Star Wars Rise of Resistance at Disneyland Recap & Crowd Predictions
This recaps Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance’s first week of operations at Disneyland, picking up where our Opening Day Ride Report left off and offering further crowd predictions, best & worst days to visit between now and March 2020, thoughts about our recent trip to Disneyland & DCA, and more.
Basically, it’s an anecdotal post that fills in the gaps between the aforementioned opening day experiences and what we cover in our Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Disneyland Strategy Guide (which is our “essential” post for the whole process). Hopefully this trip recap will be helpful and/or interesting in its own right.
Before we delve into our anecdotal experiences, one thing that’s worth discussing is the disparity between weekday and weekend crowds right now. As you might’ve noticed in our Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Disneyland Strategy Guide, we strongly recommend visiting on a weekday. A few readers commented that this conflicts with conventional wisdom about the best and worst days to visit Disneyland.
However, our Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance strategy does not conflict with the recommendations made in our 2020 Disneyland Crowd Calendars. We specifically predicted that weekdays will be far better than weekends for doing Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance while this virtual queue system is in use. That could be for a few weeks or the entire year; we tend to believe it’ll be used for a while.
Our expectation was that most locals would confine their visits to the weekends and holidays when they’re off work and can arrive early. If locals have no chance of riding Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance with a late arrival, they’ll shift those visits to weekends…which will be packed.
This is exactly the trend that has emerged through the first two weekends of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
Conventional wisdom has been that the best days to visit Disneyland are when Annual Passholders are blocked out, particularly the Southern California Select AP.
Normally, this is because the number of blocked out APs more than offsets the non-local AP weekend crowd and tourists. Consequently, Saturdays and Sundays have been good times to visit during some months of the year.
There have always been plenty of exceptions to this, especially as the tourist demographic has increased in the years since Cars Land opened. One such time has been during the doldrums of the winter off-season, which remains an especially light time for tourism to California.
Unlike Walt Disney World that can use discounts to lure visitors to Florida, Disneyland Resort is more beholden to local travel trends. Quite simply, fewer tourists travel to California during the chillier winter months.
This means that the guest demographic skews more local than normal in the winter. This is exacerbated by the Southern California resident ticket deals, which target locals who are not Annual Passholders.
These guests visit by incredibly disproportionate numbers on weekends when they’re off work. Unlike the “drop in after work” AP crowd, these non-regulars want the most bang for their buck in terms of park time, and that’s what weekends offer.
Throw in Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and the requirement that guests be inside Disneyland by park opening time in order to ride, and crowds are strongly skewing towards weekends.
In short, Saturday and Sunday are packed. Meanwhile, weekdays remain relatively uncrowded, typical of this time of year at Disneyland. If you look at our January 2020 and February 2020 Disneyland Crowd Calendars, this is exactly what we predicted–all of our best dates are weekdays and all worst dates are weekends and holidays.
There is absolutely zero reason to believe this will change until Spring Break and Easter. Sure, some locals will try to take advantage of the lower crowd levels and easier odds of doing Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance on weekdays, but most people can’t just spontaneously take off work or skip school. Ditto out of town tourists–most can’t just book a last-minute weekday getaway on such short notice.
If you can book a last-minute trip to California during non-holiday weekdays between now and March 14, 2020 (see our March 2020 Disneyland Crowd Calendar for more on that month), you should be rewarded with relatively low crowds. If your trip is anything like our visit, it should be delightful.
Speaking of which, our experience in both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure after the MLK Day holiday was wonderful. Crowds were low and we got pretty much everything we wanted done with MaxPass. (It’s included with our APs, but I’d pay out of pocket for it–so much better than FastPass+ for the more spontaneous way we do things.)
We also were able to do World of Color a couple of times; it was pretty easy to grab last minute spots in the front row thanks to the cold weather. I love the “Hurry Home” Lunar New Year pre-show; it has a great score and packs a nice punch. I really wish World of Color had more tags or a rotating segment–I miss the old World of Color TRON: Legacy Encore.
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance has sort of been all over the place. The above graph (courtesy of thrill-data.com) shows its boarding group progression throughout the day. Most notably, opening time is pretty much always after 9 am and its closing time is around 9 pm. This has been true even on days when the park hours are 8 am to midnight.
Thus far, Disneyland’s Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance has not had nearly the success as Disney’s Hollywood Studios in getting through back-up boarding groups. We experienced a couple of days with multiple end-of-day breakdowns at Disneyland that caused backups in the queue and resulted in the attraction struggling to get past boarding group 80. It seems like finishing at boarding group 100 is about the average (+/- 10 groups). The highest its ever reached is boarding group 122.
This is the big reason why our strategy guide stresses a fast finger approach to scoring as low of a boarding group as possible. Not just because backup boarding groups are less of a sure thing, but also because we’ve witnessed primary groups called in quicker succession in the evening hours, leading to longer lines.
If you get stuck in a longer line, the obvious downside is a longer wait. However, the bigger concern is increased exposure to a breakdown. If Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance breaks down while you’re in the queue, you have to wait it out or not do the attraction at all. Readmits are only distributed if you’ve reached the show scene segments.
It seemed like Rise of the Resistance was consistently breaking down at certain times–like every day right around 11 am and 7 pm. In hindsight, that’s probably coincidence. Regardless, hopefully the uptime increases, operations start to become smoother, and Rise of the Resistance starts to get through more backup boarding groups per day.
One thing we have noticed is that it’s seldom breaking down in the first 90 minutes that it’s operating–which is also when wait times are shortest. Another reason to put maximum effort into scoring a low boarding group. Obviously, part of it is luck, but that strategy will put you in the better position to “get lucky.”
As previously noted, we didn’t do Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance every single day that we were in California. This was both because we didn’t want to be greedy about it, but also selfishly because we don’t want this spellbinding attraction to lose its luster for us by overdoing it.
Our goals were researching the best practices for scoring a low number boarding pass, ride downtime, boarding group efficiency, and how crowds were elsewhere in Disneyland & Disney California Adventure. None of that required repeated rides. Also, riding more would’ve really cut into our rigorous eating schedule.
Beyond the fact that we “had” to eat several new menu items for the sake of research, several of our favorite attractions are in the California parks. (About the only thing that disappointed was ‘it’s a small world.’ It was looking rough after the refurbishment, which is probably because it was rushed to come back up before Haunted Mansion went down.) We also just love wandering around the parks–they’re so pleasant.
We also had a lot on the agenda outside Disneyland Resort. We spent days in Laguna Beach and Los Angeles, ate at some of our favorite restaurants (plus new-to-us spots), attended a filming of Jimmy Kimmel Live, and visited friends near Pasadena.
Ultimately, it was a great trip out to California–the third consecutive exceptional experience we’ve had at Disneyland Resort. Between Project Stardust improving the guest experience both inside and outside the parks, and lower crowds than anticipated post-Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, we once again enthusiastically recommend visiting Disneyland.
We’d anticipate bigger crowds this year as a result of those who postponed visits and the justified hype over Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, but it should still be a better overall experience than those couple of years after the Diamond Celebration. We already can’t wait to go back!
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 Disneyland Vacation Planning Guide.
YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you planning on visiting Disneyland in the next few months now that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is open? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of crowds over the course of the last week-plus at Disneyland? Have any predictions for how things will continue going forward? Any anecdotal experiences with Rise of the Resistance (or Disneyland in general) that you care to share? 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.
Thank you so much for the helpful tips! My husband and I are going Tuesday February 11th to celebrate our Friendaversary and I feel so much better about our chances of getting on RotR! Does anybody have any additional information that could be useful? This is our first time going as Annual Passholders (We have California Select) and I was wondering about how getting into the park early work? I planned on us waking up at 6am and leaving our Airbnb (located 15 minutes away from Disneyland) no later than 7:15am and I expect getting through security and to the front gates will be take about 30-45 minutes which means we’ll be there a whole hour early as the park’s regular hours on Tuesdays are 9am-9pm…is this unnecessarily early?
We were there last weekend and what your dating is completely correct! Thursday was a dream. Low crowds, low wait times, we got SO much done. And a good thing too, because Friday, saturday and Sunday we’re absolutely mad houses. Saturday we spent more time bar hopping and treat tasting to avoid the crowds ( not a bad thing !) because even Ariel has a 45 min wait at some points! Ariel!! With max pass we still got on some rides without long waits but some rides without fast passes you just had to suck it up and wait it out if you really wanted to ride ( see above; Ariel. Which we ended up waiting about 25 mins for once we grabbed beers for the line. Highly recommend this strategy). We managed boarding groups on Thursday and Saturday. Thursday we were group 35 and we got them by being wayyy back by small world ( magic morning!) and being off of WiFi and hanging out on the “my status screen” . Saturday we waited right by the ticket booths after scanning in and got group 23! Both times we were on before 10 am., minimal lines and no breakdowns. Great rides and. Great trip. Overall Thursday was the best day and we’ve discussed next year moving our trip monday- Thursday instead of Thursday- Sunday to avoid even more crowds! Thanks for your reporting 🙂
I can vouch for the weekends being worse, at least so far. Opening weekend was about what I expected, but not difficult to manage. We arrived about an hour early, had plenty of time to park, get thru security, and through turnstiles. Went back on Thursday and experienced similar crowd levels.
This past weekend was a completely different story, with crowd levels that easily far surpassed opening weekend, to my surprise. Arrived at parking structure an hour early on Saturday to traffic backed up all the way to the freeway. I’ve never seen anything like that before, even during the typical mid-morning rush. We headed over to Toy Story lot and found a similar, although less crazy, situation. We somehow, by the skin of our teeth, managed to get thru the gates about 3 mins before 8am, and snagged a BG for the day. I heard Sunday was even worse, with folks showing up at the structure at 6:30-6:40 and still not making it to the gates in time to get a BG.
Weekend rope drop strategy will be very different for quite sometime, it would seem!
Thanks again Tom for the level-headed report. Reading other Disney fan sites, you’d think Disney was on the brink of bankruptcy because “no crowds during January weekdays!!!”. The reality seems to be that:
1) much of the local AP crowds have shifted to the weekends in order to try to get a boarding pass for ROTR at rope drop, and,
2) this has always been a slow time of year for the DLR.
Here’s hoping this trend continues! We just booked our first trip to DL in mid-September, and hoping the first week of the Oogie Boogie Bash will not cause the crowds to be insane, as we really want to get on RoTR!
tom or anyone- now that the bus from orange county airport and disneyland has been cut, what’s the best way to get from the airport to disneyland with kids needing car seats in tow (at least 1)? i understand super shuttle has also closed up shop. does uber/lyft operate Family XL in socal for a group of 5 with kids needing car seats? would not be entertaining renting a car. the bus was incredibly convenient since it didn’t require car seats and took you right to your hotel. is there another shuttle company option who provides or does not require car seats?
replying to my own comment so i can check the box for notifications
No such options in SoCal (yet).
Looks like your only options are bringing a car seat for Uber/Lyft, renting a car, or booking a private town car/limo.
that’s what i was afraid of. so disappointed the bus was done away with. it was so convenient, even before having kids, but with kids and not bringing a car seat it was a necessity.
We’ve used the transportation companies at SNA several times, and it has been really easy. You just walk up after your flight, no reservation needed. They’ve even taken us to the grocery store near the hotel to pick up some milk, yogurt, and fruit for our breakfasts. If you want to stop at the store, check with the driver first, some are agreeable, some are not. This is what we will be doing again during our February visit. Good luck!
Alexa, any chance you have a company name i could research? and where are the counters located? are they vans or cars? thanks!
We had 7 on Bon Voyage transportation from
Long Beach to our hotel. Large van and lots of room. We prefer Long Beach airport because prices are better and ease of getting to hotels. We are AP holders and come often. As I write this we are getting ready for day four. Park was busy on weekend, but moderate Tuesday. Took two days to get group into Rise of Resistance.
I don’t have any particular company names.
If you go to the ground transportation center, cross the airport roadway, there is a taxi stand. Then one or two stands beyond that there is a door-to-door transportation stand. I think they are mostly vans.
The ground transportation center is located on the Arrival (lower) Level in the central area between the A2 and B2 Parking Structures.
Also google “ground transportation map at SNA” to get a better look.
Hope that helps!
I’m just back from a Tues-Sat stay at GC and Can anecdotally agree with just about everything you’ve said, Tom. The week days were glorious. We used max pass in DL on Wednesday and rode almost every ride in the park. At DCA on Thursday we skipped max pass and still rode everything we wanted to. (We skipped most carnival rides on Pixar Pier.). We scored BG 38 on Wednesday and 16 on Friday, but waited twice as long to ride in BG 16. Saturday was a different world, with such crowding that we counted over 75 people in a churro line and gave up any hope of trying the Lunar New Year treats. Thankfully, Lamplight Lounge was the perfect place to dodge crowds and enjoy some quiet. One of my travel companions is a CM in Burbank. She noted that the CM holiday merch discounts and increased hotel discounts have been extended into February, which is prompting many of her coworkers to book one night weekend stays for the next few weeks, despite their passes being blocked at DL. This theory proved out when she spotted at least 4 separate colleagues eating dinner in Napa Rose Saturday night.
Just returned from a visit from Tuesday they Friday. The crowds were gloriously low. We rode ROTR once. Had boarding group 75 on a Thursday. Got called at 3:15. No problems. Our only issue with the trip was the lunar new year food. Not sure which but something made both of us very sick. We shared 6 different items & didn’t love any of them. Anyway after an afternoon to evening of forcibly expelling whatever it was, we were fine. All in all, a great time with no need for the maxpass most of the time.