Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure Virtual Queue Ending
With school winter breaks concluding, Walt Disney World’s holiday crowds are starting to die down. Accordingly, the virtual queue will be ending at Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure once Marathon Weekend is over. This post shares official announcement details, plus our commentary.
It was only a few months ago that Disney’s Hollywood Studios “paused” the virtual queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. That change occurred approximately 2 weeks before Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure opened and one month before the rollout of Genie+ and Lightning Lanes.
Accordingly, many fans speculated that those were the real reasons for Walt Disney World doing away with the boarding pass system for the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge headliner. We’ll circle back to that subject later in the post. For now, here’s Walt Disney World’s official announcement ending the Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure virtual queue…
The newest attraction at EPCOT, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, had its delicious debut just in time for The World’s Most Magical Celebration honoring the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World Resort! Since the attraction opened on Oct. 1, 2021, scores of EPCOT guests have joined Remy in a visit to Gusteau’s bustling kitchen using the virtual queue, which we introduced as part of the exciting launch.
Now, guests may experience this incredible attraction using a standby queue instead of a virtual queue beginning Jan. 10, 2022. With this change, we will end the use of virtual queue for now for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. Guests also have the opportunity to purchase access to a Lightning Lane queue at this attraction.
Virtual queues continue to be helpful with the launch of popular attractions and the debut of new experiences and offerings, so we may use it again from time to time for select attractions in the future.
Be sure to take advantage of the complimentary Disney Genie service, helping guests create their best Disney day. Built right into the My Disney Experience app, Disney Genie does the planning for our guests–with a personalized itinerary feature and all of their favorites displayed instantly with real-time tips and predictions. Guests may also purchase next available Lightning Lane entry at select attractions with Disney Genie + service or by purchasing access to Lightning Lane entry at select individual attractions for added flexibility.*
*Attractions with Lightning Lane entrances that are Disney Genie+ and individual purchases are limited in availability, subject to change or closure, may vary by date, are not guaranteed and may not be available at all on the date of visit or at the time you make a selection.
As is well-documented in our many posts about Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, our perspective on virtual queues has evolved over time. In large part, that change with Rise of the Resistance was motivated by the attraction improving its reliability and uptime, meaning guests in the standby queue were less likely to endure a breakdown.
For most of the first few months that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance used a standby line, that change was largely vindicated. We had many great experiences breezing through the queue, waiting a fraction of the posted wait time. During September and October, we did the attraction several times with actual waits under 30 minutes.
However, I’m not so sure that could be said about peak weeks, when posted wait times sometimes exceeded 200 minutes. In such scenarios, the odds of a breakdown spiked. The longer you’re in line for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, the more likely you are to encounter downtime. And that’s not the only issue when lines get longer.
After Rise of the Resistance comes back online, there is be a backlog of Lightning Lane guests to process, meaning the standby line crawled. This could happen at any attraction experiencing downtime, but Rise of the Resistance has higher odds of issues. Accordingly, my perspective is that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is fine with standby ~48 weeks of the year, but would benefit from a virtual queue the other ~4 weeks.
On a related point, it’s worth noting that Walt Disney World isn’t calling this a “pause” of the Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure virtual queue. Given that they never brought back the VC for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance during peak holiday crowds, it’s a near-certainty there’s no intention of ever bringing it back. Same almost certainly applies here, hence no longer hedging the language.
Of course, this post isn’t about Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, but I thought that was worth mentioning while on the topic of virtual queues since we’re not really doing Rise of the Resistance ride reports anymore. When it comes to Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, we’ve never done ride reports.
The reason for that is simple: no one cares. Sorry to the 7 of you who are diehard Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure fans, but it’s true. This isn’t to say people are skipping Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, it’s a flop, or anything of the sort–to the contrary, it’s a solid “warts and all” addition to Epcot that has been reasonably well-received by regular guests. It’s just no Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, which is a blockbuster, once-in-a-generation attraction.
As for the motivations of moving it from a virtual queue to standby, my guess is that this is once again a matter of guest satisfaction. Virtual queues are exceedingly unpopular with guests, who find them counterintuitive and are surprised to arrive and find they do not have the option of standing in line. (As someone who is excellent scoring spots in virtual queues, I love them–but I can recognize not everyone is me.)
This is the same assessment I offered for the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance change, and many of you disagreed, contending it was done to push sales of Individual Lightning Lanes. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s safe to say that was/is not the driving motivation. Individual Lightning Lanes sell out for both attractions on a daily basis–it doesn’t appear that the virtual queue changes the calculus for prospective buyers one way or the other.
Ultimately, I’m guessing the end of Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure’s virtual queue will not be as “big of a deal” for most fans as the change to Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance for the reasons identified above.
I’m also guessing that virtual queues aren’t totally dead at Walt Disney World, especially with the high-demand Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind debuting this year and the space-constrained TRON Lightcycle Run debuting sometime this decade.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next with virtual queues at Walt Disney World. With regard to Epcot, a couple of things about which I’ll be curious are whether Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure averages the longest wait in the park for now (my guess is yes) and how crowded that area of France gets on busy days.
There’s also the question of how Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure having a standby queue will impact itineraries and arrival strategy. Our preliminary thinking is that it’ll be our rope drop recommendation, and make arriving via International Gateway incredibly advantageous. We’ll head out to the park next week to check that out, test approaches, and provide an update on how things go with the change, so stay tuned!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of this news that Walt Disney World will end of the Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure virtual queue? Do you agree or disagree with this change? Any questions we can help you answer? 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!
Someone commented above they used Lightening Lane and it was $9. I find the $9 cost for that ride to be jaw-dropping.
I will be interested to see how long the standby line will be. For the casual WDW guest, all of these different types of lines and terminology are too much to understand-standby, virtual queue/boarding groups, Genie+, Lightning Lane, Individual Lightning Lane …
I’m a huge fan of the free virtual queues concept, but then I experienced 100% success rate when following your how-to guides, Tom. I honestly wish a bunch more attractions would flip to virtual queues. Call me crazy, but I enjoy being out and about in the parks about 10 times more than waiting in standby lines.
Good. 2 years ago, I had to do RotR by myself, because the rest of my family refused to get up at 5:30 AM to catch the first bus to DHS. Even if it isn’t THAT difficult to get into the virtual queue now…a lot of the guests who would enjoy Ratatouille the most probably aren’t hardcore enough to deal with virtual queues.
While I think Remy having a physical standby queue will help people (or at least me) by giving them (and me) more non-ILL options to ride, I’m just saying that there’s technically been more reviews of Remy here than there have been of Crêpes À Emporter or La Crêperie de Paris. If you feel like multitasking and preparing like a CREPE REPORT or two, I promise to be appropriately jealous!
Tom,
Love your blog! It’s been very helpful. I am a DVC member and think this is great news as I won’t have to try and reserve RRA at 7:00 am. With a park hopper ticket,, DVC members, and those staying at deluxe resorts, can rope drop AK or DHS in the morning and use extra hours at MK and Epcot in the eveing. Now that there are no more virtual ques, all rides are available, correct? Do you think that is a solid plan? If so, do you think you might update your patk itineraries to include this (or something similar)? If not, can you offer a better suggestion?
On November 30th I rode Remy with the virtual queue and the line was still slightly over 1 hour. Boy did that mess up my plans for the day. What an awful experience.
I too am a fan of the virtual queue as I had a 100% success rate with getting them.
I still think removing the virtual queue from Rise was to drive ILL purchase. I would have happily gotten a virtual queue spot but now I’m not going to mess with standby and will just bite the bullet and pay for the ILL. Annoying since I was able to ride with not a long wait with the virtual queue for no additional cost….
I was planning on just riding Remy during deluxe extra hours but may also rope drop as we’re staying at Yacht this year.
I am glad for this change as it means we don’t need to use up a park reservation for Epcot in order to get a virtual queue for Remy. We like to get to the parks early and since Epcot normally opens later, we usually park hop to Epcot later in the day.
Whoo! As one of the seven Ratatouille fans, I like this news. I never thought a virtual queue made sense for this ride, even with the constrained space, because a lot of people at the AP and DVC previews were ambivalent about it, and most people won’t tolerate a long wait for this ride. When we were there over peak Christmas and New Year’s crowds, I was so busy showing my fiancé how to use Genie+ so that he could book TT while I was dealing with this that I lost track of time and missed the 7 am countdown. I was about 3 seconds late and still got a decent boarding group. So it’s nowhere near as competitive as Rise was, and I would guess that just by having the virtual queue process people who otherwise would have ignored it decided to ride. It is still new and tons of tourists haven’t experienced it yet, so it might start off with a longer wait. But my guess is that while successfully obtaining a boarding pass is painless, making it worth it to the “take it or leave it” crowd, those same people won’t wait longer than say 30 minutes for the ride, keeping wait times reasonable for the people who do want to ride it in the long run.
“I would guess that just by having the virtual queue process people who otherwise would have ignored it decided to ride.”
I am guilty of doing this on several occasions. Virtual queues are like a sport, and I want to “win” at them even if the prize is nothing that I want. While I’ll admit to being a bit crazy and odd, I cannot possibly be the only one.
I’m awaiting your rope drop strategy here! We’re at Epcot on February 7 – I’m very excited that my work schedule finally allows me to go to the Festival of the Arts. I’m guessing strategy will be Ratatouille and then race to Frozen but I’m glad you’re going to test it all out for me before I arrive. 🙂
“…the space-constrained TRON Lightcycle Run debuting sometime this decade.”
Hahahaha it’s funny because it’s true! The amount of time it takes Disney to clone an already existing attraction is downright shocking. Also, real talk, I worry TRON runs the risk of being somewhat underwhelming if it opens after Guardians. Not to the same degree Remy’s is a letdown after Rise and Runaway Railroad, but if Guardians delivers on what they seem to be promising could see TRON coming across as less ambitious by comparison.
I think the bigger risk to TRON is actually the new coasters at Universal. Those are both incredibly satisfying, well-paced, etc. The more WDW guests who experience those, the more will expect a well-rounded roller coaster.
TRON is solid and a lot of people love it, but it’s too short. Also, given how long it’s taking to build, I’m guessing that many fans will expect show scenes rather than a mostly-empty gravity building.
Also- “TRON light cycle run debuting sometime this decade” so funny and so true!
Is there any reason to believe that RRA won’t be added to the list of early access attractions for Epcot? Seems like its viability as a rope drop attraction depends on that.
If you’re driving to the park, are you able to enter from the international gateway? Or is that only for resort guests?
We use lightning Lane this past Tuesday to get on Remy. We feel it was worth the nine dollars per person lightning Lane price for the experience. We didn’t want to take a chance on the virtual queue but would definitely try standby if that’s offered next time.
Arriving 1/21 and so glad to hear I don’t have to worry about the virtual queue nonsense for Remy now since that’s a hop day for us and would have been annoying!
This may be me missing something in reading, but will this be available as a Genie + LL selection or an ILL?
Think those rope dropping from International Gateway will have an advantage for Rat standby? Or expect the hold-locations to even things out?
I assume there will be a pronounced advantage–I’m not sure they can change the hold locations to a great enough of a degree to even the scales.
Ugh, arriving next Sunday and already had my plans made. Obtain RRA virtual que and then buy ILL for RotR for the evening as I am arriving from Pennsylvania midday with an Epcot park pass.