Star Wars Rise of Resistance Ride Report: A Bearable Breakdown

We’re back with another ride on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Walt Disney World. This report from the Disney’s Hollywood Studios version of the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge headliner shares our latest ‘success story’ scoring boarding passes, and our first experience with the attraction breaking down in over a year.

Part of the reason we haven’t experienced any breakdowns is because we’ve been doing Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance less. The main reason for that is because there’s not as much “newsworthy” happening with it. It’s not like the first few months when crowds kept ballooning, post-reopening when there was a lull, or even following the bifurcated boarding pass drop. The attraction has gotten more efficient in the last few months, but the virtual queue still fills in seconds.

Suffice to say, if all you care about is strategy, consult our Ride Guide & FAQ for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance for the ins and outs of the virtual queue–including our tips to improve your speed–rather than reading this report. It’s worth noting that there have not been any recent major changes to that ride guide. We mention this because we’ve seen a supposed “big change” making the rounds on social media. These reports are false.

These indicate that guests don’t have to be in Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the 1 pm boarding pass drop. This has always been the case. The virtual queue is not geofenced or based upon proximity—this functionality unlocks in the My Disney Experience app after you’ve physically tapped into the park’s tap/turnstiles. You can leave after tapping in and still join during the afternoon entry time from your hotel room or wherever. You could literally be inside Disney’s Hollywood Studios or in Duluth, Minnesota.

The virtual queue system only validates whether you’ve tapped into Disney’s Hollywood Studios, not your current location. We know this because we’ve spent a ton of time testing different strategies for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Regular readers might recall this, as it was a huge fixation pre-closure. In fact, our 1-Day “Resistance Run” Itinerary was built around this premise. This was savvy strategy while it lasted thanks to so few people being aware of this system quirk (or willing to do that much backtracking).

For what it’s worth, the system works exactly the same way at Disneyland. We’ve obtained boarding passes there from our hotel room and inside Disney California Adventure after first entering Disneyland. This is how the virtual queue has always worked on both coasts, but Disney has never officially acknowledged as much.

In fact, several pieces of Disney’s official info deliberately omit key advice because it’s more of a hassle for the company if guests know how these systems actually work. (For instance, the official line is that you need to be “nearby” Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the 7 am drop, which is untrue. You can be anywhere in the world.) It’s thus understandable that some fans might think this is a new development, but it’s not. Nevertheless, for those who didn’t know before, it is a useful reminder that you don’t have to be in the park at 1 pm–so don’t fear taking a midday break and trying from your resort!

Moving along, we followed our own “fast finger” advice for the boarding pass dash–mostly. We honestly prefer higher numbered groups because we don’t want to rope drop Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s a half-day park for us right now, and we far prefer being there in the afternoon and evening. Accordingly, I briefly paused before hitting the “Join” button. We definitely don’t recommend this to first-timers, as it’s a high risk approach.

My pause was not long enough, as we were called back at 10:40 am with an hour to return. We rolled up to Disney’s Hollywood Studios just in the nick of time, getting to the attraction at exactly 11:39 am. We probably would’ve been fine arriving late, but we don’t like being a hassle. Those Cast Members outside Rise of the Resistance already deal with a lot of guest-induced headaches.

Things started out well. None of the outdoor queue or overflow queue was being used, which is always a good sign. We met up with the line about halfway into the indoor queue, which is pretty consistent with recent experiences doing RotR.

I’m not going to fixate on the indoor queue or pre-shows as nothing has changed since our previous Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride report. Lots of photos in that, including photo spoilers. I’d prefer to keep this one spoiler free. (There’s also the “minor detail” that I didn’t take many photos of the queue or pre-shows since I wasn’t planning on writing a full ride report!)

Speaking of which, we’re still indefinitely avoiding Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance text or photo ride spoilers in most blog posts. I’m cognizant that the vast majority of you don’t care, and we’re obviously not the “spoiler police,” so we’re not going to demand that you not watch ride-through video or anything of the sort.

We simply want to give readers the opportunity to enjoy our posts without worrying about spoilers (beyond the major pre-show scene that is unavoidably plastered all over Disney’s marketing). We wouldn’t want the experience spoiled for us, and think those who have yet to ride deserve the same to the greatest extent possible. Due to the weird year that has caused many to postpone visits, we’re going to continue avoiding spoilers for this attraction until it’s been open for a full year of normal operations.

For the first 95% of the queue and pre-show, we ran into no issues with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance backing up or stopping. To the contrary, the entire process moved smoothly at all points. Walt Disney World has gotten really good at pulsing boarding groups through to make for a seamless experience. Kudos there.

One thing we noticed is that the parties around us were far less mindful of physical distancing. This is hardly unique to Rise of the Resistance, and is a general trend we’ve observed throughout Walt Disney World since roughly the start of spring break. Six months or so ago, this would’ve driven us crazy. Not so much anymore.

Unfortunately, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance broke down as we were in the final brief line, just before the last pre-show. We were almost to the front of this line–literally a few minutes later and we would’ve been on the ride vehicles!

This is actually the first time we’ve had Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance break down while we’ve been in line since last January at Disneyland, when we endured multiple hour-plus downtimes that led to us just sitting in the queue. I’m guessing a lot of people have “replayed” scenarios where they could’ve been unknowingly exposed to coronavirus before it was a widely known thing–those were ours.

Thankfully, this had not happened when doing Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios post-reopening. I’m not sure whether we got really lucky with that, or if we got so unlucky at Disneyland that we had a backlog of “Force credits” or what have you owed to us in order to restore the natural balance.

Previously, our plan was to bail if the ride were down more than ~15 minutes due to unknowns about ventilation and air filtration in the queue. Fortunately, we literally just hit our fully vaccinated date, so we’re no longer concerned about any of that. I’m glad we stayed, as we witnessed Disney’s health safety protocol for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance downtime.

The portion of the queue where we were stopped has a plexiglass divider, with guests on both sides. We’ve previously cast aspersions about the ‘proliferation of plexiglass’ at Walt Disney World, so I won’t rehash those here.

To Disney’s credit, Cast Members emptied one side of this queue, taking those guests to unused space in the pre-show area for even more physical distancing. This was a great move, and definitely should put minds at ease when it comes to potential downtime with this attraction. I don’t know if this was/is done in all portions of the queue, as the extra space may not exist everywhere, but it was a savvy move in this section.

Once that side was emptied out, First Order Cast Members walked through that side and further ensured physical distancing compliance in character. They made a few sharp comments to guests who were not.

This resulted in our line further spacing itself out, and extending back into the previous room. This type of thing would not be possible on most attractions since they don’t have multiple queues and pre-shows, but those also don’t have the downtime woes of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.

It was reassuring to see this happening, which has presumably been the protocol since reopening. We don’t expect Disney to expressly detail the precise procedures for every single attraction (that’s obviously too in the weeds), but I’d rather know about things like this (or ventilation!) than the hygiene theater Disney so often stresses.

As far as ride breakdowns go, this one was pretty bearable. I’ll stop short of calling it “good” since it did involve sitting around for 30 minutes, but our location couldn’t have been better. We were right next to the First Order Cast Members, who did an exceptional job of staying in character and “interrogating” guests during the stoppage. We also moved locations right before the attraction came back online, giving us more time than normal in the final pre-ride staging area. It was pretty cool. Downright good for us, but we had no agenda in the park. First timers to Disney’s Hollywood Studios probably would’ve felt differently about it.

After the ~45 minute downtime, we proceeded with the next phase of the attraction and everything went smoothly from there on out. Not a single effect was out of order or in B-mode, which was great. As we shared previously, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance has become more reliable in the last few months, with less frequent breakdowns and them lasting longer when they do occur. This has been a great development in getting more guests on the attraction, but efficiency woes and reduced capacity still hamper its overall numbers. Hopefully both can be remedied in the near future, as Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is one of Imagineering’s greatest achievements ever, and it’s really unfortunate that some guests have the experience tainted by the stressful virtual queue.

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

Have you experienced a prolonged breakdown of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance since reopening? Was the ‘protocol’ similar to or different from what happened here? Thoughts on the 7 am and 1 pm Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue releases? Have you scored a boarding group from outside DHS? Will you be attempting to join the new/modified virtual queue on your next trip to Walt Disney World? Do you agree or disagree with our 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!