Crowds Spike, EMH Changes, and Hours Extended at DHS for Star Wars Rise of Resistance
I’m starting to feel like Bill Murray (except not as cool) in Groundhog Day, as each week brings news that Walt Disney World is changing things up and extending the park hours at Hollywood Studios (and sometimes elsewhere) due to Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. This time, they’ve added hours for January 2020, with Februrary 2020 having shifted Extra Magic Hours.
This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Crowds have spiked and demand is actually growing for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance rather than subsiding (more on this in our commentary section below). As this blockbuster attraction continues to garner rave reviews from critics and guests alike, the ride’s popularity is unlikely to wane any time in the coming days, weeks, or months.
For its part, Walt Disney World has been pretty diligent about extending park hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but is taking an incremental approach, only adding hours when it becomes clear demand is there. Hence this Groundhog Day situation. They don’t want a repeat of last fall’s Extra, Extra Magic Hours fiasco, but I think at this point it’s patently obvious that’s not going to happen…
Before delving into this update, we’ll offer the boilerplate reminder that most questions you have are likely answered by our Ride Guide & FAQ for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. We continue to update that as circumstances dictate, so please read that before asking a question in the comments below.
Irrespective of the operating hours, that ride guide and answers to frequently asked questions will ensure you a place in the virtual queue…so long as you’re willing to get up bright and early while on vacation and trudge over to Disney’s Hollywood Studios!
To recap on recent park hours extensions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, we had the belated Christmas gift of 6 am openings all of last week, with those ending at the start of January 2020.
Earlier openings continued into the new year, thanks to extended park hours for January 1-11, 2020. As a result, these dates have 7 am openings. Although it now seems “late” by comparison, park opening hours were moved to 8 am through February 1, 2020.
The latest change has moved forward the opening of Disney’s Hollywood Studios to 7 am for more dates: January 17-20, 2020 and January 24-26, 2020. The first set of extended dates coincides with the long MLK Weekend holiday, while the second set of dates is Pro Bowl Weekend, which is being held in Orlando, Florida.
Additionally, park closing has been extended from 9 pm until 10 pm through this weekend (January 4, 2020). It’s possible if not probable that park closing time will be extended for subsequent dates due to WDW Marathon Weekend and the other events/holidays listed above. (For how these and other events will impact crowds, see our January 2020 at Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar & Info post.)
Next up, we have more changes to Extra Magic Hours. Previously, Walt Disney World shifted December and January 2020 Extra Magic Hours from mornings to evenings. Now, the same thing is happening with February 2020 dates: Extra Magic Hours will now be at night on February 2, 9, 16, and 23.
It probably got lost in the holiday shuffle, but we recently published a post with Strategy for Evening Extra Magic Hours at Hollywood Studios (Post-Star Wars Rise of Resistance). Obviously I’m biased, but I think this is good advice that will hold true in the future. It’s worth a quick read/skim.
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Crowds Commentary
In our previous update (“More 2020 DHS Hours Extended for Star Wars Rise of Resistance“), we offered some commentary on the latest developments of…let’s call it the Rise (of the Resistance) & Shine Pre-Dawn Cattle Call. Many of you found that interesting and shared your own experiences (thank you!!!), so we thought we’d do the same here.
Suffice to say, Disney’s Hollywood Studios has been bonkers for the last few days. We anticipated a slight reprieve after New Year’s Eve and that did not happen. I can’t offer a definitive explanation for this, but here’s my leading theory: it’s locals. Well, locals and the holiday hangover crowd.
In the past, we’ve stressed how the boarding pass and virtual queue system for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance primarily favors tourists, at least on weekdays. This is because most locals have 9-5 jobs, and coming after work to queue up is not an option.
That’s not the case right now. Plenty of people are still off of work and, more importantly, both Orange County and Osceola County School Districts are on winter break until January 7, 2020. Many of these same locals have been on break for the last several weeks, but many (most?) of them are Annual Passholders who would’ve been blocked out…or simply busy hosting family for the holidays.
If this is accurate (and I really can’t think of a better explanation), expect things to only get worse this weekend. Most Walt Disney World Annual Passholders were blocked out until January 3, 2020. We weren’t in Disney’s Hollywood Studios this morning, but reports on social media made it sound pretty bad. With tomorrow being a weekend and dates that are unblocked and the final few days before school is back in session, you can count on Saturday and Sunday being particularly packed.
The other trend we’ve noticed lately is guests becoming more savvy when it comes to other attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. For a while, wait times throughout the park didn’t spike right away–and that’s still true, in large part.
However, gone are the mornings of doing Toy Story Land’s headliners repeatedly with no wait. You should still be able to experience the trio with minimal wait if you’re efficient about getting back there, but you won’t be able to loop Slinky Dog Dash. This shouldn’t be a huge surprise; this always happens as guest flow gets into a groove with new attractions.
For those of you heading to Walt Disney World in the very near future trying to choose the best date to do the Rise (of the Resistance) & Shine Pre-Dawn Cattle Call, our pick would be January 7 or 8, 2020. On these dates, local schools will be back in session and most of the New Year’s crowd will have gone home. Dates closer to the weekend will start seeing elevated crowds (again) because of the Walt Disney World Marathon, so those mid-week days should be the sweet spot.
Of course, this is barring downtime on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, assuming our theory is correct, and [insert additional caveats you can think of here]. As with forecasting Walt Disney World crowds, this early morning stuff with Rise of the Resistance is more art than it is science. Pack your patience, be prepared to roll with the punches, and you should be fine. It’s a great attraction that is well worth jumping through a few hoops to experience!
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
Think local schools are to blame for the early January 2020 spike in crowds for rope drop at DHS? If you’ve arrived early for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, what was your experience like? If you have an upcoming January or February 2020 trip, 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!
Flu season
We were there New Year’s Eve week
8 family members got the flu
We are still sick
What have you heard about outbreak
We did not see any warnings
Yes. We were there Jan 3-6. My husband caught a terrible case of Flu A and although I swabbed negative and wasn’t as sick as him, I have been ill all week too. Miraculously, our 3 kids haven’t come down with it. We had to leave half way through our trip and come home. Still recovering.
We went on the worst day of the year so far, 3 January and were really lucky to be the last group called that day – 94 due to so much downtime. The best tip we had for killing time was to ride the single rider queue for Smuggler’s Run. OK, you’re really unlikely to get Pilot, but we rode 4 times on loop around 9pm as a party of four, getting Engineers and Gunners. Not ideal if you have young children, but my 12 year-old was more than happy to ride alone 4 times than queue for ~2hours, ride once and maybe get Pilot. DHS was still busy, despite dejected Resistance hopefuls giving up early upon seeing the boarding calls stalling, so definitely worth considering heading straight to the left hand side of Smugglers Run entrance…
As an update I just got a notice that DHS will now officially open at 7AM through January 26. Need to set the clock even earlier now.
Looks like they’ve quietly changed more dates in January. Our DHS day, the 23rd, said 8 a.m. yesterday and, as of today, says 7a.m. My 13-year-old is really going to have to balance his love of Star Wars vs. his recent resistance to getting up early. Me–I’m of the Star Wars generation and I can sleep when I get home 🙂
My group of 9 arrived at the Hollywood Studios gate on Sunday, December 29th at 5:15 am (for 6:00 am Early Magic Hours) and got #48 in the Boarding Pass Queue for Rise of Resistance. The gates opened around 5:40 am, so we got in and found an awning for shelter from the rain as we awaited the queue to open at 6 am. Even though we did not sprint to rope-drop with everyone else, we got to the line for Millennium Falcon and waited for about 90 minutes to get on. We appreciated Disney making the line for Millennium Falcon weave a lot because it felt like we were getting closer since we were walking almost constantly. By the time our group got off Falcon (which was amazing), our Rise of Resistance number was up so we went straight there! Even though we waited in lines for hours in the pouring rain, it was an amazing morning!
Jan. 7th. Left Boardwalk at 6:45am walking to HS at a moderate pace (.75 miles from Boardwalk veranda area to HS bag check). Got into park at 7:05 and got boarding group 113 with no glitches. As of 7:50 they are boarding groups 8 – 25.
I have an upcoming Disneyland January 28th – 31st. Does anyone know if they plan on extending park hours like they have in Hollywood Studios for Rise of the Resistance?
We visited HWS on the 29th Dec – went at 6.30am on a 6am opening day and registered our boarding pass – we were group 122. We then did FP I had pre-arranged for toy story and alien saucers and afterwards managed only a 30 minute wait for slinky dog (initially when we arrived the que for that ride was 70-90 mins). It was rainy quite heavily which I think played in our favour – as it was quieter. We headed back to the hotel at 10am and came back for dinner at 6pm. We then got out boarding pass call back so ended up on the ride just before 8pm. We did a rider switch as we had our 4 year old with us so my eldest daughter actually did it twice! After the ride while the Fantasia show was on we managed slinky dog and alien saucers twice more with only 15 min wait. On our last day the 2nd Jan my husband and daughter went back early to try and do smugglers run but it was so busy they ended up coming back and we went to Epcot for opening and did soarin and the frozen ride with minimal waits.
We are going to HS on January 21. I’ve been trying to read up about the Star Wars land and the boarding passes on your blog. How will this work with everyone in my party? I arranged all of the fast passes for my boys, husband, and my parents. Will I be able to get all their boarding passes too? Can I control all of theirs? Just want to make sure I do this right so that we can hopefully enjoy the new Star Wars land and rides. Thanks for your help!
As long as everyone is at HWS and has scanned the band and done finger then you can get boarding pass when park opens (you have to be in the park) and then they say turn of WiFi for better luck!!
Yes – as long as your entire party is linked on My Disney Experience (and it sounds like it is given your previous FP booking) and everyone has scanned into the park, you will be able to add them to your boarding pass party just as with booking a FP.
We are annual passholders and we were there January 3rd for the craziness. I think the crowds are due to most families in driving distance being off school. We are from Miami and saw several people we know who also came up for the weekend. I have actually not even done smugglers run because the thought of a multi hour wait doesn’t excite me but getting up to a 7 am fast pass sounded like a great deal! So the end of the blackout period coinciding with an easy way to get on the ride without the 3 hour wait if flights of passage was too good not to take up. Also I looked for other weekends and there have been no affordable weekends until March! So I stuck with my reservation on the 3rd despite knowing the crowds would be bad! Many probably had similar experiences.
We were there Jan 3, arrived around 6:10 walking over from Boardwalk and took about 30 minutes to get through security and taps. I had read online a suggestion that not using your fingerprint to tap in could cause the system not to recognize a guest as in the park so I told my family to be sure to register their fingerprint. Three of us did, but when my mom went to do hers the CM physically blocked the finger scanner and wouldn’t let her do it! Panic ensued for us, but I am happy to report it did NOT cause a problem. We got group 58 and entered the queue around noon. Ride broke down midway through the queue, we did not worry and relaxed with chips, bananas, water and popcorn brought in at different times. After around 40 minutes the ride reopened. Partway through the experience however, the ride broke down and we had to exit. They gave us FastPass to reenter. We went back a couple hours later and at the same point in the ride we again had to abruptly exit. They gave us another FastPass to reenter, plus one for Millineum Falcon as we complained how much time we had wasted. Ride was then down for a long time. Just before we left we went back to check again and it was open around 8:30 pm,. We got to experience the whole ride!!
Another odd quirk happened to us yesterday… our 9:10 FPP for VLM converted due to the show being cancelled but through some system malfunction we received sets of 4 multi experience FPP repeatedly all day tied to that 9:10 reservation. By the end of the day we had 72 left! They did not include Toy Story Land so there were only so many we wanted to use. It did make our day otherwise much easier!
I’m not sure refreshing is the best way to go. Instead of that, we would just click back a page to the Galaxy’s Edge info page, click more info, and then see if BG was up. We had 4 phones and did 2 on wifi, 2 not. Seemed a bit random as to which got it first. We were gone by 12/29 so maybe this is outdated, but all 3 days we got a BG (for either a group of 2, 3, or 4 depending on the day) below 40. We were always within the first 50-100 people on Smugglers each time as well.
We were there on January 3rd. The My Disney Experience app was super SLOW loading at 7 am. Everyone around us was having trouble. We were able to snag group 121 around 7:03 am. Ride had LOTS of issues all day. They only got to boarding group 94. We got a notification around 8 pm we would not be able to get on the ride. Because we were in a “guaranteed” boarding group our notification told us we’d get a fast pass for the ride the next day as well as a 1 day ticket to get into Hollywood Studios.
We are local pass holders and unfortunately could not come back the next day. A trip to guest services and they offered us the fast pass for the ride for our next visit to the park.
The park was crowded from 7 am and wait times for all rides were almost immediately over 100 minutes.
Thanks for all your previous help and guidance in securing a spot on a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance. We were attending HS on a 6am opening. We walked from the Boardwalk Hotel and arrived at the park just after 5am. We learned the night prior that the boats only run a half hour prior to park opening. The lines were starting to grow as we approached the entrance. We were able to secure boarding group 30 and were called back at 8am. We did Smugglers Run at park open, but am not sure if that was a good decision as we waited about 90 minutes. We returned again to Smugglers Run at the end of the night when there was a 30 minute wait. We also did Slinky Dog and Toy Story Mania at the end of the night when wait times were minimal. I am not sure if the better plan is to get the boarding pass and then go back to hotel to sleep or to stick around the park during the day and wait in the long lines. I thought the 4:30 am wake up would test our patience as the day went along, but we accomplished quite a bit at the park that day. Thanks again for all your guidance, suggestions, help and tips to ensure a successful day at Hollywood Studios. Also, the Rise of the Resistance is a fantastic experience. I am not a Star Wars fan and to me the ride was extraordinary. I have a difficult time understanding how others can dismiss the ride. It is definitely a must do when at the park.
After the changes in December, the only thing arriving earlier gets you now is possibly getting shorter standby wait times for Smuggler’s Run or Slinky Dog. With Virtual Queue you just need to be inside the park by 7am.
We went yesterday, Jan 3. It was insanely busy. We got there at 6:15 am and it was a total mob scene to get through the gate. Around 6:30 they let us in and we walked straight toward Toy Story land, and the crowd was already backed up to the Little Mermaid show area. My family went straight to Slinky Dog At 7 when they opened the land and still waited over an hour. Ride times for popular rides were steady around 3 hours all day. At 7am theY opened the virtual queue for Star Wars, but (I assume due to network traffic), my app wouldn’t load the page correctly to let me sign up for several minutes resulting in a 160 boarding group. They must have also had issues with the ride, because around 8pm they still hadn’t moved into the 100’s boarding groups. They were to be open until 10pm so maybe they got to 125, which is what they had guaranteed? We heard from an employee that the ride keeps breaking down and having long down times? So no Star Wars for us and only 1 trip around Slinky, but we did have a reservation for light sabers and my family loved it. (Oh, there was an 80 minute line just to go in the STORE in Star Wars, so we skipped that…). Luckily, we’re here til Wednesday, Jan 8 so hoping for slower Mon-Weds.
Here on 04 Jan, virtual queue not opening until 7:00. Got in the park about 6:30, so much for the early riser advantage.