Disneyland fans claimed all the boarding group spots for the park's new Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance attraction pretty much instantly this morning.
Checking the official Disneyland app showed that the park was assigning guests into backup groups in the virtual queue by 8:01am. And the park stopped assigning any boarding group spots by 8:10am.
Disneyland guests hoping to ride Rise of the Resistance have to claim a space in a virtual queue, using the Disneyland app. The virtual queue opens at the park's published opening time, but visitors must be inside the park in order to join. Disneyland allows visitors to enter Main Street before the park opens each morning, and crowds were substantial this morning, though not wall-to-wall.
21 minutes until boarding group madness. pic.twitter.com/M1v7pGn9y2
— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) January 17, 2020
Disney marked the opening with a D23 webcast this morning.
The swift assignment of all the day's spots in the virtual queue raises the question of just how many spots Disney has made available. Rise of the Resistance has been facing capacity and uptime issues ever since the original installation opened at Walt Disney World in Orlando last month. At Disneyland, the park still hadn't called any of the assigned boarding groups to get on the ride by 8:30am. (Update: First groups were called around 8:50am.)
For those of your waiting or who didn't get to ride, if you'd like a spoiler-filled preview of what to expect on Rise of the Resistance, here is our complete experience POV video from the ride's media preview yesterday:
Also, the Disneyland Resort is opening its Lunar New Year celebration over in Disney California Adventure today, providing another option for fans while they await their boarding groups being called for Rise.
Meanwhile, back at Walt Disney World, Epcot opened its three new movie attractions today:
Visiting Disneyland? For discount tickets to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, including the latest discount offer on kids' tickets, visit our travel partner's officially authorized Disneyland tickets page.
Not surprised at all by this. However, it does sound like Disney is being very conservative for the ride's first day in the number of guaranteed boarding groups they established today. Assuming the number of guests per boarding group is the same at WDW, then Disneyland's version only allowed about 75% as many as they typically give out in Florida. This makes sense since today is the first real "stress test" for California's attraction even though it's been reportedly testing for a lot longer than the one in Florida did prior to its debut.
As with any attraction in a theme park, not everyone that walks through the gates is going to be able to ride it in a given day. The problem with RotR is that everyone wants to experience this new attraction, so there are naturally going to be guests that are going to be disappointed. Let the whining commence!!
I’m looking at disappointment. Boarding group 109. Keeping my fingers crossed. There’s still 12+ hours left in the operating day.
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Interesting that groups 82 and above are the backup boarding groups. Seems like a much lower number compared to Hollywood Studios. I imagine they are expecting potential downtime and playing it safe.