Figuring out how to use Lightning Lanes can be overwhelming and confusing. It feels like there are too many options, but not the options that you want, and everyone on the internet has opinions about the best way to do things.
If you are trying to decide what parks to use Lightning Lanes in, we highly suggest prioritizing Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Magic Kingdom has an insane number of attractions – you will never be able to do them all in one day. Hollywood Studios has far less attractions – but each of those can have VERY long lines. Hollywood Studios is also extremely hot with very little shade and can be a physically taxing park.
We want to break down our family’s lightning lane multi pass strategy that also combines rope dropping – this may help you! Here we go!
We wanted to give you an idea of what you can do in Hollywood Studios using Lightning Lanes. Our group was a family of 12 with people ranging in age from 5 to the mid 60’s. We stayed on site so we were able to take advantage of early entry.
Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Tiers
There are two lightning lane options in Hollywood Studios. First, there is the Individual Lighting Lane for Rise of the Resistance. In order to skip the line for Rise of the Resistance you need to purchase a separate pass just for this attraction. This costs anywhere from $15-$30ish dollars depending upon the day. The only other way to skip the line for ROTR is by purchasing a very expensive premier pass.
The Lightning Lane Multi Pass is what people are primarily referring to when talking about “Lightning Lanes.” Here is the info for Hollywood Studios:
Multi Pass Experiences
When purchasing a Lightning Lane Multi Pass for Disney’s Hollywood Studios, you can choose up to 3 multi pass experiences and arrival windows.
Choose up to one experience from this group (Tier 1):
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith
- Slinky Dog Dash
Choose your other 2 experiences—or all 3—from this group (Tier 2):
- Alien Swirling Saucers
- Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage
- For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration
- Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular
- The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue
- Toy Story Mania!
- The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror™
As you can see, you can only initially choose one attraction from the first group – which includes the most popular rides in the park. It can be very challenging to get lightning lanes for all four tier one attractions – especially if your group is larger than four people.
Hollywood Studios Rope Drop Strategy
In our experience, if you want the best shot at riding all four Tier-1 attractions plus Rise of the Resistance in one day, rope dropping is pretty much essential. Once the day gets rolling, standby waits for Tier 1 rides can easily hit 2+ hours, and the odds of scoring Lightning Lane returns for all of them later are basically slim to none.
“Rope drop” means means arriving at the park 15–30 minutes before the official opening time. Keep in mind, opening times vary throughout the year.
If you are staying on site (I hope you are!) you get early entry into the park. Early entry is typically 30 minutes prior to park opening. We suggest being in line to scan into the park at least 30 minutes prior to early entry. For example, if early entry is 8:00, plan on getting to Hollywood Studios by 7:30. It simply takes time to get off transportation, walk to the entrance, wait in line, scan in, and get bags checked.
If you do not have early entry, and regular park opening is 8:30, you should try to get to the park at least 45 minutes in advance.
You have two main options for rope dropping in Hollywood Studios:
Option 1: Purchase an individual lightning lane for Rise of the Resistance and rope drop Slinky Dog Dash.
Option 2: Rope drop Rise of the Resistance. Purchase a multi-pass and book Slinky Dog Dash as one of your options right away.
One thing to note: Rise of the Resistance is well known for breaking down. It would not be unusual for you to plan to rope drop Rise and find that it is not working. There is nothing you can do about that except be mentally prepared that this might happen. If riding Rise is absolutely essential for you, we suggest coughing up the money for an ILL.
Hollywood Studios One Day Plan
Here is an example of how we navigated Hollywood Studios in early October with our group of 12.
We decided to not purchase an individual lighting lane for Rise of the Resistance. We did decide to purchase the Lightning Lane Multi Pass which allowed us to choose one attraction from tier 1 and 2 from the other group. Once we had the ability to book our return times, this is what we ended up with:
9:20 Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
10:45 Slinky Dog Dash
11:45 Toy Story Mania
Here is how this all played out during our day.
We got to the park a little bit later than we would have preferred, but we were still in the park during the early entrance for Disney Resort guests. We booked it to over to Rise of the Resistance and rode it. Once we got done with that we saw that Millennium Falcon had a 15 minute wait so a bunch of us headed to that attraction and got it done!
During this time Jen and her youngest skipped the Star Wars attractions and spent some time in Toy Story Land.
Unfortunately, we had to walk clear to the other side of the park for the Tower of Terror. After we checked into Tower of Terror we were able to start bookingnew lightning lanes. Throughout our day we were able to book Lightning Lanes for Star Tours, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad, and Rockin’ Roller Coaster.
During our day we were able to catch an Indiana Jones show and watch Muppet-Vision 3D (sadly, now gone forever). We had reservations for Oga’s Cantina for half of us – the other half went to Pixar Place and met a bunch of characters.
Of course, on our way out of the park we did some shopping on Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Boulevard. Overall, we were pretty happy with our strategy. We got to do most everything we wanted and we were able to make it back to the Polynesian for dinner at club level!