Walt Disney World again is tweaking the rules to get on one of its most popular rides. Starting this Sunday, the "second seating" for the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue will open at 1pm daily, up one hour from the current 2pm opening time.
Fans visiting Disney's Hollywood Studios have two chances daily to enter the mandatory virtual queue for the attraction, which won our Theme Park Insider Award this year as the world's best. The first opportunity comes at 7am daily. Guests must have a valid Disney Park Pass reservation to visit Disney's Hollywood Studios in order to try to enter the queue.
Disney World is planning to allow park hopping across its four theme parks once again, starting January 1. However, visitors will not be allowed to switch parks until 2pm each day, so the rule change for the Rise virtual queue effectively prevents guests from getting on the ride unless Disney's Hollywood Studios — the east coast home to the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge land — is their first park of the day.
To enter the virtual queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, you should use the official Walt Disney World app. While you do not need to be inside the park for the 7am opportunity, you do for the 1pm. Access to a boarding group is subject to availability and not guaranteed.
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When the park hopping was announced, Disney made it clear that only guests with DHS original reservations were going to be able to get a RotR boarding group, so those coming in for the 'hop' wouldn't be given the chance anyway.
It's a great way for Disney to get the 2pm people into the park an hour earlier, thus potentially spending more money. From January, it also ensures the 2pm crowd doesn't immediately exit the park when they can't get a boarding group. If you can't get a pass at 1pm what can you do for an hour ..... spend money at Hollywood Studios maybe ??
Smart business as usual by Disney
Maybe it’s best to cancel the new rules as they were not as good as the original rules. We can pretend like the new rules never existed.
Ha ha, Keith...I see what you did there. :)
I have been following RotR on the Lines app and for the past week, and with exception of yesterday, it looks like it has been running well. Boarding groups over 100 have been called in the early afternoon and they have been reaching backup groups as high as 175, so hopefully more people can experience the attraction.
Source: https://blog-cdn.touringplans.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2020-12-15-ROTR.png
I was wondering what the reasoning behind it would be. Park hopping makes perfect sense.
In all honesty, the best bet to get on the ride is being in that first 7am slot. Even if the ride goes down, you will have a better chance getting on it!
Instead of changing rules repeatedly, how about Disney just shuts the ride down and does whatever is necessary to allow it to operate using a normal queuing system? Attractions with much lower capacity use that setup, and it's clear a fair number of guests would be okay with 2-3 hour waits in lieu of the boarding pass system given how long the lines can be elsewhere. As much as I like Rise of the Resistance, the hassles required to ride are a huge strike against it, and if Disney doesn't have a more workable solution by the time visitor numbers return to normal the attraction could be viewed as a sizable flop despite all that it has going for it.
AJ, I agree. I remember four hour waits for the Temple of the Forbidden Eye at Disneyland when it opened (the queue stretched out of Adventureland, down Main Street, back up Main Street, into Frontierland, and up Big Thunder Trail). The people who got on that attraction when it was new were DEDICATED to riding it (and, as with most new attractions, there was a lot of downtime due to technical difficulties).
I absolutely get the advantage of boarding groups -- people can enjoy other parts of the park while waiting to have their group called (IF they are fortunate enough to get a spot in the virtual queue). But while having an assigned boarding group that may or may not get called allows people to do other things instead of standing in a long queue, it puts people's odds of getting on up to chance and not sticktoitiveness (I'm amazed that spell check considers that a word -- I thought I was going to have to hyphenate as stick-to-it-ive-ness).
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This is an obvious move to give DHS park-goers increased chances to get on RotR if they wish. Leaving the 2nd boarding pass distribution time at 2 PM would have resulted in park hoppers getting spots that guests starting their day at DHS should have first dibs on. However, this change also allows DHS guests to hop out of DHS if they fail to secure a spot during the second boarding pass distribution.
Honestly, I'm not sure why this second distribution couldn't be moved up to noon, because by that time, ride ops should have a good feel for how far along they are in accommodating the first set of Boarding Groups, and anyone who was going to start their day at DHS would have already been in the park by noon anyway.