February 2020 Hollywood Studios Extended Park Hours, Plus Predictions
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance continues to be the most popular attraction at Walt Disney World, which has repeatedly led to extensions of park hours at Hollywood Studios, with 7 am opening times becoming the norm. That has happened once again, with revised operating schedules for the entirety of February 2020.
Even during what should be the doldrums of the winter off-season (although it hasn’t often felt like it this year!), Disney’s Hollywood Studios has been packed and the virtual queue is filling up quickly. This can likely be attributed to strong word of mouth and better guest education about what’s necessary to ride.
On comments to our Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance posts, the resounding reader sentiment is that the attraction is worth the early wake-up call to experience. We definitely agree (see our spoiler-free Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Review). In addition to taking a look at the latest hours extension, we’ll also offer some commentary, plus speculation about the future of these extensions, and an update on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance operations in this post…
Before delving into this update, let’s reiterate once more that most questions you have are likely answered by our Ride Guide & FAQ for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Earlier this week, we once again updated that with new info and more answers to questions readers that were frequently being asked by readers in the comments. That’s basically Rise of the Resistance 101.
That FAQ & Ride Guide is already pretty long, so we’re hesitant to add even more to it, but if you want a 300/400 level crash course in scoring a lower number boarding group, see the top section (before the FAQ) of our Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Disneyland Strategy Guide. Yes, that’s for the California version of the attraction, but the same ‘fast-finger’ strategy applies for My Disney Experience.
Moving along to park hours, opening time remains 7 am with 8 pm closings for the remainder of January 2020. As you might recall, these dates were all originally 9 am openings, but were first moved forward to 8 am before eventually landing on the current 7 am opening time.
The latest changes concern February 2020. Disney’s Hollywood Studios will now open at 7 am through February 3, with 8 am openings beginning February 4 and continuing for the duration of the month. The park will continue to close at 8 pm, which we do not anticipate changing. The opening hours are a different story…
While it’s possible that Walt Disney World is going to slowly phase out the 7 am openings beginning in early February, we do not believe that to be the case. It seems much more likely that this is another instance of incremental extensions coming only a couple of weeks out.
There’s no reason to extend park hours for February 3, 2020 (which is a Monday during a week that’s historically slow) but not for the two weekends that follow. This is especially true of Presidents’ Day and the entire week that follows, which is one of the busier weeks of the year thanks to that holiday and the Princess Half Marathon bookending the week.
Quite simply, it’s highly unlikely that Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be opening at 8 am any day during the week of Presidents’ Day.
Why Walt Disney World is still doing these gradual extensions is beyond us. Since literally the day it opened, we’ve been hammering on the reality that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance will be popular for years. Demand will far exceed its daily capacity for the next decade.
The most likely potential explanation for these delayed extensions is not that Walt Disney World is waiting until the last minute to gauge demand, but waiting until the last minute to gauge supply. It’s no secret that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance still has reliability and uptime issues. What’s not so common knowledge is that it’s operating at nowhere near full capacity.
Improvements on those fronts could enable the attraction to handle more riders per day. That would mean distributing more boarding passes, which wouldn’t be gone as quickly in the morning. Theoretically, that would mean guests would stop feeling the need to arrive so early, allowing Walt Disney World to get away with the 8 am opening time.
As we see it, there’s another potential problem with opening Disney’s Hollywood Studios at 8 or 9 am. Right now, the main complaint we’re seeing about the earlier opening time is that it’s difficult for families to get their kids up by ~5 am and arrive at Disney’s Hollywood Studios by 6:30 am.
The practical reality of the current system is that the early opening time is a non-starter for a lot of guests, either by choice (vacations are supposed to be relaxing) or out of near-necessity. If Walt Disney World delayed the opening time until 8 or 9 am, that expands the pool of potential guests who would partake in the Rise (of the Resistance) & Shine Pre-Dawn Cattle Call.
This presents a couple of potential issues. First, more guests all logging on simultaneously and trying to use My Disney Experience could crash the app. MDX isn’t exactly known for its stability, and I’m actually surprised this hasn’t happened yet. Even under normal pressure, this 8-year old app (that sometimes still feels like its being beta-tested) seems to have a system-wide outage for a few hours every once in a while. More concurrent use only exacerbates problems and increases the likelihood of that.
Second, if more people are able to arrive before park opening and thus enter Disney’s Hollywood Studios by official opening time, that means more people competing for boarding passes. If daily capacity has not improved, then not everyone arriving at park opening would be able to score primary boarding groups (or even backup groups with a high probability of being called).
This would turn the virtual queue into a true lottery instead of a hybrid first-come, first-served and lottery system. There would be actual losers among those who got up early and wrangled their kids to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. In our estimation, this would lead to more “vacation ruined!” complaints at Guest Relations. This actually came very close to happening earlier in January, the first couple of days most APs were unblocked and locals were still off work and school.
There’s also the issue of why Disney’s Hollywood Studios isn’t simply open later. Again, all I can offer here is speculation. My first guess is that Walt Disney World saw how unsuccessful that was for dealing with crowds when Pandora – World of Avatar debuted.
Additionally, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is only being operated for about 12 hours (give or take) on both coasts. This is unlikely arbitrary or coincidence. As test and adjust remains ongoing, that evening and overnight downtime is critical to improving the attraction’s reliability and uptime.
As a final explanation for the earlier closing, that is the way Walt Disney World is trending, in general. Late nights are far less common than they were a decade (or even 5 years) ago, despite significantly larger crowds. Whether this is out of a desire to push guests towards hard ticket After Hours events, out of park restaurants, or something else is beyond me.
Ultimately, this is a lot of rampant speculation based upon semi-educated guesses. We aren’t privy to any inside info on what’s happening with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance or Disney’s rationale as to its operating hours on either coast. Rather, we’re attempting to offer some potential explanations as to why things are the way they are–with the emphasis on potential.
The current boarding pass/virtual queue system may not be perfect or ideal for every Walt Disney World guest, but that would be true of literally any approach. Daily demand simply far exceeds daily supply/capacity and will for years. It’s either this approach or another with different winners and losers. Personally, I’ll take the system we have right now.
If you’re planning on visiting the new land, you’ll also want to read our Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Guide. This covers a range of topics from basics about the land and its location, to strategically choosing a hotel for your stay, recommended strategy for the land, and how to beat the crowds. It’s a good primer for this huge addition. As for planning the rest of your trip, we have a thorough Walt Disney World Planning Guide.
YOUR THOUGHTS
Have any predictions about when these 7 am park openings will end at Disney’s Hollywood Studios? Do you think our theories about why the early openings–as opposed to later openings and later closings–are occurring? If you’ve arrived early for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance in the last week or so, what was your experience like? Do you plan on arriving to Disney’s Hollywood Studios super early? Do you agree or disagree with our advice and assessment? Any questions? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Just asking a random question as a parent of two young kids (6 and 2) who will be visiting Hollywood Studios on Tuesday, February 25th. If my son and I have no real intentions of riding Rise of the Resistence and just want to visit the park without the expectation of getting on the virtual ROR line, is a young family better off waiting for the early morning chaos to fade and enter the park around 9am for a smoother entry? I realize the hoopla at Hollywood Studios is mostly around this ride, so if you take that out of the equation, is this park worth the hassle right now or just out of hand in terms of crowds and overall craziness? We have avoided Hollywood Studios the past several years due to all the construction and changes on our yearly trips so I really have no real idea of how to gauge the park everywhere else minus the biggest attraction.
That’s obviously a personal choice. My kids are older 11, 13 and 14 but all 3 of them say HS is their favorite park. The entry to the park is only crazy up until official park opening. The scheduled park opening for Feb 25th is 8am (keep an eye out because that could change). Anytime after 8am should be very easy to enter the park (maybe give it 10-15 mins). Since ROTR has opened, the trend has been that the park is busier in the morning due to the crowds waiting for their BG’s to be called. But I have read that some guests do leave and take the Skyliner to Epcot after they get their BG’s and return later. Disney just changed their FastPass set up last week to include every ride other than Smugglers Run and Slink Dog to tier 2 so you should look and see what FP’s are available for your dates to reduce wait times for the attractions you want. **(edit: I just checked and everything is available except the 2 tier 1 attractions)** If you have Park Hopper, the risk of trying it out is probably worth the reward since if it is too busy for you, you can just leave and try another park. My personal opinion would be that it’s definitely worth it. Hope this helps and good luck
Thanks Mike, that is all very helpful information! We were able to secure a Fast Past to Smugglers Run last week and we do have a dinner reservation at Hollywood Studios so it’s on the agenda, but we really are not inclined to do the early morning shuffle to secure ROTR slots. Also thanks for the tip on the Skyliner idea to Epcot, I like that option to mix things up if needed.
Maybe we were just some of the lucky ones but we had a great RoR experience this past week at HS. We were there on Saturday Jan 25 and had a party of 9 ranging in age from 3-35. We arrived to the buses at Contemporary a little before 6:15 and had to wait at least 20+ minutes for one to come for HS. We were getting a little worried but we arrived at HS a few minutes before 7. We walked right through bag check and ticketing and were in the park by 7:03 and had a boarding group of 121. We were called back to our boarding group about 3:00 in the afternoon and waited about 30 minutes to actually board the ride. It worked out great because we were able to ride all the “big rides” several times with <30-40 minute waits in the morning and early afternoon before our boarding group was called. The early wake up was a little annoying but with the earlier park closing times for all the parks during this time, we were back in our room most nights fairly early anyways.
What I experienced was a bunch of people in the park by 7am (Only park open for another 2 hours) and after people got boarding passes and/or other park openings were getting close they steadily streamed out. Wait times still barely fluctuated with 90 minutes on ToT, 120 minutes for Slinky, and 110 minutes for the Falcon even as 9am approached on a Tuesday in January of one of the supposedly slowest weeks. However the tour groups have caught on and they have their groups in the park at 7am in a glowing huddled mass around a flag lit up by everyones phone screens!!
I disagree with those, including Tom, who say the early hours are no good for kids. My kids range from 2 to 20. I have six. The adventure of getting everyone up at 4.30 and parking by 5.30 was unforgettable. The crowd at the turnstiles. The sense of shared excitement. With your advice Tom – and this was at the end of December – we were in before 6.00am and got Boarding Party 60. And we had a brilliant full day in about three parks. Yes it’s a vacation but it’s also a chance to do stuff that is the envy of the world. X
Oh so you’re the one
Well John, I imagine your opinion would be quite different had you been one of the thousands of people inside the park with us in earlier in January, when the queue opened at 7am, yet they were not able to score a boarding pass. Our experiences on January 12th and 14th were quite different than yours. There were thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to get in when they opened the park at 6:30. THE QUEUE DID NOT OPEN UNTIL 7 AM. By 7:02, there were only “backup” groups available. On January 14th we were in boarding group 88 by 7:01 AM, just ONE MINUTE AFTER THE QUEUE OPENED. Judging by the conversations overheard, I believe there were multitudes of vacationers who did not get a boarding group, even though they dragged their kids out of bed and were inside the park by the time the queue opened at 7 am. So, even if they were up at 4:30 and inside the park, their family was disappointed. For all of those families, it doesn’t make for very good memories.
My party of 3 were assigned boarding group 102 on Monday, January,27 @ 7:01;up to 93 were guaranteed. They gave out the final boarding pass @ 7:32.
The traffic @ 6:30 getting into the parking lot was overwhelming. 6-8 lanes, 20+ cars deep in each. Thousands were at the gate before 7:00.
We spoke to someone later in the day who was assigned 44 @ 7:00 AM, who knew of another 7:00 AM assigned 11.
Our group became eligible @ 4:35. The line would have taken ~ 35 minutes, but we stood in a narrow, indoor space during a 45 minute shutdown = miserable, especially because they gave us no sense of when or if it would restart. They did come by after awhile to provide water, popcorn and bananas, which were welcome. I even got a special escort to the bathroom.
The ride was great, but Disney needs to do better!
In my opinion, traveling with kids makes this current virtual queue system for Rise of Resistance a real downer for your vacation. First of all, you must wake up everyone in the “middle of the night.” (At least it seems like that to the kids.) Drag them into chaos at 5:30 in the morning, along with thousands of other people, who are all tired and stressed out, wondering if they’ll be able to score a boarding pass. On two separate mornings the second week in January, we were waiting in line by 6:15 a.m., in the park by 6:40, and had our boarding passes for group 68 by 7:01. All boarding passes were gone by 7:02. (two minutes after the queue opened.) My phone was not responding quickly, and luckily we had two teenagers in our group who were already logged in, and were able to score the boarding passes. I felt sorry for all the disappointed families that were there so early, and yet went away disappointed. To make it even more aggravating, there were lots of locals there talking about the multiple times they’ve ridden Rise of Resistance, while there were multitudes of vacationers who traveled thousands of miles, who went away disappointed that day. Unfortunately our boarding group was called when we were at our dining reservation, and we had our tier one fastpass scheduled right after our dining. That added more stress to the scheduled plans. After rousing the kids so early they were tired and cranky by afternoon, but we couldn’t leave for a nap since we already had fastpasses scheduled in the afternoon. It would be a hundred times worse in the summer when everyone would be HOT, tired, and cranky. I would much rather just know 60 days ahead of time whether or not we could ride Rise of Resistance, and just be able to plan around it.
Did your teens have their own log-ins and linked to you or just use your log-in? I’m just trying to figure out what will be best for my family so I’m not the only one trying to get a boarding pass, that my family will also be trying. Thanks.
We’re going on February 3rd and have researched the best strategies for attempting to snag a boarding group. That being said, this will be my first time attempting this and I have a group of 18 people (!!!). Do you know of any strategies for obtaining a boarding group for a large party? We all plan to be IN the park by 7am and I have everyone linked and working in MDE. Just nervous trying to snag one for this large of a group. We were considering splitting up (every fam for themselves in MDE) but we’d like to ride together. Lastly, what’s the best mode of transportation to take this early in the morning? Staying at Pop but not sure the Skyliner will be running at 6am. Should we take the bus? What time should we leave the hotel?
Worth noting that the ride vehicles are in pairs, with each vehicle moving on a slightly different track, and each hold 8 people, so you will be split up riding even if you all score a group together.
Thank you, this is helpful!
Is it predicted that HS will still open at 7am on days following 03Feb2020 even though time is posted as opening at 8am? Who would be the best person to ask while we are there?
Now Feb 3rd is 7am so that might answer your question.
Any guess as to what type of system/hours will be in place at the end of August? With MMRR opening, HS is going to get even more energized.
BTW, the first photo of the entrance is fantastic.
It’s too early to predict what will happen beyond March 3, 2020.
At least until then, I think the current system/hours will continue as-is.
We rode on January 15th. Got to HS at 6:00am (via Uber) and got a boarding group of 21. People next to us got much higher numbers. ( we were lucky) Done with the ride by 8:30am. Successful morning! Only complaint… NOT enough breakfast /coffee options in the park after letting everyone in!
My biggest beef is that resort guests get no perks at all and I think that could be addressed without compromising the current set up. Offer morning EMH every Tuesday and Friday for 1 hour before scheduled park opening. Release only half of the days boarding groups (including back ups as a ratio for eg. if normal day is 140 total groups issued 100 reg and 40 back up, then issue 50 reg and 20 back up) and leave the other half available for when regular park hours open. That way resort guests have an advantage (but only 2 days per week and not on a weekend) and regular day guests still have an opportunity. If all BG don’t get taken then they go to regular park opening pool that’s released and if they all get taken then resort guests get second opportunity if they got shut out.
Resort guests should get extra perks (hence EMH), but there’s no way a resort guest should get half of the available seats for RotR when they have the same ticket as an off-site guest has. The current system is about as fair as it gets under these circumstances.
Why not? They get that by using FP 30 days before for every day and have the same ticket don’t they? The popular FPs (SDD, FOP, etc) are usually 100% gone by the time the 30 day window comes around. My suggestion still leaves plenty of opportunity available to ride every day.
I think the system would also encourage off site guests to plan their Hollywood Studios day for one of those 2 days Mike suggested while offsite guests would plan to hit up Hollywood Studios on the other 5 days. It might work pretty slick, at least until onsite guests started complaining there wasn’t enough to accommodate all resort guests, etc. But like Tom said, there’s no perfect solution for the way to handle this and would need some sort of hybrid system to make things better.
oops, meant Onsite guests would plan for those 2 days.
As for resort guests, there are 2 things that are factors in my opinion:
1) they have nothing now so this is definitely better than the existing system
2) if you look at the history from when the ride first opened On dec 5 and then saw the same data for when AP holders blackouts kicked in (so mostly just resorts guests in the park) you will see that on average there were plenty on boarding groups available even an hour after the park opened (and some days over 2 hours after) suggesting that the supply should satisfy the resort only demand (Especially this was during the busiest weeks of the year for the parks).
I miss the good old days of Fast Pass when everyone walked into the park on equal footing. I’ve stayed away from Disney since they changed the system, but RotT has forced me back.
It would be awfully nice if they were running the Skyliner early enough to accommodate these hours though. It’s particularly frustrating to have booked Riviera 7 months ago when one of the biggest attractions of that resort for me is the Skyliner. We’re planning on trying to get there at 7:00 next Sunday, bet a boarding group (hopefully actually a later one), go to Animal Kingdom for the first half of the day, then head back to DHS to ride Rise. Since I imagine they won’t run the park-to-park buses until after the parks open, at least, our plan was going to be Skyliner to DHS, then back to the hotel to grab breakfast, then bus to AK. Now all the busing is just frustrating (we’ll have the kids with us, so Uber/Lyft not real option).
We have the exact same plan for our very first day (Feb 4th). We planned to take the skyliner to DHS, get a boarding group, then take a bus from DHS to AK for rope drop. I didn’t even consider that there wouldn’t be a park to park bus yet. And we’ll also have a kid with us too. We’re not early risers, so this will be tough. Hope it’s worth it!
If you take the bus to Animal kingdom lodge or Coronado Springs, then get to the Animal Kingdom bus, you shouldn’t waste too much time. it’s a bit more effort, but should be better than most other routes as you don’t backtrack much.
Also, just remember, once your entire group scans into the park, you don’t have to be in the park to get your boarding pass, so you can leave right away and make your trek over to AK and get ready to get the boarding pass while on your way.
Thanks for the tips!
Same here, specifically booked CBR for a February trip just to be right on top of the Skyliner hub with a 5-minute hop to DHS. They need to open Skyliner earlier for those who want to rope-drop the parks, particularly DHS with the early hours.
We don’t have smart phones.., just old flip phones. What is the procedure to get boarding passes for us? Thanks for all the time you take to keep us informed. It is needed.
Will there still be extended hours in December 2020
Wondering if it would help any if a set number of boarding passes were issued each hour or every 2 hours so people didn’t crowd the park in the early morning hours…allowing a more diverse group the opportunity to ride? My family includes adult children & we had the ability to arrive early & score a boarding group but thought that might even out the crowds a bit (but probably knock out the app).
The problems I could see with that are:
1) constant refreshing of MDX to check could overburden the app.
2) DHS simply doesn’t have the physical space for this. That may not be totally true in Jan/Feb, but it definitely will be later in the spring and beyond. Discouraging some guests from even showing up in the first place (and allowing them to Park Hop over to Epcot while waiting for their boarding group) is actually pretty ideal operationally, because the park is still small and light on things to do. Not to mention, it doesn’t have nearly enough dining capacity to handle lunch and dinner rushes with a truly FULL park.
I’ve been watching for these hours changes thinking I could possibly score a new FastPass for Slinky Dog when the change occurs. I saw the change last evening, but no new FP available. This morning at 6:00 am there were FP in the 8:00 hour for TSM and Rock & Roller Coaster but nothing else. Did I miss them or does Disney not release them for all attractions? Is there a protocol for when they are released?
Thanks, I really enjoy your blog!
In my experience, it’s totally random.
Admittedly, I don’t pay super close attention to FastPass+ availability, but I do check when I see that park hours are extended, and the one almost never coincides with the other. I doubt the two teams work that closely with one another.
Are there handicapped lines for those of us in wheelchairs and scooters for rise of resistance
The queue is accessible, but you will need a boarding group to enter. While we waited, there were guests on both scooters and in wheelchairs waiting in line with us.
I’ve been checking for new SDD FPs as well. I want to move mine earlier. I keep refreshing the app and also on the computer, but I haven’t seen anything yet.