Hollywood Studios Hours: This Isn’t Working.
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance has been on a roll at Walt Disney World, getting through over 130 boarding groups each of the last 4 days, including 146 yesterday. On several dates, the ride has maxed out early, meaning it could’ve gotten through even more backup groups had they been distributed. We’re not quite ready to trumpet these as reliability gains as a long-term or lasting improvement, having made that mistake once before.
In addition to this, there’s more good news. Walt Disney World has once again extended park hours for DHS for the second half of March 2020. Disney’s Hollywood Studios now opens at 8 am and closes at 8:30 pm from the opening day of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway through March 28, 2020.
The two weeks after that and through April 19, 2020 are likely to be among the busiest of the year thanks to a combination of schools being off for spring break and the Easter holiday, plus the Star Wars runDisney weekend. As such, we’d expect those hours to likewise be extended to an 8 am opening. As good as this all sounds, it’s still not enough…
Over the past two weeks, we’ve felt the “consequences” of Disney’s Hollywood Studios moving from opening at 7 am to 8 am. As stressed in our last several posts about the boarding pass dash for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, the delayed opening time makes it easier for more guests to arrive at DHS by rope drop. Many might argue it’s great for them since arriving before 7 am is a non-starter, whereas 8 am is challenging but doable with some effort.
However, this is a double-edged sword. The later opening time incentivizes more guests to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the morning, which in turn makes scoring a boarding pass more competitive. The crowds we’ve observed for 7 am rope drop as compared to 8 am rope drop bear this out, as do statistics. More guests have been arriving at DHS before 8 am on mornings with the later opening than on mornings with the earlier opening.
Stated differently, on days when Disney’s Hollywood Studios opened at 7 am, fewer guests arrived before park opening plus the following hour leading up to 8 am, than are currently arriving by 8 am. Back in the “good ole days” of 7 am openings, it wasn’t uncommon to snag a backup boarding group at 8:30 am, often much later. Almost every day for the last two weeks or so, all boarding groups have been gone by 8:05 am. Often earlier.
In case I’m still not properly articulating this, above is a graph from thrill-data.com that shows the distribution of boarding groups since Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened. As you can see, back in December (before the distinction between primary and back-up boarding groups) when the park was quietly opening at 6:30 am or so, boarding groups were often lasting until 9 am or later. (Note the gaps between the green and red plot points on the graph before January.)
As that moved forward to official 7 am opening times and a distinction was made between primary and backup boarding groups, the guaranteed ones went quickly but backup groups were still available over an hour after park opening most days. Move forward to 8 am openings, and we’re now seeing all three plot points on top of one another, meaning all boarding groups are gone immediately.
In other words, the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance boarding pass dash has slowly morphed over time into something more closely resembling a pure lottery on some mornings. It started as a pure first-come, first-served system back in early to mid-December. Many guests who didn’t want to get up before 5 am understandably objected to this.
That approach was modified to the hybrid first-come, first-served and lottery system we saw from mid-December until mid-February. Since you could arrive an hour after rope drop and still get a boarding pass with a very high chance of riding most days, this wasn’t a lottery. It was the approach that we viewed as most equitable.
Currently, attempting to join the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue is often a lottery, albeit one with a very high success rate. With few exceptions, you must be in the park at rope drop in order to obtain a spot in the virtual queue–and luck determines whether it’s a guaranteed group or a backup one. If you have problems with My Disney Experience or need help from the Guest Experience Team, forget about riding at all.
To compound matters, if you “lose” this lottery or even don’t perform well in it, your alternatives are not great. Slinky Dog Dash and Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run are instantly posting triple-digit wait times, and crowds are massive everywhere else in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. As we’ve suggested in our Park Hopper Strategy for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, your best bet is leaving for a couple of hours and rope dropping Epcot.
This problem is not going away anytime soon. Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway opens next week and will provide Disney’s Hollywood Studios with sorely-needed capacity. However, it’ll also draw more guests to the park, and those people aren’t just going to do that one new attraction and leave.
Then there’s spring break followed by Easter. Those crowds will start materializing around March 13, 2020 and will continue through Easter. Don’t expect peak season crowds to let up until April 20, 2020 due to a combo of lingering Easter crowds and the Star Wars Rival Run Weekend.
During those peak season dates, expect all Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance boarding groups to instantly fill up at park opening most days. That’s a long time for this problem to persist.
The silver lining is that there should be a temporary reprieve for the next 10 days or so, and all backup groups are unlikely to fill up instantly in this window of time before Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway opens. After that, all bets are off.
Which brings us back to the 7 am park openings. At least for now, those appear to be the “friction” that is needed to discourage enough Walt Disney World guests from attempting to join the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue at or shortly after official park opening time at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
We’re not contending that this approach is perfect and doesn’t likewise have its own losers. Obviously it does–the whole idea is to discourage some guests from participating. Literally every single approach to allocating capacity for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is going to suffer from that problem due to a combination of high demand, low supply, and frequent breakdowns. There is no possible way to make everyone happy.
However, we contend that it’s the best system given the circumstances. It’s better for guests to be able to make the decision to opt out ahead of time, rather than putting in all of the effort of arriving early, using a park day at DHS, still potentially being denied a chance to ride, and then having to deal with the crowds & chaos. This is what has been happening with the current 8 am openings, which makes for an unpleasant day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Aside from the 7 am opening plus virtual queue, no other approach presents predictability and efficiency. If Rise of the Resistance were standby-only, the queue would fill up very early in the day and have to be cut at an undetermined time. That’s assuming there’s enough physical space to put everyone (there isn’t) and the line wouldn’t have to be dumped multiple times due to ride breakdowns (it would). Anyone thinking they could simply hop into line at the end of the day and wait it out should perish the thought.
Opening an hour earlier is also better than staying open an hour later. While we firmly believe Walt Disney World park hours should be extended considerably across the board (the current closing times are laughable given the peak crowd levels this winter), the solution here is not simply operating Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance later into the night.
Later closing times draw in more guests who want to take advantage of evening hours in the parks, which is the exact opposite of the goal here. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s the same idea as opening DHS an hour later–many guests strongly prefer staying late, which means a 10 pm closing would induce more demand/attendance.
There’s also the fact that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance still needs significant overnight maintenance. Operating the attraction from 8 am until 10 pm daily is simply not in the cards, as ideal as that might be for addressing its current capacity woes.
If anything, the other parks should have later closing times–especially Magic Kingdom–on a nightly basis. That’s tangential to the main point here, but the current crowds nonetheless necessitate it, and longer hours elsewhere at Walt Disney World could help pull guests away from Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Ultimately, the current approach for allocating ride capacity at Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is not working with Disney’s Hollywood Studios opening at 8 am. Even as it has come under considerable criticism, we have been staunch defenders of the virtual queue and boarding pass system. Throughout this, we’ve been of the perspective that any scheme will create winners and losers, and this is the most sensible for creating “lemonade out of lemons.”
However, that’s in large part true because the virtual queue previously valued the time of guests, offered a predictable payoff, and favored tourists over locals (at least on weekdays). So long as you made the effort to arrive by 7 am, you’d be rewarded with a boarding group–maybe not early in the day, but at some point. Now, you can make the effort to arrive early, do everything right, and still come up empty-handed some mornings. In the process, you’re pretty much committing to spending time in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which may not be ideal given the wait times and crowds elsewhere in the park.
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
Do you agree with our assessment that Disney’s Hollywood Studios needs to return to 7 am official opening times for Easter and spring break season? Alternatively, do you prefer the later opening time even if it means scoring a boarding group is more difficult? Do you plan on visiting Disney’s Hollywood Studios in March or April 2020? 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!
Tom, I was there on Feb. 17th, got there incredibly early by Lyft. Did all my research, practiced opening the apps, knew all the tips like turning off WiFi and when 8am hit, I could not get a bp. Finally, I got 119 while the guy next to me got one in the 60s. I was cautiously optimistic and around dinner we received notification that our bp would not be called. It was a horrible experience and I was literally shaking by the time our rope drop line started moving. Let me say, I loved Galaxy’s Edge but was underwhelmed with smuggler’s run (frankly my husband and I both think Star Tours is better) and the whole random crazy rope drop experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I definitely will not be returning anytime soon unless I am guaranteed a turn on ROTR. The thing that really bothers me is hearing people get to ride this repeatedly. I’m sorry but give others a chance. I think Disney should give first dibs to those who haven’t ridden it yet. With magic bands, etc, that should be easy to track. I got there just as early as those who just rode ROTR the day before. Ridiculous.
Interesting to see the data analysis.
Surprised that you can get that level of data from Disney.
This could have all been avoided if Disney would have waited until the ride was actually ready to open before they opened it, but I understand the only thing Disney cares about is money so we will have to deal with boarding passes until the ride stops breaking down.
I agree that a family that fails to score a boarding group for RotR can end up with a bummer of a day a Hollywood Studios. We visited HS 3 times on our last trip but only rope dropped to try for a BG 2 of those days, we decided to arrive slightly after rope drop the third day. Honestly the wait times for other attractions were so long we only did the three attractions we had fast passes for. I would have liked to switch the rest of my FP and hop to another park. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to move up our FP and we felt stuck.
Completely agree. We were there on a packed president’s day, got up early, there at 8am and got a backup group 111. My three young kids couldn’t understand why we didn’t get on the ride. They didn’t have stamina for waiting on slinky OR smugglers run which had crazy waits. Honestly it felt like we wasted the day (and a lot, a LOT of money) which was a disappointing experience for our first Disney park…
We were totally let down on 2/17 🙁 got to the park at 6:45 get in line got in at 7. Waited for the virtual queue to open at 8am. It wouldn’t load on either of our phones until 8:03 (while it was loading on other’s phones) we got boarding group 117 which never loaded… I’m pretty sure all groups were taken before 8:04. Other people next to us didnt even get into the boarding groups at all.. I dont know if the park was extra busy that day, but it was definitely super disappointing for our families and others. The guest service line was super long w people complaining. They were willing to give away an extra park tickets but couldn’t give access to the ride.
I think one thing over looked here is the lack of cast members…early opening means getting up at 3 in the morning and most people working touch points are retired…you can’t expect an 80 year old man to get to work that early but Disney does…and people are leaving that park…the young college kids can’t get to the parks early no buses…the lack of people wanting to work very early or late hours will become a big problem at some point..infact it is now…the abuse cast members get at the touch points is also a problem..people are losing their minds and taking it out on the staff..people may think there is a never ending amount of people wanting to work at Disney but that’s not true…the people who work at Hollywood can’t even go into their own park they are block out…this and Disney not even giving staff discounts like the other parks do could end up with very very long lines or early closing and late opening
I can guarantee you DHS and DL made these changes based on how the past system was unfair to disabled guests. There is no disability option for getting into the park, either you showed up and waited for hours to get let in or got a boarding group they would never realistically call. We went 3 days around 7:30 because I cannot stand outside waiting to get in that long, and our boarding group never got called. Essentially, my medical issues ruined our vacation with the entire purpose of riding ROTR.
The new system is more fair to people with disabilities, I have ridden it 3x now and don’t need to stand outside starting at 5am to get a reasonable boarding group. It sucks when you show up early and don’t get a boarding group, but literally all options suck in some way for an unreliable ride with massive demand. I really just want Disney to care about the reliability of their apps, which have so far been terrible. They don’t care if their boarding group process actually works which is frustrating.
Went on 2/16. Terribly crowded. Rope dropped and there super early. App stuck and never loaded.
Lines were crowded everywhere. We waited in a 45 minute line for slinky dog dash during emh- at 930 pm.
We made the best of the day, but it was so terribly crowded, I feel like it was a waste of money.
My family and I visited Hollywood Studios at the end of February, but we will never go back to any Disney attraction ever. We had the “opportunity” to visit the Galaxy Edge, plus 3 other attractions thanks to the Fast Passes, however, it was impossible to visit other attractions because of the 120 minutes wait. It happened the same when we visited Animal Kingdom. I can’t believe that everybody is discussing tricks to “enjoy” a few attractions. We are paying a lot of money (flight tickets, hotel, park tickets, expensive food inside the parks, etc) just to “enjoy” 3 attractions! Disney just care about bringing more people everyday, but doesn’t care about the service. We should enjoy EVERY attraction, we paid for it.
You are absolutely right, I could not agree more, it is ridiculous that wait lines are so long
For what they charge they need to reduce the number of people they allow in the parks each day
“I can’t think of another succinct term to describe the present system“….I can, it’s called a disgrace. Thousands of dollars spent on a vacation to have to deal with this panic-stricken disaster is unacceptable. The fact that this massive thread even exists is evidence of how ridiculous this is.
Why not merge both ride mitigating systems – fast pass+ and boarding groups? Let those stating onsite secure a predetermined number of boarding group passes each day ahead of time (I.e. 60 days out) and then release more at rope drop for those who can’t or don’t book a fast pass? Would alleviate some of the morning crowd crazies and once again offer some form of bonus to those staying onsite!
I think migrating the virtual queue and boarding groups to the FastPass+ system (and playing within its current on-site/off-site – 60/30 day parameters) is likely the next logical evolution of the system.
I’m curious what the guest satisfaction numbers are looking like these days at DHS. Are those who get to experience and are blown away by Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance still far outnumbering those who are frustrated and disenchanted by the whole process? (I genuinely am curious and truly don’t know–comments here are not always representative of the guest experience at large.)
In any case, I think shifting this to the FastPass+ infrastructure (but still using the boarding groups) would lead to an increase in guest satisfaction amongst higher-spending on-site guests, and that’s the demo with which WDW likely is most concerned.
Anecdotally I would imagine guest satisfaction numbers are still pretty good. When I was there the majority of people seemed to be enjoying themselves, and people who have never been to the parks before (still a good portion of visitors) probably just write the craziness off as “well, I guess this is how Disney World is.” Like you said in the article, *all* of the parks are busy now, so to the average guest I don’t think Hollywood Studios sticks out as much worse than the other 3 parks as far as crowds go.
Rhey need to do what disneyland does, no fast pass ahead if time, only can get 1 the day tou visit, then you can book others has tou use the current one
I called Disney last week about trying to book the premium rides like Avatar and smugglers run and they are all gone before my window even opens.
They also told me people that can book 60 days out because they are staying on Disney property cant even get a fast pass at the 60 day window, demand exceeds what is available.
The only fair way is no fast passes until you enter the park that morning
This post seems a little whiny. We’ve been dealing with exactly this scenario in Disneyland since Rise opened. And you know… You just deal with it. Life isn’t always fair.
Krissy, the difference is that Disneyland is a local park. The vast majority of people can try again another day. Walt Disney Wold is usually a rare trip for people. They may not get to try again, ever. They may only have one shot. So please don’t compare Disneyland to Walt Disney World (not even close to being the same thing).
I agree completely. The fact the post was labeled “we’ve been dealing with”, as in the poster has routinely dealt with it makes it incomparable. Most traveling to WDW are paying thousands and thousands of dollars and it’s all coming down to chance.
I disagree. Disneyland does have a lot of locals, but it also has a lot of visitors as well. A lot of people do make I’d to Disneyland only once. We are from Vancouver, Canada on the West coast and have been able to go to both parks. Many of our teenage kids friends though haven’t been able to go and are planning a once in a lifetime trip.
The same can be said about a lot of the things at WDW and the “may only get one chance” viewpoint. What if a ride is down for scheduled maintenance when you go? Or there is really bad weather that ruins a day? Going to WDW does cost a lot of money, but there are no guarantees your trip will go like you want it to. Accepting that going in will make you have a lot less anxiety and anger when things inevitably go poorly at some point. Just a thought.
Hey Tom,
We were at the Studios last week, on Tuesday, the 18th and Thursday, the 20th. On the 18th, we got there early enough that we were pretty close to the entrance to Toy Story Land. At precisely 8 AM, we tried to get a boarding group. I had some trouble, but my wife got 89. We rope dropped Toy Story Mania, which had no line first thing, but things got crazy busy after that. Eventually, we were able to ride ROTR at about 5 PM, which was great.
On the 20th, we tapped into the Studios at about 7:30, but immediately left and took the skyliner to Epcot. Before we entered Epcot, we did the boarding group lottery and got 88 this time. We spent about 7 hours in Epcot and then returned to the studios and rode ROTR at about 4:30. This time, one of the Kylo Ren animatronics was non functioning. It was slumped over like he’d been shot in the gut. I’m guessing they didn’t want to shut down the ride over one broken animatronic.
One question: if we’d tapped into Epcot, would we still have been able to get a boarding group for ROTR? I wasn’t sure if that would mess things up. Have you tried that?
Thanks, and by the way I completely agree that the shorter hours are ridiculous and annoying.
“One question: if we’d tapped into Epcot, would we still have been able to get a boarding group for ROTR? I wasn’t sure if that would mess things up. Have you tried that?”
I’m not sure! It’s one of the things I really want to test, but haven’t had the chance yet. I know at Disneyland, you *can* enter DCA without issue, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the same is true at WDW.
I am so thankful that you will be checking to see if you can tap into EPCOT (or any other park) after you have tapped into Hollywood Studios and get a boarding pass once inside EPCOT. That would be sooo helpful to know. I have a 8:15 a.m. pre-park opening breakfast at Garden Grill in EPCOT and am wondering if I can first tap in at Hollywood Studios as soon as they start letting guests in and then leave for EPCOT and enter into EPCOT before 8 a.m. Thank you for this article! I agree that the opening time at Hollywood Studios needs to be earlier especially moving towards end of March and Easter Spring break.
I am pretty sure you have to be I’m the park they are geotagging.
Ok, I’m confused. I thought you had to be within HS gates to enter a boarding group. As in reading this, am I to understand that as long as you tap your band, you can then leave and try for a boarding group?
If you go into dca, you can’t try to get a boarding pass for rotr. You have to check into Disneyland
For March 3rd-If we aren’t interested in ROTR and have fast passes beginning at 1pm in HS, would you recommend spending the morning at another park before heading over? We have little kids and I’m concerned about crowd levels at rope drop there and Super long ride lines. Thanks!
Yes, absolutely. Rope drop Epcot and take the Skyliner to DHS for the afternoon and evening.
Your analysis of that nice red and green graph put 100% of the blame for the passes going so fast on the switch from 7 to 8 am and didn’t even acknowledge the fact that the dates where the passes went almost immediately were President’s Day weekend, Prince Half-Marathon Weekend, and the week in between the two. All of the parks were far busier from the stretch of 2/14 to 2/23 than they were in preceding weeks. There would have been far more demand for boarding passes either way, regardless of what time the gate opened. This is an interesting article, but the fact that you compared crowds on a holiday weekend or a race weekend to crowds in mid-January and didn’t even mention the natural difference in attendance between those two times really undermines the point you’re trying to make.
The earlier sets of dates in that same graph include the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, which are busier than the week of Presidents’ Day.
Why does Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance still need significant overnight maintenance? What type of maintenance do they have to do nightly? Why would they design a ride that couldn’t be open from 7am to midnight? I didn’t feel like it was that technologically advanced…how long has Pooh’s Hunny Hunt been around at Tokyo Disneyland? It’s another trackless ride with multiple rooms just no minor drops.
For the boarding groups, what are your thoughts on having a group of boarding groups assigned at opening and then another lottery after 1pm? That might help with some of the crowds. Maybe even shut the ride down mid-day to do whatever maintenance is needed and start it back up with the afternoon groups.
I don’t think they designed the ride to need overnight maintenance. It’s just new rides often need a ton of maintenance in the beginning because imagineers don’t always foresee and/or can’t test for what sort of problems will come when the rides are exposed to the strain of thousands of people riding them every day. If I remember correctly, Frozen Ever After has a ton of issues in the first six months it was open despite the fact that the ride system remained pretty much unchanged from when it operated as Maelstrom. So did all of the major rides at Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Things usually get better over time, but it’s not unusual for the first 6-12 months of a ride’s life to be bumpy.
Do you know what type of maintenance this ride requires? It seems like they would have worked out all of the kinks in testing.
Also, do you know how long it takes to reboot the system? A guy in guest relations said it takes three hours to reboot and that the main cause of the ride breaking is because of guests…not the ride itself. Have you heard of what guests are doing to break the ride? Seems like a lame excuse for me not being able to ride it last week after trying three times…and every time I went back it was broken! So frustrating!
Marc, if I had to guess, it would be guests dropping stuff in the trackless part (hats, glasses, phones, etc) and tripping the safety sensors and shutting down the ride. Before it could be restarted, it’s likely that cast members would have to walk the entirety of the track to make sure it’s clear, AND reset the safety systems. I have been on both Spaceship Earth and Test Track when this has happened.
They should try a Six Flags system where they require you to put everything in a locker to ride the ride and see if that helps with downtime. Or just say no phones/cameras on the ride like Tokyo Disney does…they stopped Dumbo one time because I was taking pics of my sister while riding. I had no idea what the CM was saying on the speaker and then they stopped the ride. Whoops! The CM came to me, crossed her arms and said “no photo!” Double whoops! I felt bad for making them stop the ride! 🙁
Wow. Seems like Disney is the victim of their own success. Demand for ROTR must be exceeding their expectations, but now there’s the risk of bad publicity. It seemed in the past that you could get on any ride you wanted if you arrived early and got your fast pass for your preferred ride if you went straight to the kiosk at opening (even it if it did turn out later in the day). Now, you have to be a smart phone quick clicker and hoping your signal gets processed by the server, and it really is an element of luck. Couldn’t they have gone with a reservation system? Basically, Disney would make x amount of reservations for a day available up to 30 days in advance. You link your reservation to a park ticket number. You put down a refundable $10 deposit per person. For that date (say March 24), they make x + 10% available (counting on a certain number of cancellations). You can cancel your reservation at no cost up to 48 hours beforehand. If you are in the 10%, you are told that you are the equivalent of flying “standby” i.e. will get in if enough people cancel in advance. If you cancel your reservation within 48 hours, you instead get a $10 Disney park credit. Cancelled reservations go for people who put themselves on a wait list for that day. If you are no show on the March 24 date, you lose your reservation. How you get assigned your boarding group is basically first come first serve for those with reservations. The second your pass is scanned showing you have arrived at the park, you then get your boarding group. You would be able to group your tickets for a group like you do now by linking your tickets together. Once the last person in the group scans in, the boarding pass is assigned. Your reservation fee is either automatically refunded, or made into a $15 park credit (incentive). Under this system, first come gets the best time. If you are in the x number of guaranteed spots, no matter what time you arrive (but probably given a limit of must check in maximum 2 hours post park opening), you will get a boarding group. Last people to arrive would find themselves on a later boarding group. Those who arrive after two hours are told they are on standby and may or may not get a BG. So if ROTR is moving smoothly that day, Disney has a list of standby riders already checked into the park. If ROTR runs slowly, as long as they set x at their 90% typical ridership capacity based on reliability, they shouldn’t have disappointed people not getting an opportunity. Anyway, this is just off the top of my head, I”m sure there are flaws, or could be better refined, but it just seems to take the mad dash to the gates at opening time and the server overload to a minimum by stretching it out. The no-shows are minimized because after two hours of not showing up, they lost their deposit and the spots open up to anyone else in the park in the virtual wait list.
Exceeded their expectations? I think it is more that they never thought about it until it was too late to really do something about it (like what you’ve suggested) and so they are operationally trying to leverage what they can to make it work. Someone probably said “let’s do it this way, we can just spend the $$$ to add more WiFi capacity instead of launching a whole new project”. Clearly what is going on now was never meant to be long term….but as the seasons change it does seem that this is the new normal. Here’s hoping behind the scenes they are actually working on a “boarding pass” IT project that will mitigate the current cluge.
Would you think a group of 7 people will have a harder time getting a board pass than a group of 3 people? Traveling with family and need to decide how we want to try and get in this ride. We’d like to go all together, but don’t want to ruin all our chances with a giant group.
Thanks for your opinion.
Heather, I can’t imagine a group of 7 would have trouble based purely on group size, given that something like 15,000 probably ride it everyday. But I’m not gonna answer definitively when I don’t really know (anyone outside of Disney would just be guessing too).
Here’s what I do know. If everybody on your list is in the park and trying to ride, then you’ll have the very simple step of clicking “Select All” when you reach that step of the boarding group process. If you had to specifically scroll down to select only 3 exact people out of 7 on your overall list, well, that takes a little extra time. More time passing theoretically equals a lower boarding group.
Speaking of those steps, practice them. Often. From home, at park open time. Seeing, learning and knowing the steps makes it much easier to go through them under stress on the actual day you’re there. Gives you an advantage. This isn’t a lottery (despite that word getting thrown around) — doing it faster gives you an edge, and practicing helps you do it faster!
We’re a group of six and have gotten boarding passes multiple times. As low as 13. We’re on the other coast but I believe the process is the same.
Disney clearly needs to build a new park. There are so many people, and not enough new attractions.
I think that these rides if impossible to ride, than money should be given to people who bought tickets . This is a disgrace that Disney didn’t plan this out . They are charging a lot of money to the public and if they can’t produce they should make it right with the customers who stood in line for hours to ride this ride. Say for instance a meal paid in full at some of the best rated restaurants on the Disney campus to all those who couldn’t ride during their stay at Disney World.
1. I preferred the thought of an 8:00 park open for HS as our trip approached, knowing we’d have late nights before each of the 2 times we went to HS. I’m guessing many families with kids feel the same, especially when staying on property like we were. That said, we intended to take on-site transport both mornings, and for various reasons ended up taking Uber anyway, so an hour of extra sleep was all we got out of the deal. Ensuring a higher probability of getting a boarding group would have been a good tradeoff for the sleep.
2. Everyone calling it a “lottery” needs to stop. Just because the groups go fast and even it has the *appearance* of something close to a lottery, that specific terminology is not accurate, and it does a disservice to people who are trying to make plans and EDUCATED decisions about whether it’s worth it to even TRY getting a boarding group.
I’ll stop short of saying this is fact (since I obviously don’t know for sure), but the anecdotal evidence online suggest that people who are confident in their personal system for working the app sure seem to get the results to back up their beliefs. I practiced using the app from home at park open time for weeks, and got groups in the 30s both times we went (and that’s even without doing the steps as optimally as I had planned; sort of played it safe). I was confident the whole time since I knew what I was doing. I never felt like the situation was being left up to chance… and our results validated that, in my mind.
Sure, an app can crash or WiFi can lag, etc. But barring those types of factors, people CAN exert a realistic level of control over this boarding group process and give themselves an actual advantage — especially if they’re willing to put in the effort and preparation. That is not a lottery. And going further to state “pure lottery” in this article borders on flat-out disinformation.
Well Mike, I can tell you for “a fact” that “Educated and well planned” guests (your words) are subject to a lottery style issuance of boarding passes. Although I don’t need to, I will give you a fine example. 4 parties standing near each other, all executing Tom’s suggested method, score groups 17, 63, 92. and 127 all within a fraction of a second. Due to the inconsistency of reliability of the ride, what are the chances everyone rides that day. How would you assign probability to these 4 equal groups? Just curious.
There’s a reason I add all sorts of different qualifiers in my various comments — because I really don’t KNOW what’s going on, just like you don’t. Based on other people’s experiences I’ve read about (and the 2 — and only 2 — direct experiences I’ve personally had), I don’t think it’s a lottery. I think being faster on the trigger helps. And there are tons of people who agree, most of whom seem to have way more evidence than I do to draw on.
Is it possible I’m drawing the wrong conclusions? Yes.
Is it possible, given how lightning fast the groups go within a minute (AND that people are generally hyper-stressed during that minute) that the 4 parties you describe didn’t really get them within a “fraction” of a second like they may have perceived? Yes.
Is it possible that Disney is somehow gaming the system, so that speed is only one of many factors? Yes!
I see your point, but I’d say I’m similarly adding a lot of qualifiers around the word “lottery” (and using it sparingly). In the context and totality of the article, I think most people will understand what I mean.
I can’t think of another succinct term to describe the present system, where you can attempt to obtain a boarding pass at 8 am and walk away empty-handed. Can you?
Tom, I need your insight here ….. you said “Operating the attraction from 8 am until 10 pm daily is simply not in the cards”. I live in So Cal and go to Disneyland on a regular basis. While I was fortunate to ride ROTR once I do monitor the app regularly. Here on the west coast our operating hours are much longer but regardless of when the park closes ROTR does not operate during the last 2 hours and depending on reliability opens 1 to 2 hours late. They could issue a lot more back up boarding passes to fit in 3 hours and since they are not guaranteed anyway, why are they not doing so. I know the ride needs overnight maintenance but with the current system they are getting 12+ hours per day. Also, this lottery system, while I suppose is the best method for now, has ruined the morning park experience by bring in a lot more early crowds. And of top of it all, when they do the extra cost after hours “Star Wars” event, the ride will not be available.