Should You Sleep In, Skipping Early Entry & Rope Drop at Disney’s Animal Kingdom?

Planning and strategizing for Walt Disney World is essentially a series of trade-offs. It’s reasonably well understood that, among middle class Americans, money is a finite resource. Upgrading to a Deluxe Resort might mean fewer park days, buying Lightning Lanes might come at the expense of table service restaurants, and so on–you get the idea.

Also understood, albeit arguably less so, is that time and energy are likewise limited resources. Despite being diehard rope droppers and commando park-goers, one of my biggest pet peeves is hardcore planners who are the first at the turnstiles claiming they only waited 5 minutes for TRON Lightcycle Run, Avatar Flight of Passage, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Slinky Dog Dash, or other headliners. That’s just categorically false.

While we obsess over efficiency and strategizing, we also like to think about things in holistic terms. Not all vacation time has equal value, but it all does have some value, and there’s an opportunity cost to every strategy or decision. Arriving to Animal Kingdom at 6 am on a day when Early Entry starts at 7:30 am, and getting to the first preshow of Avatar Flight of Passage by 7:35 am is not a 5 minute wait. It’s 5 minutes plus up to 90 minutes!

Some commando tourists will argue otherwise, doing a form of fuzzy Disney math, and saying that the pre-park opening time did not count, since it was outside the operating day. I appreciate this to an extent, as someone who is bad at math. That’s precisely why the above math is 5 plus “up to” 90 as opposed to 95 minutes. That 90 minutes before park opening is less valuable and should be ‘marked down’ as a result, especially among commandos who tour from park opening to park closing.

Nevertheless, it does have some value. During those 90 minutes, you could’ve taken a leisurely morning stroll around your resort (or a not-so-leisurely jog). You could’ve sat on your balcony, enjoying a coffee and watching Walt Disney World wake up for the day. You could’ve even wandered around Discovery Island, drinking in the details and ambiance. All of these activities have value, albeit perhaps not as much in the eyes of the commando.

A better example is the alternative of sleeping in. Among those who would need a midday break or wouldn’t be able to stay until park closing if they got up at the crack of dawn for Early Entry. In this case, that zero dark thirty wake-up call is coming at the expense of park time, creating a clear opportunity cost.

Accordingly, that makes it easier to argue that the wait time for Avatar Flight of Passage was 80 or 90 minutes (it’s probably reasonable to subtract 10 minutes for getting through security and the turnstiles). The question thus becomes whether, on balance, arriving extra early or sleeping in was a better use of the finite resource of vacation time?

That’s the question this post will try to answer. It’s against that backdrop that we’ll address pros & cons of Early Entry at Animal Kingdom as of late 2026, making the case for sleeping in certain circumstances and early arrival in others. Let’s dig in…

Despite all of the above, we love Early Entry at Walt Disney World. The on-site perk gives hotel guests a head-start to do headliner attractions with shorter lines and lower wait times to beat the crowds. We enthusiastically recommend Early Entry in dozens of planning posts.

It’s an underrated perk, with many guests dismissing it as “only” 30 minutes and inferior to the hour-long Extra Magic Hours. While I’d obviously rather have double the time, Early Entry is actually a lot less busy than EMH was; having the perk at all 4 parks every single day makes a huge difference.

We’ve argued that Early Entry is typically a great time-saving tool at 3 of the 4 parks. The problem is that the “bad” park is constantly changing. It used to be Magic Kingdom most of the time. Then TRON ditched its virtual queue and enough capacity came online to offset demand.

Then it was EPCOT for a while when Test Track was closed for reimagining. On any given day, it can still be Disney’s Hollywood Studios if the dreaded delayed opening strikes your starting attraction (or multiple headliners), as often happens.

Up until recently, we never questioned the wisdom of doing Early Entry at Animal Kingdom.

The big advantage Early Entry offered was that it was extra early and reliably uncrowded. Animal Kingdom usually opens at 8 am, which means Early Entry at 7:30 am. That offers a big upside for early risers, and one we’ve discussed at length in the past when it comes to Magic Kingdom during Party Season.

In a nutshell, few guests have the necessary desire and determination to be out their hotel room door by ~6:30 am, which is pretty much what’s necessary to arrive at Animal Kingdom in time for the start of 7:30 am Early Entry. By contrast, tons of people can make it for 8:30 am Early Entry at the other parks.

This 7:30 am Early Entry start time set the stage for an incredibly efficient morning at Animal Kingdom.

We’ve documented our success with this elsewhere, but suffice to say, it was glorious. We could knock out both Pandora – World of Avatar attractions within that half hour, then ride the wave of crowds to do literally every other ride as a walk-on. This made it possible to do everything minus the stage shows before noon, and then Park Hop elsewhere for the rest of the day.

Zooming out, this strategy still generally works. If your time is limited or you want a half day in a different park (perhaps you need 1.5 days in Magic Kingdom or EPCOT), this remains the optimal approach. The specifics differ, but you should not upend your strategy. Wanting to knock out the park in a half-day is the most compelling reason to do Early Entry at Animal Kingdom.

The problems that I’ve encountered on a couple of recent mornings at Animal Kingdom in the last few months are three-fold.

First, that the pre-park opening crowd is larger and earlier arriving than anticipated. There were times that I got to Animal Kingdom at or slightly before 7:00 am, and I was already pretty far back while waiting for security to open.

The second is an offshoot of that, which is that encountering a line for bagcheck to open creates something of a wildcard. That’s one chokepoint, and if you “win” the secondary screening lotto, you might suddenly be way behind people who arrived much later than you. Same goes for choosing poorly when it comes to the turnstiles.

Normally, this might not be much of an issue, and is something that would ‘smooth out’ as guests proceed to their first destination of the day.

However, the problem with Early Entry at Animal Kingdom is that there’s one attraction almost everyone targets: Avatar Flight of Passage. The lines for security and then the turnstiles are basically a glorified pre-queue for Flight of Passage, and every misstep moves you back in line. (Conversely, efficient guests can jockey for and improve their position!)

In addition to this, since the closure of Dinoland USA, there are now only four (4) attractions that participate in Early Entry at Animal Kingdom: Avatar Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey in Pandora, along with Expedition Everest and Zootopia: Better Zoogether. Only three (3) of those attractions are actually worth doing, and there’s one very obvious starting point.

As we reported a few months ago, there’s a new approach to park opening at Animal Kingdom that mirrors changes made last year at the other 3 parks. Under the new system, both Early Entry resort guests and the regular rope droppers from off-site can proceed down either path of the Oasis.

The guest holding areas have largely been eliminated, giving off-site guests the freedom to wander Discovery Island itself while they wait, as opposed to being concentrated in the corridor through the Oasis. From Discovery Island, there are now Early Entry checkpoints at individual attractions, plus the entrance(s) to Pandora – World of Avatar.

During our visits over the last several months, the precise locations of the checkpoints have varied. Our assumption is that Animal Kingdom will revert to having two checkpoints on either side of Discovery Island once Tropical Americas starts to open next year.

Virtually everyone heads left to Pandora – World of Avatar.

On the mornings when I’ve done Early Entry at Animal Kingdom since the checkpoints moved, this has worked the same way as the other parks, with the slow trickle of guests coming through the turnstiles naturally pulsing demand and crowds into the park. (It used to be the case that Cast Members ‘slowly shepherded’ guests into Pandora – World of Avatar.)

I’ve been behind the first wave on these occasions, but still close enough to the front of the pack that I’ve made it to the Pandora checkpoint before 7:30 am. I’d hazard a guess that the very first guests through the turnstiles are reaching this point just before before 7:25 am.

Once through the checkpoint, you’re free to proceed to Pandora. Just follow or lead the crowd, and be mindful of signage if you’re heading to Avatar Flight of Passage, as it still utilizes a winding route to ‘stack’ the standby line within the land outside the front entrance.

I assume Disney does this because the standby line would back up outside the entrance otherwise. Regardless, the appearance of the physical line outside the attraction is not indicative of the line inside. You’ll be briskly walking through empty indoor queue most mornings.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the attraction itself will be a walk-on. Just that the standby line spilling outside the attraction, something that seldom happens on a normal day, is deceptive.

Both of the mornings I did Early Entry, the length of the line exceeded my balking point. The posted wait time was 45-55 minutes by 7:45 am on these mornings, and judging by just what I could see of the line, that was probably not too badly inflated.

Whenever the wait time during Early Entry exceeds ~40 minutes, I’m reticent to jump in line unless it looks far shorter, as the arrival of Lightning Lane returns at park opening can balloon wait times. These were also days with 3/10 and 4/10 crowd levels, so it can get worse.

My goal is to ‘ride the wave’ of the crowds and stay ahead of the pack, and allocating disproportionate time to one attraction can make that difficult. It thus seemed pragmatic to skip Avatar Flight of Passage, and instead continue on.

One of these mornings, I did Na’vi River Journey twice. It had a 10 minute posted wait, but was a complete walk-on both times. Although I didn’t do it again, I came back shortly after 8:00 am another time, after the first ‘wave’ of the rope drop rush had rolled in, and Na’vi River Journey was still only posting a 15 minute wait. There was no visible line outside.

Outside of Pandora, nothing had a long line. Kilimanjaro Safaris and Expedition Everest were all walk-ons by the time I got to them. Although I didn’t do it, Kali River Rapids had no wait between 9 am (when it opened) and 10 am. My longstanding practice is criss-crossing the park to do Expedition Everest before Kilimanjaro Safaris, attempting to loop the shorter thrill ride(s) and potentially get an empty on-ride photo.

All three of these non-Pandora attractions typically have low wait times for the first hour of the day even after Early Entry ends on even moderately busy days. If you’re visiting during a peak week, it’s obviously a different story, but this isn’t like Magic Kingdom or Disney’s Hollywood Studios where every headliner has a high wait time within the first 30 minutes of the morning. Animal Kingdom crowds are definitely more late-arriving.

Expedition Everest has no pre-show, so it can be completed very quickly when the ride is a walk-on. At this hour, I’ve found that ‘hitting a wall’ with Everest is more about my body’s own tolerances than the actual line or wait time. But if you’re up for looping it, I’d hazard a guess that you could do Expedition Everest 8-10 times with virtually no wait during the first hour-plus of the day.

The really interesting thing here, and the other component that gave rise to this post, is that the mid-morning lull for Avatar Flight of Passage was about on par with the line during Early Entry! On both days, the wait time after the initial rope drop rush had dissipated fell back to 45 minutes.

That doesn’t seem uncommon with Avatar Flight of Passage, either! I’ve been at Animal Kingdom in the middle of the day over the last few months when the posted wait time has been 30 minutes or less. I’ve waited in line less than that, and this was well before the afternoon exodus.

It was on days when Animal Kingdom wasn’t dead, per se, but it also wasn’t packed. Several readers have reported similarly, with some sharing that Flight of Passage has been a walk-on (or close to it) during the middle of the day.

In light of this, it can actually be counterproductive to be at the front of the pack for Early Entry at Animal Kingdom. However you do the math, you’re committing considerably more time than someone who uses no strategy at all and simply rolls up later to Flight of Passage.

This was true again just last weekend on a day when Animal Kingdom’s closing was extended to 8 pm, suggesting heavier crowds. And while the park was busy earlier in the day, Flight of Passage had a wait time under an hour for the final few hours of the day whenever I passed by the attraction or checked the app.

Given these wait times for Avatar Flight of Passage, it’s difficult to recommend arriving at the crack of dawn to be front of pack for Early Entry at Animal Kingdom. That’s true both of the all-in waits before and during Early Entry, as well as those after around 10:30 am.

Instead of waiting 30-45 minutes just to get into the park to be among the first at Avatar Flight of Passage, you can sleep in a bit, and roll up right around or after 7:30 am. Start by knocking out Na’vi River Journey during Early Entry, followed by Kilimanjaro Safaris, Expedition Everest, and Kali River Rapids at and after regular rope drop. And just slot Avatar Flight of Passage in later, when it still should have a manageable wait, so long as you’re after that initial rush.

Obviously, advising you to “sleep in” but still be at the park by 7:45 am is going to be laughable to those who aren’t early birds. If you want to take it a step further, you can arrive after 8 am on most days and just pick up the plan with Expedition Everest or Kilimanjaro Safaris, saving all of Pandora for that mid-morning lull or even the afternoon (if you’re planning to stay all day).

The bottom line is that if you need to sleep in on one of your park days at Walt Disney World, make it your DAK day. Whether you arrive at 7:45 am or even after 9:00 am, you can make it work.

Another strategy, and our actual preferred way to do Animal Kingdom, especially for the next several months when it’s possible to experience nighttime in the parks, is to arrive in the late afternoon and stick around until park closing. I just did this last Saturday, starting at EPCOT then bouncing to Animal Kingdom before attending the first Jollywood Nights of the year. That worked out flawlessly; it’s what we do frequently during the Christmas season and highly recommend.

Ultimately, the strategy here should reassure you that it’s okay to sleep in a little bit when it comes to Early Entry or rope drop at Animal Kingdom, and that the effort and time cost of being at the front of the pack is not worth it right now, at least in moderate crowds. For the commandos out there, that’s hopefully a relief. For everyone else, the lesson is that you also don’t need to be as diligent about DAK as you do the other 3 parks.

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

YOUR THOUGHTS

Have you done Early Entry at Animal Kingdom recently? Did you feel it was “worth it” to arrive extra-early, or could you have done just as well by showing up at regular rope drop? What’s your preferred approach to Animal Kingdom? Agree or disagree with our advice? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!