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!
I find it fascinating that nowhere in this article does the author comment on how these opening times impact Disney cast members. I read through twice to be sure, and the concern of this entire piece is aimed at guest friendliness. There is no mention of cast members needing to be there prior to park open, so for every guest who takes one day out of their vacation to get up for a 7am park open, there is an entire parks worth of cast members getting up even earlier for inconsistent hours and throwing off their sleep schedule, not as a one time deal like you, but this is how they live their lives. I don’t care how much you want to ride the ride or how much you spent to visit, people are impacted by your complaining and no one fights for them, including the union who does not control park hours. These types of articles are why corporations like Disney continue to push their people into unhealthy situations and lifestyles they can’t escape from.
Give me a Break! Do you ever work ANYWHERE? Like for example a hospital or an airline? There is no difference in the hours of a day except the employee could get a higher pay for shift differential. There are no weekends, there are no holidays. And the employee knows this so it is up ti the employee ti take the job or look for a 9-5 weekdays.
hospitals and the like do not pay minimum wage, so that’s a poor comparison. there is a huge differences between the treatment in hospitality industry and jobs in medicine/law enforcement. that’s a ludicrous comparison to make by nature of the positions. people train for years to be an officer or a nurse because they want to help people. people work in hospitality because its considered entry level in most branches and they need a paycheck.
Thank you. What an appropriate response. I know many cast members that would love the extra hours!!!!!!!!
Camryn, you are in a dream world if you don’t think hospitals pay minimum wage. Ever heard of nursing techs or CNA’s? They are the ones doing the night shift a lot of the time.
well then cccrys, you clearly know best, don’t let me or my 500,000+ colleagues in hospitality in the Orlando area stop you; please come take these 2 AM shifts, they’re all yours my friend, enjoy.
Have you literally ever worked in a service job?
I’m going to assume no because you believe it’s simple to find a job that is 9-5. Majority of jobs don’t have these hours, if they did you wouldn’t be able to go to anywhere on the weekends or holidays.
The cast members just want to be treated with fairly. This expectation that cast members need to be civil servants is completely ridiculous. If you can’t accept the fact that cast members want some basic rights and possibly Disney is trying to give them some with this system, then you can stay home and complain about it from your computer.
This system isn’t changing anytime soon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A lot of people are part time so they can phone in and take time off which a lot do…it’s a big reason early hours will not be that common for long periods of time..lack of staff….Disney are begging people to take longer hours and more days… but no one wants early mornings….a downfall to having retired people and part time staff is Disney have only a little control on how many hours or days you work..older workers pick only 2 days ..then they can take more if they wish……last year they mucked up took on too many college kids giving part time staff no work for months…so people moved on to places like universal that give better benefits..and no early mornings…I have seen Disney guests act mental at the gate I don’t know how the staff keep their cool…one mad thing is giving 80 year old staff 4am starts..but that’s how low on staff they are..
We were at HS over the holidays and got to ride the ride, but getting there around 6am was challenging and we were all exhausted all day. It took some of the joy out of getting to enjoy the park and new ride. It is hard to be excited when you are so tired.
If they can get the ride to work reliably all day then I think they could convert to a pure fast pass system. No standby, just all fast passes. Some tickets go at 60 days for those on property, some 30 days, and some day-of, but without needing to be in the park. The problem right now is the frequent down time. Calling the next boarding group can be delayed, but that wouldn’t work for fast passes. Hopefully the ride continues to improve its up time and they can switch over. Then it is still a lottery, but from the comfort of your own home, just like every fast pass.
As a DVC member, we plan our Disney trips often. We were lucky enough to go twice last year. My husband and I went in September and then our big family trip during New Years. In September Hollywood was still offering 6am to 9am extra, extra hours and we took advantage of that. We were in the park for 5:45am, followed the crowd to the Millennium Falcon and was off the ride by 6:45am. We managed to ride 4 more rides that morning and was out of the park by 8:50am.
During New Years, we kept our younger 2 out of school the Monday after, hoping to have a better chance for Rise of the Resistance. We got to the park for 6:30am with massive crowds. With no finger scans, we made it through by 6:45am. I had the app up and running, refreshing often before 7am. I did not use park wifi, I was on my cell service. At 6:59am, my finger hovered over the boarding group button, all while walking. Right at 7am, the button illuminated and I pressed it. Boarding group 23!!! I stopped walking because I was crying!! I’m a huge Star Wars fan and so is my youngest son. Our group was called around 8:45am and we went straight to the ride, even though it gave us an hour and a half to return. Best. Ride. Ever.
I think one-day Park hoppers should be offered to anyone that doesn’t snag a primary boarding pass. It doesn’t solve the problem but would allow very disappointed guests to leave an overcrowded park with limited options and slightly ease the crowds
Good idea or even offer to anyone who enters HWS currently because it sounds like its completely overburdened and slammed with crowds.
I agree my family from South America made a big sacrifice to take the kids surely a one time in their life experience due to the enormous cost of the airfares etc looking forward to the new Star Wars , they were not able to ride the new Star Wars attraction and went back with the kids crying. Money hungry Disney will never care.
I must admit I am dreading trying to get on this ride. I think whatever system they use someone will always lose but they could do a combination of methods which would help. I have younger children with me that to get to the park for 6 is hard. But if you’ve been in the park for an hour why should you have the same chance as getting on the ride as someone who has been in the park for 10 minutes. And also, I hate the fact that you could try so much to get on the ride and you still may not.
I do believe you should have an advantage of getting on the ride if you are staying on site but don’t feel that non Disney residents don’t have a chance. I personally think they should maybe put out a % of fast passes on 60 days, a % at 30 days and then a final % using boarding passes on the day. And for the fast passes only be able to book one for the duration of the holiday. There will still be losers but Disney residents have a higher chance but there is still a real chance for non residents to snag a fast pass. Just seems to make so much more sense then the current system
I really like your thought process here. It gives a good chance for people staying on property to get a FP, but does not leave out locals or people staying off property. And I love your idea of only being allowed on FP per visit as that gives more people an opportunity to get to ride. Anyone who got a FP and wants to ride again during their visit and try to get one of the BG released on the day.
What gets me is how people would balk if they charged for Boarding Group passes but don’t seem to realize the consequences of the lottery on one’s decision for tickets–thus involving money. My family always gets Park Hoppers, so it wasn’t an issue for us, but people who never get PH might find that they ~need it because otherwise, you are stuck at DHS. You have to spend one of your ticket days on entering DHS for the chance to enter the lottery. If you get a BG, you’re now stuck in an overcrowded park with long waits all morning. If you don’t get a BG (or get a high backup group on a rough day for operating RotR), again you’re stuck at DHS with the crowds, but without getting to ride the premier attraction and now with the added pressure of having to decide whether to spend another one of your ticket days at DHS to try again. In other words, a lot of people will spend the extra money for PHs to give themselves flexibility and more choices to cope with the lottery. But somehow charging directly for RotR is a non-starter.
Except those who typically don’t get park hopper’s could “pay” to better their chances. You simply buy park hoppers, and if you want to ride it show up there in the morning on every day you are there and try to get a boarding group.
Having rode this ride I can it is totally worth the hassle. And that included the 30 min wait in while the standby line (which they try to keep at 1 hour) didnt move, and the ride breaking down while on it. I don’t think they made it to the backup groups on the day I rode, and despite have group 28 we didn’t ride until 4pm.
The current system isn’t perfect, but it probably more of trying to managing angry guests who waited in a three hour+ standby line only to have it break down and not get to ride than anything else. We will back in March so we will see how it goes with slightly bigger crowds.
When did you visit Jeff? If it was anytime in January, the game has changed significantly since then. The crowds have been completely insane. In the last 3 weeks, bgs, backup or otherwise, have been gone in 2 minutes, literally. And with the issues of the app or wifi not working, it has become an even bigger issue. I wouldn’t want to be a cast member right now. And you’re right about March. Disney is expecting huge crowds and the process will be much worse.
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I’m glad I’m a local PH. Lol.
Good point re: PH tickets. When we visited last April, PH’s would’ve cost 3 of us x 7 days = $1260! Defin. not worth it for us. (one can’t have only 1 day PH — either all days are, or none are)
Another solution could be to follow Disneyland’s example and go to “Max Pass” system, for addtl $20/person per day. For us that would’ve been extra $420. Still pricey, but more doable! I realize RotR isn’t yet on FP+ system, but paying addtl charge to INSURE one gets on RotR seems like only feasible way forward. Esp. as DHS is opening later. Talk about a cattle call…
According to several crowd calendars, next week (3/2-3/6) shows low to moderate crowds. Especially in the first part of the week. It seems to me that the information so far is with high crowds. Do you think the lower crowd volume will affect guests ability to secure a spot? Thank you.
If that is correct, it would help. I highly HIGHLY doubt it will be lower though. Disney has intentionally managed their systems to keep the parks busy and boy has it worked! I’m local and I have never seen such crowds. They are comparable with the holiday season.
Instead of giving some folks the option to pay extra for a boarding pass, they chose to raise the gate price for everyone. Disney knows the value their rides have on the guest experience. They go to the effort to publish when certain attractions aren’t running (which does help to lessen disappointment for folks who perhaps were planning a trip based on that ride). Unscheduled downtime is always a reality, but they’ve changed the game here and created a stressful experience for basically everyone showing up at rope drop. The technology is out there that this is NOT necessary. There is already an added tax to folks who WANT to experience this ride on their vacation as they really have no choice but to invest in Parkhoppers (instead of lesser 1 park/day options). I’m on a 7 day vacation… and it looks like the strategy is to go to DHS every morning until I get lucky enough to get a pass. Hopefully it happens in the first couple of days… but there is a chance that it won’t.
On the day they made it through all the boarding groups, couldn’t they have opened more up?
I’m not sure that has ever happened. They issue backup boarding groups but I don’t believe they’ve ever gotten through them all.
Disney park guests should not have to get to the park before opening just to get access to a ride, maybe…time to end boarding groups, go to Fast Pass + and a standby line. Any guest or family should have access to the ride on the day they visit Hollywood Studios, even if that means waiting in a line for several hours. No access to the ride 10-minutes after the park opens is wrong.
I’d like to see FP also.
To have to get to the park for a lottery is totally inconsiderate of Disney, considering what people are paying to go there.
Especially for those staying on property. They are paying a real premium and are getting nothing for their money… from an attraction standpoint.
Disney builds these elaborate “lands,” and puts 2, that’s two attractions in there. That’s ridiculous. But it seems to be their m.o. Look at the new Fantasyland, Circus, etc.
I really think they are doing this to prep guests for a digital form of the old E-Ticket book. It’s getting so bad that people will be begging to pay to ride!!!
I agree, the real problem is they are allowing way too many people in the park. You pay for a ticket, you should have access to all rides. If not, tickets should be discounted.
I do think they are pushing the limits on number of guests but it’s more complicated than that. If all of the guests dispersed evenly, the crowds wouldn’t be as bad. But crowds hit bigger ticket rides. If you wanted to do (sorry Muppets) Muppets 4d, you could probably walk on most times during the day.
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The trick Disney has to figure out is how to give potential access to all guests, of all ages and abilities. That’s very difficult.
Unfortunately, standby is impossible. Disney can’t have people waiting in line for 10 hours for a ride. I think a combination of x amount for FPs (a percentage for resort stayers and a percentage for non-resort / PHers) and x amount for bgs could work though.
Difficult but not impossible for Disney of all companies to figure it out. They’ve been doing this a very long time and have basically written the book on crowd control. They will progressively get better with this one, just like they have in the past with other experiences. However, what I think is irksome with THIS particular use case is that WDW, unlike DL (or any other parks) has a trove of data on their guests. They spent over a $1bil on the system to know their guests. My Disney Experience isn’t a freshman system any more (but that’s another debate). Folks have been filling out their profiles, tying tickets to hotel stays, dining reservations, etc… for years now. The fact that they did NOT leverage the data to engineer a solution up front is the failure here. Boarding groups are just fastpasses without a time assigned… and Disney has done fastpasses for decades now. They could have done this one better than asking folks to wake up early, haul over to a park for an attempt at a pass. They could have used (and still could use) MDE with a tighter window on reservations — that would be more humane and less staff intensive than what they are currently doing. But reality is Tech projects take time and money. They knew that ROTR would be a huge draw… that isn’t a surprise to them. I suspect budgets got in the way and crowd control was an area that was cut on this one.
All the parks need longer hours. 7-12. All of them.
And as much as it kills me to say this because it’s already nearly out of my price range, they need to raise the prices. Lots of locals have the silver pass and it clogs the park up (I’m a local, I have friends that can afford the higher tier but would be too cheap to buy it).
They also need to charge for babies. People will release quickly how idiotic it is to bring a baby and clog up the park in the process if they had to buy a ticket for said baby. They’d wait to come when their kids are older.
Staff…people may think there is a never ending amount of people who want to work at Disney..but the cost of living around here means you just can’t afford a home ..and there is so much traffic nowadays another problem is getting too work…27 is a large car park a lot of the day …I agree about paying for kids…to many people try to get their 5 years in for free…
Here’s an idea. How about Disney let us make RoTR boarding passes the day before? Say, you must be in the park on the day before and at 6:00pm they release the passes for the next day. Then, if you don’t get one, you don’t have to go to DHS at all. Or, they could release half the passes the day before and the other half the next morning as they do now. I don’t know, but I agree that something needs to be done to help resolve this situation.
This is the best suggestion I’ve seen yet. Allows people to plan their day and will curb some of the frustrations, although not all.
My family followed your advice posted on the site for our visit today; closed out the app beforehand and reopened with 30 seconds to go and it worked perfectly (group 11). But while we were ecstatic I couldn’t help feel horrible for the others around us who you could tell right away that they didn’t have things work out quite so well through no fault of their own. I agree with the 7 AM approach. It’s the only one that seems to make sense at the moment. And I could not believe how crowded it was, with the exception of Muppets 3D I don’t think we saw a single stand-by wait any less than 40 minutes, If we hadn’t got a boarding group and then had to deal with that level of crowding because the rest of the park doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle the level of interest in Star Wars it would have ruined the whole day and put a damper on the entire vacation.
My husband and I were there this weekend for the Princess races and were expecting high crowds. We had no illusions that we would get to ride Rise and we were okay with that. We had my 2 young nieces join us and planned to walk through Batuu and spend some time in Toy Story Land. Every ride in the park had a minimum of 60 minute wait. It was their first visit so they didn’t really know what they were missing. The only experience we were able to do was Muppet 3D.(which they loved) We hopped the skyliner over to Epcot and had a fantastic rest of the day. I realize it was a school vacation week and race weekend, but from this article HS is letting a lot of people down. Reminds me of Avatar, but I know if I don’t snag a FP, I just skip it. A lot of families don’t have the luxury of being DVC members who visit yearly. I worry what Mickey’s new ride will do to park attendance. I don’t know if there’s a better solution but I don’t know how much time I’ll be dedicating to HS when I return in December.
Wow. I completely agree that this is a problem, but I’ve been watching the news and I think I know why Hollywood Studios can’t extend their hours too much right now. Due to Coronavirus, both Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland have been shut down for weeks. I’m not an accountant, but I’m sure that’s a significant loss of revenue. Maybe all Disney parks have some level of cutback going on. I won’t pretend to understand business, but I do understand that you have to spend money to make money. It’s possible that Disney spent a lot on projects and attractions with the expectation that everything would be immediately successful. I doubt anyone expected Coronavirus, which is affecting more than just travel and tourism now.
Wendy, I’m not sure what your point is? Are you suggesting WDW depends on revenues from Shanghai & Hong Kong parks to pay HS employees to open park 1 hr earlier? (7 a.m. like it used to be, instead of 8 a.m. as it is now) While money is fungible, I’d guess each park location has its own financials. And there’s no coronavirus in FL (yet, anyway).
Also, while Disney does spends tons on projects & attractions, they KNOW everything won’t be immediately perfect. Even with best Imagineering & testing, complex new rides in particular break down — a lot. So their decision to make RotR a free-for-all “lottery” is inexplicable, and is actually defeating their purpose. Unless making guests especially unhappy is the goal… they seem to be achieving that!
I’m hopeful the more we write about this, the faster it will be corrected.
We just finished our visit to WDW. We were at HS at 6:15 am, in th e park at 7 when they dropped the rope, and waiting in the Rockin Roller Coaster line at 8 when the RoR queue opened. The energy around us was insane as folks cheered when they got into a group or nervously tapped their phones hoping to get in. We got in group 47. We had to adjust our other fast passes and reservations, but here is the key..
IT WAS WORTH IT.
The ride is brilliantly done- from the moment you step into the queue until the whole experience ends, you are fully immersed in the world. And it is amazing. I cried after it was over.
Given the choice to go through all of it again? I’d do it in a second!!
They wont make you your chance to ride over a reservation.
We got boarding group 28 a few weeks back. Turns out group 28 ended up getting called in the afternoon, and we had an hour to our reservation. Had no time to wait in the hour in line for the ride, do the 20 min experience, and make our reservation. CM said do go to our reservation and they would let use ride if we missed our window. They weren’t going to make us pay to lose the reservation or lose our chance to ride.
When ended up going to the restaurant 25 mins early and getting in and out with about 15 mins to go.
I’m a runner and my husband is a star wars nut. We are parents to two teenagers who struggle to wake up by 10 a.m. So I’ve decided that my game plan is to get myself over to hollywood studios for rope drop, do the whole rise of the resistance thing on the app for myself only, immediately leave the park and go for a run around the Boardwalk which is something I’ve always wanted to do, return to our hotel, meet up with the rest of my family and casually head over to Hollywood studios early afternoon unless i get a low boarding group. Kids get a lazy morning (something they crave on vacation b/c I rarely let them do it), I get a run in and my husband can take my magic band and go on the ride since he’s the one that really cares about it. Winning all around 🙂 And this strategy is weird enough that I suspect it won’t be stolen or duplicated 😉
They will probably not allow him the ride on with your magicband instead of his, guest information is visible to the cast members when the band is scanned when you check on for your boarding group. Heads up.
That approach actually worked just fine for my friend last week. She and her husband got in a group, but her brother-in-law’s family (standing right next to her) did not. She gave her magic band to her nephew and he rode using her magic band without a peep of objection from a cast member.
I have seen the question of dining reservations come up many times. Our boarding group got called at the same time as our New Year’s Eve dining reservation at the yachtsman. We called the restaurant and they were very understanding and waived the cancellation fee. Your Concierge can help with that as well. Also we were a little late showing up for our window because of an activity reservation and the cast members had no problem letting us get in line late. If you get called while at a meal, just take your receipt that has a time stamp and show it to the cast members at the entrance. Hope that helps!
We were there on 2/16 and this exact scenario happened, we were there at 6:45am. Waited for the queue to open at 8. In the crowd around us in line for slinky dog, the family to our left got group 21, the family to our right got group 33, and we got group 94! All that happened within about 3 seconds! There’s no way you can convince me that it’s first come first served. It’s now a random lottery that has no advantage to getting to the park early. Btw, the ride only made it to group 62 that day. Extremely frustrating!
The current method gives you the safest way of getting on the ride for being in a wheelchair. There is no rush to get to a ride queue you just have to be in the park. You can find a lot crowd spot to get a boarding group.
I’m on the West coast but I totally agree. Ours seems like a lottery every day, and now our parks are a lot more crowded in the early ours because 8am sounds reasonable to so many. It’s very frustrating. It was so difficult to get our pass for the bed 2 preview but it doesn’t seem like a strong second option to have a. Of reservation-only, but it seems like there has to be some sort of solution. Seems like early entry days are the perfect compromise between first-come-first-serve and what it is now.
You talk about making the system as equitable as possible, and though this is going to sound horribly snobbish it needs to be said – it shouldn’t be equitable. Priority should be given to those staying on property. We’re going to be there April 13-23 (I stupidly thought with Easter being so late that the Spring Break crowds would be cleared out after.) We’re staying at the Grand Floridian. That’s 10 nights at the most expensive hotel on property with 10 day park hopper tickets. In my opinion that should give us a level of priority.
I’m also in a power wheelchair. The kind of crowd crush involved with the boarding group scramble can be dangerous for me. I’ve had oblivious people actually trip right over me and fall on top of me. So, even though we’re spending a large amount of money on this trip, we’ve already had to give up on getting to ride RotR. To me that’s far from fair or right.
That is an incredibly snobby sentient, actually, and the reason why the Disney World experience is turning the way that it is. Hard ticket events, paid concierge fast passes, dessert parties everywhere, etc,. Those that think just because they pay more for certain experiences thinking they deserve more is what is ruining the “magic” from the WDW experience – That’s fine if you pay for those experiences, but it’s also unleashing an unfathomable level of entitlement in guests now . YOU made the choice to stay at the Grand Floridian and YOU alone. That is a personal choice. Why should someone staying at a Value Resort have any less of a magical experience because they chose Value? When I stay at a Deluxe it’s because I’m choosing to pay more for things that matter to me. Certain services, selection of more dining options, theming, etc. But I don’t think that entitles me to anything else park related wise. We all pay the same price for park tickets, we all get the same experience. That’s how it should be. Anything else we choose to spend on experience wise is a personal matter but doesn’t entitle you to anything else.
If you’ll notice I said anyone staying on property should get priority, nothing about resort tier.
Excuse me but as a resort guest you ALREADY get preference over us lowly Orlando locals because Disney gives you access to fast passes *60 DAYS* before while we can only plan 30 days in advance. So we’re left with your scraps. EVERYONE who pays for a Disney ticket is entitled to ride the ride, including those of us with annual passes.
Your paying for an expensive hotel is a choice and gives you several perks at the parks, but it doesn’t mean you should have instant access to this ride. As a local, that elitist attitude is offensive, we have to deal with tourists clogging up our roads year round… we deserve the same opportunity to have fun at the parks.
Except locals already have far more opportunity to visit the parks. Your park tickets cost less as a Florida resident. You don’t have to pay for lodging. That’s the perk of being a local.
Those of us who live out of state or even the country have none of that. Many will only be able to visit once every few years. Some only once in their life. The costs are far more. The planning has to be done far in advance. That’s why I feel our perk should be priority for this sort of stuff. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
With all due respect, staying in the park already has perks. We have stayed at Caribbean Beach twice. We took advantage of the fast passes & booked our dining as soon as we could. This time we are staying at a Disney Good Neighbor Hotel. Our Fast Passes can’t be booked until 30 days out. This was my choice to save over $900. I agree there needs to be a better system in place, but it certainly shouldn’t be priority to those staying on property. Hopefully it gets better by our trip in July.
Yes, and I’m suggesting RotR should work the same as fast pass regarding priority.
I agree that Disney Resort guests should get automatic fast passes. We were there last week. There were no lines on the fast pass Lane but we ended up waiting almost 2 hours in the stand by Lane for pirates of the Caribbean. The posted wait time was 50 minutes. They would take 4 or 5 standby people at a time then 30+ FP people, leaving no FP line at all. They need to either increase the number of FPs, automatically FP resort guests, or do away with the FP system altogether. It’s broken.
One very interesting fact is that if you try to get a boarding pass, there is the distinct possibility that you could be on the ride that evening at say 6.00pm.
This means that on the day that you intend to go to Hollywood Studios you can’t make an evening dining reservation because you have no idea what time you might score a boarding pass.
In the perfect world you get a boarding pass and you go on the ride at 2.00pm and you have a dining reservation for 6pm. That’s the perfect world but it usually doesn’t work out that way.
Rise of the Resistance completely disrupts any future planning you want to make. It’s also hard on the rest of the family. Say 3 out of 7 family members get to HS at 7.00am and get a 6.00pm boarding pass and you already have pre-booked an evening dining reservation for 7 people at 6.45pm then what do you do???????????????
It appears that Disney has become too successful in it’s own right!!!!
I think every 30 min or hour they should release x# of boarding passes. They know by now how many they can get through in 60 minutes. So they can keep the line full but moving and allow for more people to get passes. We were there around opening of ROR and no wY in hell I’m getting to the park gate at 4a.m. for any ride.
That’s your choice, but people who really want to experience it will show up.
Bruce I agree with you, with thousands of people trying to get a pass it’s impossible. A better system needs to be in place. splitting it up would be much better for everyone even if its just twice a day, it will ease up the crowds for other rides and allow people to change fast passes/dining around easier too.
That does sound like a better idea but unfortunately I don’t think it would solve more problems than it creates. I thought about it originally as a brilliant idea, it would solve most of the current issues. However, then people with PHs would be stuck at HS all day attempting to get a bg instead of just moving on to another park. Lines would be even more insane. Also unfortunately, imagine cast members having to deal with angry guests allllllll day. It’s like slowly ripping off a bandaid instead of one quick painful pull in the morning. As I said though, it does solve so many issues but it only creates others.
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Personally, I don’t see why they can’t do FP+ and bgs. If you snag a fp+, great, if not, you have a shot at the bg.
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I think one of the bigger problems is it wasn’t ready to be released. They quickly designed and built it, in a rush for Xmas and didn’t conceive the shear maintenance issues. So many sections of the ride rely on everything going absolutely right. You can’t have one little section go down. Plus, all of the moving parts of it is a maintenance nightmare. Seems like an engineering mistake.
Except that probably won’t make things any better from a crowd perspective., nor will it really give you any better of a chance of getting one. People will still show up early trying to get the first chance at a boarding pass, and then will just remain at the park if they dont get one waiting on their next chance. If anything, that will probably make crowds there worse as right now the park does start to empty some in the afternoon. It wont empty if people think they can still get a boarding pass later.
We just returned home from WDW and had an awesome time. We were able to get into Rise using Tom’s methods. We were boarding #48. We had a reservation at Brown Derby for 12:30. Sure enough our number was called up about 12:00. On the way to Rise I stopped by Brown Derby and told the receptionist and she said no problem she would make note of it and to simply return for our reservation after getting off the Rise. We got back about 1:00 and were seated in about 10 minutes. Disney is usually very accommodating and easy to work around.
This is great to know! I was also concerned since we have evening ADRs most days, but knowing that the restaurants will typically work with you eases my worries if we do happen to get on ROTR.
Garry, I appreciate you’re mostly talking about RotR boarding groups interfering with dining rsrvtns, but one thing you need to make sure of: out of the 7 ppl, say 3 are in HS @ 7 a.m. to get b.g. passes. If all the magic bands are already *linked*, the system won’t let you even try for b.g. unless all 7 ppl are there! So be careful.
Also if you read other comments, it seems cast members at both RotR & dining rsrvtns are happy to work with you. It may take some fancy & fast footwork, but both things can still take place, just maybe not on exact prearranged timeline
Wait, really? We have four people in our MDE planning group, but only two of us would do Rise. We have a young child for whom it wouldn’t be appropriate. He can’t stay with grandma while my husband and I get boarding passes?
I am getting a little nervous about HS. I am travelling with 2 small children and have an 8:15 character breakfast…how with ALL THOSE LINES, WILL BE EVER GET THROUGH TO THE FRONT TO GET TO OUR RESTURANT. HELP
It won’t be bad, get there a bit before park open and you’ll be fine. Once they move people into the park, they spread out pretty far and you won’t have trouble getting to your restaurant.
From things I’ve read in the past, I think allowances are made for those with early in-park breakfast reservations, not just at DHS but for all parks. That’s because very often the first available reservation is at or earlier than park opening. My suggestion would be to call Disney Dining (407-939-1947). There may be some way around waiting for the 8AM park opening. I also suggest you call first thing in the morning (for Disney, that’s 7AM Eastern time) or late in the evening so you don’t spend too much time on hold.
Even though the park opens at 8am they start letting people in much earlier. The crowd disperses towards Star Wars, Sunset Blvd and Toy Story Land and many people are well into the park long before 8am (although just standing in another line) We were there 2/9 and arrived at 7:45, there was no one in the security line and we were inside on Hollywood Blvd at 7:52. Most of the crowd was already well ahead of us. You will be easily able to get to Hollywood and Vine at 8:15 as thousands of people are already deep into the park, they do not hold everyone at the gates.