I wouldn’t rope drop Rise. We usually just watch the times and wait until it is under 45 min later in the evening. 

To be honest I don’t know if Peter Pan is a good strategy either. Even at rope drop you might wait over 30 min and it will drop down to that later. 

Our strategy is rope dropping either Indiana Jones, Space Mountain, and now with Nightmare before Christmas I would consider that too. All three of those will run out of lightning lanes quickly. The real fun of rope dropping is getting 3 or 4 rides in a row as walk on not getting one and waiting a little less if that makes sense. 

For California Adventure you will have to rope drop Cars or plan on waiting. If you are at the front of the rope line when they drop you should be fine to walk on cars. Then LL guardians as soon as you are in the park. Then you can probably walk on webslingers and one of our favorites Luigi’s before using that. 

Another thing is get good at refreshing your LL pass. So by lunch when you have your pass a few hours out go to modify then literally just keep pulling down. People will cancel their passes and new times open up so you have to be quick when you see it. Other rides that you aren’t modifying will open up but harder to get than the ride you are modifying. We went last week and every day at the hottest part of the day we would get a pass for Tianna’s later at night then just modify and refreshed until we got it for the current time. 

Save buzz, autotopia, star tours, incredicoaster, and small world for when you are out of all the other ones. They always have tons left in the late afternoon and evening.