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 agree that 7 a.m. opening would weed out the weaker fans, but geez – don’t you people have any sympathy for parents of tweens? We’ve determined to give this system one shot on our 7-day Spring Break. I’ve got a teen with autism who will either go with the flow or lose his ever-loving mind. And I’ve got a tween girl who may just roll her eyes the entire time. This system is the antithesis of family fun. The more I read, the more I wonder if it’s even worth it. (don’t get too excited, we’re still gonna go for it once…)
I’m in the same boat, my 15 year old nonverbal autistic would probably lose his mind if I forced him to get up at and get to the park at 7 a.m.
“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.”
I thought that the historical correlation between later guests and later evening hours was because Disney keeps the park open later during busier times. Also, don’t guests who stay later tend to arrive later? Even if it’s true that more guests will go to HS if it’s open later, it doesn’t mean that they all show up at rope drop. I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway; less hours of testing seems like the *last* thing RotR needs.
The biggest benefit to me of staying at a Disney Resort is not needing to rent a car, but I am very nervous to not have control over my arrival time at the parks. They need to make their transportation earlier so that guests willing to get up early are guaranteed to get there on time to get on the rides they want that they paid for.
They have enough money. I think they should provide refunds to people if they don’t get a chance to get in a boarding group. It’s only fair. It’s what most people are going there for. Otherwise, shut the ride down until they can get their act together and it stops breaking down.
Your point about the transportation is valid here. I’m staying on property in May, but they are telling me that if I want to have a chance to ride this ride I have to get an Uber, to their own park even for it’s opening!? And if I don’t get a BG then I either stay at park where I didn’t get to do the thing I came for or pay more for Park Hopper? Got you coming and going.
Can’t agree with you more Tom. I’t’s my last day of my 4 night trip at the yacht club. I have been an annual pass holder for 5 years and the crowds have never been so bad. The operating hours are a joke. They need to be opening at least an hour earlier AND later. The fast passes plus the ONE ride you can try to get on at rope drop are all I have been willing to wait for. I’m not waiting two hours for space mountain 45 minutes after rope drop. They need to open all the registers with cast members and run at full capacity. If this is how it is going to be in the future…I think I’ll be going somewhere else for vacation. This was just too stressful.
I think that they need to guarantee boarding passes to people who are staying at a Disney Hotel and then if there are any left they can be first come first serve. Also they should be open until Midnight every night with this much demand.
1. There are more people staying in Disney hotels every night than there would be boarding passes to distribute.
2. The ride has to close early because it’s a tehcnical mess that requires much more overnight maintenance than a typical attraction. With this level of demand, if the ride COULD run until midnight, it probably would…
1. There are more people staying in Disney hotels every night than there are boarding passes to distribute. Not really an option.
2. The ride closes early because it is a technical mess that requires much more overnight maintenance than a typical ride. With this level of demand, if the ride COULD be open until midnight, it probably would be.
If we are staying at a Disney resort and if the Studios open at 8, when should we go to the bus stop? Since we want badly to get a chance to ride ROTR, will we be able to get there early enough using a Disney bus? We have a party member with a scooter so it has to be via bus.
Best advice, show up to bus stop by 6:30am Buses run inconsistently in the morning, but there should at least be 1 between 6:30 and 7. Anything after and you’ll be pushing it. Nice thing with the scooter is that the driver will get that person on first as well as their group before anyone else, so as long as you’re the only scooter, you should get the first bus that comes your way.
Depends on the resort. Don’t stay at Caribbean because the buses were very unreliable to anywhere! It would be nice if the sky liner would operate 1/2 hour before park opening! We tried two time to get to Hollywood studios Feb 4-11 and couldn’t get in to ROTR. Big disappointment! I’m sorry but there should be some sort of perk for staying on property instead of a disadvantage because you rely on their transportation.
Find out from your hotel bus hour Schedule and approximately you she be getting there by 6:20 no later and as soon as your in the park you better have the app on and try to stay to the left as soon as your in. You don’t want to be all the way in and around so many people with their phones on. Go by the nurses station to the left when your inside. That’s what we did and got group 24.! There should be a few of you alert with the time and app. Try to hit the join group few seconds before . That’s how we did it. Good Luck
We just left the parks – 2/21. The buses run 45 minutes before the park opens. We made it to Hollywood Studios and threw the gates BEFORE rope drop. We were staying at the Caribbean, which is close to the park. If you are staying at a resort that isn’t close, I’d (personally) take a Lift. We could have taken the Skyliner, ( def faster) however we were concerned that it ran 30min before the park opened. We weren’t willing to take the chance. Good luck!
If you want to play it abolsutley 100% safe, pay for a minnie van and get an accessible one. The bus offers no guarantees…
We are going in two weeks and have two days where we can attempt to get boarding groups – what time do we need to get to HS to get in line to enter the virtual queue? Is it like California now where they let you inside and then at 8 the app is enabled?
Yes, it works just like in California. The turnstiles open at least 30 minutes prior to official park opening, and the virtual queue is enabled in the app at official park opening time.
Most people are advising getting to the park at least 30 minutes before opening, to make sure you get thru security and the entrance in time. Note that if you are driving and parking yourself, you will want to get there AT LEAST an hour before opening, as it will take a very long time to get into the parking lot and park and all that.
Thanks Andy! Fingers crossed we will get to ride it!
Makes me so mad!!! All of us poor people that paid $$ to go over President’s Day weekend and they only got to 80-85 each day with my ‘boarding group’ 115. What a joke. I got to stand in line all day for 2 or 3 rides. There were NO fastpasses to be had. Even the Muppets were all out of fastpasses. There is plenty of staff. I know for a fact that MANY cast members are only getting 30hours/week and would like more. For previous poster “Anon,” I’d like to know what 256 other things there are to do at Studios. Enlighten me?? Not everyone has hopper passes. Cast members work all hours of the night in every park so how is that “unhealthy?” You are clueless. I for one feel free to complain – I spent over $500 on tickets and meals for that day and got to ride 3 things. Let me clarify “meals.” Oh yeah, there was no where to eat – every restaurant was busting at the seams. I had to eat at the nasty Rosie’s cafe and had to eat on the ground because after battling for 30 minutes to get a table, I gave up. I stood in line for 45 minutes for coffee. I stood in line 30 minutes for popcorn. Oh believe me, I am a super planner – I’ve been at this for 40 years but did not have the luxury of getting early tickets on this occasion. I should be able to have a decent experience with the money I spent during my visit. It was ugly and I am still sore about it.
Yup, all that sucks, and when all you do is focus on rides and crowds, you miss out on everything around you. There are definitely little things – street performances, stage shows, etc, but unfortunately, this ride has created an intense amount of people for everything. I experienced this a few months after Toy Story Land opened in 2018. except now it’s worse.
And then there’s the unreliability of the ride. RotR was suffering through a terrible streak of several unreliable days in a row that limited the amount of people that could get on. It would have sucked way worse had it been a standby line with how long it was down some days. On 2/17, President’s day, the ride had issues before the park even opened, so no one was able to get on until 930, an hour and a half after open. Imagine that with a standby line. So, yeah, it sucks that you missed out, but the amount of money you pay doesn’t guarantee you anything other than to get in the park. Everyone pays their way in.
Eric, thanks for the info on the 17th, which is the day I got bg 119 and never got to ride. I kept checking bg status and it seemed like they were still boarding early groups later in the day. I thought something was wrong and now I know. I wasn’t sure if maybe it was my phone.
You also made the choice to go over Presidents Day weekend. Did you not realize that the park is more busy during holidays?
It’s unfortunate that you have had a poor experience but the reality with disney today is that you have to plan out your trip weeks in advance. If you are going to pay the $500 for your tickets and meals, you might as well spend another half an hour a few weeks before to create fast passes or look up other activities in Hollywood Studios. Everyone pays the same amount to be in the park, they just made the choice before to plan for fast passes/enjoy the other experiences. Appreciate what Disney has to offer, there’s more than just rides.
If you don’t like anything but rides then you probably shouldn’t go to Disney in the first place and just stick to Universal
Cutting down the available boarding group window to 1 hour has its disadvantages too. When it was 2 hours, you could feasibly get your BG and then leave the park (alleviating some of the crowds) but with only 1 hour this would be risky.
Disney has lost me. You need a PhD in neuroscience AND astrophysics to understand anything now. Have to spend hours planning my visit, securing fast passes, now boarding passes and park entry times? Come on Disney! What a mess!
I waited 51 years…I can wait another five when it dies down
I agree, Linda! We just got back, and are so disappointed in how Hollywood studios has changed with all of the additions. Star Wars land is too complicated to navigate – we are waiting a few more years to tackle the Star Wars rides, hoping things settle down a bit. We had a reservation for Oga’s Cantina, and you wait in a long line with a reservation, then are barked orders on how things will and will not work, and are told you have 45 minutes and DON’T leave where you are sitting or your place will be taken, and then are sat with strangers. It was weird. Sorry, just wanted to say I agree with your comment!!
Interesting perspective. Sounds like they might need to hire more people, and maybe provide an extra incentive for working the early shifts. Of course it shouldn’t be up to the same number of staff to work an increased and more stressful set of hours, and I don’t think the majority of guests would want or expect that.
It seems like this mess at DHS also pushes people to have hoppers so if they don’t like what they get at DHS, they can at least hop on out of there.
We never get hoppers at WDW — for 5 people it’s just really a lot pricier and due to how long it takes to get to a different park, it just isn’t worth our time or money. DLR, absolutely worth the hopper.
It seems like Disney has so much data available (via the magic bands, advanced reservations, etc.), and they don’t seem to be using it to address a myriad of concerns raised throughout the comments.
There is a lot of back and forth about locals vs. tourists, and giving priority. Disney knows who is going to HS and who is getting to ride the ride. If locals are really taking away the opportunity from on-site guests, why not encourage onsite guests to visit HS on certain days (by granting them priority to the virtual queue as an example) and let locals have an advantage on certain days (weekends maybe?). It also seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to put a cap on ridership within x amount of weeks/days, etc. if AP holders are really riding that much.
It’s fascinating they Disney had months of EEMH when it wasn’t crowded, and now that it is crowded there is nothing. You could revert back to those hours (more costly for Disney, maybe Cast Members hate it?) but not open the virtual queue until 7/8/whenever? Allow early risers to visit other attractions but not enter the virtual queue. This would allow other attractions to serve guests early so the demand for them is reduced later in the day.
Finally, Disney can see who will be where 30/60 days out. It’s probably evident which days will be most crowded based on FP+ selections, and ADRs. If some days are heavy and others are lighter you can encourage a subset of guests to move park days around to disperse the load.
Or maybe the data they have shows no matter what they do they are screwed because the attraction is just too popular and too unreliable.
From the outside looking in it doesn’t look like Disney is using its data to its advantage to inform park operations.
I visited last week during school vaca (for the first time for me and my 5 and 7 year olds) and was able to get a boarding group (103) but received a message later in the day stating they couldn’t accommodate higher than 65. WHY issue higher #’s if they can’t accommodate? And why FFS close at 8PM? Why not keep it open until 10PM?
1. They don’t know how many groups they can accommodate. It depends on how many times the ride breaks down, and how long it takes to bring back on line when it does. Some days they get to BG 140 and beyond, some days not so much.
2. With BG 103, you would have been repeatedly told in the app that you were a backup group, and there was a non-trivial chance that you wouldn’t get to ride.
3. It closes early because it’s a mess that requires much more overnight maintenance that “normal” rides.
RotR honestly shouldn’t be operating in its current condition, but management insisted that the ride be “open” whether or not it was ready to be open. This is the result.
Honestly, it sounds crazy but I think Disney may need to consider assigning a boarding pass at the time your book your vacation, and leave a number of boarding passes available for day of. Imagine if you book your week of vacation and shortly after, get an email with the time/date of your boarding pass (excluding arrival/departure days). Then you can plan out your vacation knowing you don’t have to fight for a boarding pass day of. This will heavily ourits over locals which, to be frank, needs to be done. Having a number of boarding passes available day-of will give locals and last-minute vacationers at least a chance of getting a boarding group.
While it might seem unfair to locals, Inwould argue that Disney has more of an obligation to those dropping the money to travel from farther away. Those of us that are privileged enough to visit regularly forget that for many, a Disney trip is pricey enough to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. When I was a kid, it was a trip that happened once every 5-7 years.
The advantage (or disadvantage) of this is that tourists will only get one chance to ride per trip. It opens up more slots for other riders. Yes, it sucks to only be able to ride it once during your vacation. But you would have a guaranteed spot, and could still participate in rope drop boarding passes if you wanted to try for a second go. Not perfect, but still more fair in maximizing the number of unique riders.
Plus–Disney could incentivize “giving up” your predetermined boarding pass. Imagine the scenario above, where you get a boarding pass automatically when you book your vacation. Now, imagine Disney offering you a 4th, open FP+ for any park outside of Hollywood Studios for those who decide they don’t want a RotR boarding pass.
Great idea! I hope Disney is listening!
This whole boarding pass thing is meant to be temporary until Rise can get its act together well enough to operate and be treated like a “normal” ride. The last thing Disney wants to do is start doling out guaranteed boarding groups months in advance, when there are no guarantees that, months from now, the ride will (a) require the virtual queue or (b) be able to operate in the first place.
True.. but… they could at the 60, 30 day marks in the FP system… just allow for the creation of a Fastpass that’s a BP # instead of a time. The user experience would be significantly better if they didn’t have to get up before sunrise to go to a park to only find out the whole reason for being there is not possible for the day.
I love this idea!! It would be so much less stressful!! It stinks to plan a trip a year in advance with no guarantee of riding.
This is the best idea ever! We are coming from overseas, so our flights are about the same price as our package. Plus we are on a different time zone meaning that getting up at 6am is like waking up at midnight. We are planning to do afternoons and evenings in the parks.
Without a Fastpass or guaranteed boarding pass I don’t think we can ride this, and that’s extremely disappointing given how much we are spending to come.
Totally agree on all accounts.
The earlier the park opens, the earlier the cast must come in to prepare- which means they have to be paid for their time and expected to work as early as 2am, and stay until “the ride is empty” which could be a different time every night. That’s not healthy for anyone, and for a business paying people hourly, it’s not good for them either. the complaining is unnecessary. No one has the right to be the first person or newest or best. If you don’t get to ride, it out can go ahead and enjoy like 256 other things there are to do.
Prior to the last couple of years, it was common for Magic Kingdom to operate 15 hours per day during busier times of year, and up to 18 hours per day on weekends and with Extra Magic Hours. Even now, there are hard ticket events that push the park’s operating hours to 17-18 hours some days. The same concerns about Cast Members being up early and staying late would apply there.
Right now, Disney’s Hollywood Studios is operating for 12 hours per day.
In DHS, there are definitely not 256 attractions that guests can do instead. There are ~20, depending upon how you count shows, walk-throughs, and meet & greets.
What is an effective way to suggest this to Walt Disney World so they actually change the opening time? This makes a lot of sense to me.
Except you can’t, because most of them either have 2 hour lines by 8:45, or they don’t open until after 10, or they’ve been canceled completely without being replaced by anything.
We are currently in Disney. We used to come here from NH every other year, but it’s pricey, so we haven’t been in 5 years. I have to say this is probably our last trip. The crowds have been crazy. We allocated 3 of our 10 days to DHS so that hopefully we could get to ride RotR (and we did, but only once out of 3!!!! and it was great, but in hindsight not worth it). We were there for rope drop, but basically so was everyone else, so we waited for over 2 hours for Slinky Dog and nearly as long for Smugglers Run and Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster on the other days, despite having been on the first Disney transport.
But in my opinion, the problem is not just in DHS, we have experienced crazy crowds in all the parks with very little recourse. If you’re willing to rope drop at the early extra magic hours, you get a couple of rides in that hour + your 3 fastpasses, that if you did them in the morning you might be able to get a couple more same day fast passes on less popular rides on the afternoon/evening. so got your admission price you get maybe 7 rides (at any park but DHS, there you get 4 rides?) To me, it’s not worth the money or time I spent planning. I’m a huge planner, I actually enjoy the planning part quite a bit… spreadsheets, 180 day ADRs, 60 day FPs (and it’s not easy to get 11 people to agree on where they want to eat–and therefore which Park to be at 6 month out). I’ve done Disney enough, that I kinda know what you have to do for efficiency.
I liked it better when Disney rewarded those who were willing/able to get up early, but Disney will do what’s best for them and that just means my family will spend their vacation money elsewhere. I’m not angry, just disappointed.
@K80 I’m like you. I love the planning and am currently planning a trip for 10 people in April. We were lucky to get some good FP’s, but I’ve spent way too much time warning my family that this trip could be tough because of the crowds. That’s just not how a Disney vacation should be.
My group does luck out because we still have some younger members (aged 3, 5, and 7) that enjoy the smaller rides/shows that don’t get as crowded. So we’ll hopefully be able to do more than 3-5 rides in the crowded parks. I am also considering making this my last trip for awhile. Maybe I’ll take my kids again when they’re older and we can do some days in Universal as well.
We were there 2 weeks ago. One day we got a boarding group of 121 and they made it to 120 and stopped. The next day we were there for early opening and got a 94 group. They didn’t even make it to 90.
I have no idea how they can fix this but something has to be done. The variety from day to day is ridiculous.
Maybe Disney could somehow add an extra Fast Pass to your account if you are there at rope drop and not able to get a boarding pass for ROTR or allow guest to choose going to another park without it counting as a park admission at HS.
Yes or if you are at hollywood studios and couldn’t get a boarding pass your ticket should be upgraded to a park hopper for the day.
We arrive on March the for a week. We have one day planned at HS but no hopper passes. We have no interest in Ris of the Resistance….just all the short rides. After reading all these posts I am wondering if we should just skip HS all together. Thoughts??
that would be an amazing idea. The virtual cue is okay if you do have a park hopper option or an annual pass and can come back. But when you have two small children 8 and 6 makes it impossible to get this experience.