Disneyland is making a change to its "Boarding Groups" virtual queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland. But it should be a familiar one to Walt Disney World visitors.
Like at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida, California's Disneyland will open the virtual queue for Rise of the Resistance twice daily when the park reopens April 30. The change is designed to help visitors who start their day at Disney California Adventure have a chance at getting on Disneyland's top Star Wars ride later in the day.
Under Disneyland's upcoming advance reservation system, visitors must choose whether to start the day at Disneyland or Disney California Adventure. If they hold a Park Hopper ticket, they will be allowed to move to the other park starting at 1pm daily. By adding a second opportunity to get into the Rise of the Resistance virtual queue, Disney is hoping to spread the crowd by allowing Star Wars fans to start the day at DCA without forfeiting the opportunity to get on Rise.
Remember that even though the parks are admitting just 25% of their capacity during this reopening period, attractions are operating at 25% of their capacity as well. So getting into the virtual queue might not be a sure thing even with fewer people in the parks.
Can't wait to get back to Batuu? We've got you - here's the queue and full ride-through POV from the ride's opening day last year:
For more about Disneyland's reopening procedure, please see our previous posts: Disneyland Announces Dates for Ticket Sales and Reservations and Disneyland Announces Ticket Prices and Calendar.
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Yeah, the Haunted Mansion is going to get interesting (and it IS on the list of attractions that will be open starting April 30th -- not all attractions will be). Perhaps markers on the floor of the stretch room for physical distancing with 25% capacity? I live a few miles outside of California, so once Disneyland reopens I'll be turning to Theme Park Insider (and probably YouTube as well) to see how this ends up working.
It's appalling that Disney wants to reduce ride capacity in proportion to park capacity. It's as if they're never happy unless park guests always have to wait in long queues no matter what! Heaven forbid that the guest experience ever becomes top priority...
I don't think they're deliberately reducing capacity, because if you read the California re-opening restrictions, the rules are written in such a way that parks have no choice but to reduce capacities on indoor attractions unless they completely alter the way they load/unload and/or operate. It's not like Disney is trying to lessen the experience because they can't let in as many guests right now.
I do think ROTR might be able to leverage it's exterior loading platform to its advantage in order to circumvent California's interior attraction rules, but nobody will know until the parks officially open for guests.
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Will the ROTR capacity really be reduced to 25% of maximum? There are some weird aspects to California's rules, but the fact that ROTR unloads on an exterior platform (open air, as does TSMM), Disney should be able to get close to the capacity that they're running in Florida. With plexiglass between the rows of the main dark ride vehicle, Disney should be able to get closer to @50% of the effective capacity of the attraction. However, MF:SR is another story since isolating parties within the 6-person cockpit is not practical. That attraction will probably run closer to 25-30% of effective capacity.
I think the most interesting part of Disneyland pandemic operations will be how they handle the Stretch Room on Haunted Mansion. At MK, the room is an open walk through right now. However, at DL, the room is an actual elevator that takes guests to the lower level where the loading platform is, so it's not as simple as opening both sides of the room and letting people walk through. Will guests be routed through a backstage stairway, or will the Stretch Room be maintained with extremely limited capacity? Given ADA, you would think the room would at least need to be used for scooters and wheelchairs.