the straightforward option is just to walk straight from World Celebration to the World Showcase and make a left (left route below):

Here’s an example Frozen rope drop:

7:52AM - Inside park
8:26AM - Allowed to walk to rides
8:30AM - Official start of Early Entry (9AM park open)
8:36AM - On Frozen Ever After

After the first of these you’ll probably either head (1) the other or (2) Soarin’. Historically, you could get both Frozen Ever After and Test Track done in a reasonable amount of time. Nowadays, I wouldn’t count on squeezing in both Cosmic Rewind and Frozen.

Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure is not a reasonable option from the front of the park. The walk is simply too long and too many people at the other entrance will be queued before you’re anywhere near the ride. The wait will usually be at least 30 minutes by the time you get there. (As mentioned above, you might transit through Hollywood Studios if you want to avoid this.)

What To Rope Drop at Epcot (With Early Entry) - World Showcase Entrance

Now, from the World Showcase entrance. Looking through some of my posts, I see that I’m not even consistent on which approach I use here. Let’s explain the two alternatives…

Option 1. Rope Drop Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure is only a short walk and usually begins queuing before Early Entry officially begins.

Starting with Remy’s allows you to pick something else (Frozen or Test Track) as your initial Tier 1 Lightning Lane, which gives you a better chance at an earlier time, which allows you to make your next pick sooner. If you don’t have Multi Pass, then Remy’s is going to be the best option to rope drop from this entrance in any case.

Walking in through the World Showcase entrance you’ll turn right and go over the bridge into the France pavilion:

Remy may even begin queuing on the bridge (this isn’t necessarily a bad sign, if they haven’t loaded the queue for the ride yet this isn’t that many people). Here’s a look at an example schedule:

7:48AM Arrive
7:57AM Let inside park / queued for Remy
8:30AM Start of Early Entry
8:37AM On Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure

Option 2. Rope Drop Frozen. If you have Multi Pass and pick Remy’s as your initial Tier 1 Lightning Lane, you’ll be able to rope drop the slightly less popular Frozen Ever After. Lower crowds mean you won’t have to stress as much about an early arrival. The long walk to the ride also gives you more time to get ahead of some crowds. (With Remy, guests are just queued as the enter the park, basically.)

Here’s a sample Frozen rope drop with a “late” arrival, starting with a look at the crowd when I arrived:

And my schedule:

8:12AM Arrive / Let inside park
8:27AM Begin walk to Frozen
8:36AM On one of the first few Frozen boats

Guests from the front can get to Frozen before guests from the International Gateway. In our experience, that kept us from getting on Frozen until 8:51AM. This isn’t a huge practical difference (whether you’re on at 8:36AM or 8:51AM, the lines for the big three rides are going to be long and the lines for most everything else short), but it’s notable I suppose.

Note: Over at Disney Tourist Blog, Tom has a good look at a successful Cosmic Rewind rope drop from the International Gateway. I’m cautiously optimistic this could be a viable option longterm, but I think there’s still some risk you’d be walking into an hour-plus wait.

Cosmic Rewind isn’t a viable option from the International Gateway. If you have Multi Pass, you might feel like Cosmic Rewind makes sense since you can book everything else via Multi Pass. The problem is that you’ll spend the first 60-90 minutes of your day dealing with Cosmic Rewind, rather than getting through some Multi Pass rides. This leaves you trying to squeeze in every multi pass ride later on, and that means you’ll have a significant chance you’ll have to make time to wait for Frozen or Remy later on.

Continuing Your Morning at Epcot

Usually it’s going to make sense to visit one of the other “big three” rides once you’re done with your first one at Epcot. After that, you’ll head to the rest of the rides—starting with Soarin’—trying to get as many short waits done as quickly as possible.

If the waits for the major rides are all over, say, 45 minutes, it might make sense just to delay them and just tackle some short waits. Ideally if the waits for Cosmic Rewind / Frozen / Remy are too long you’ll still have luck with Soarin’.

For more on a full day at Epcot, check out our Epcot One Day Itinerary post.

All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered

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Don't forget to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.

Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.

Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.

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