Star Wars Rise of the Resistance Ride Report & Standby Strategy
It’s time for another ride report on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Hollywood Studios. This Walt Disney World update details our first attempt at experiencing the attraction via the standby line due to “pausing” of the virtual queue, wait time data for the Galaxy’s Edge attraction since it moved to a traditional queue, and strategy going forward as 50th Anniversary and holiday crowds arrive.
The big news since our last ride report is that Walt Disney World “paused” the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue on September 23. Disney noted that virtual queues continue to be helpful with attraction access–including Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure–and guests should monitor the My Disney Experience app for how virtual queues are being used, including at Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at a later date, or from time to time.
While the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue has been a source of constant consternation among readers of this blog, many of you were understandably skeptical of this change. The timing ahead of the launch of Genie+ and paid Lightning Lane access for the attraction didn’t seem coincidental, but more like a deliberate move to increase sales of the line skipping service.
Our outlook was more optimistic. We attributed the change to guest complaints, and Walt Disney World wanting to increase satisfaction ratings for Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It was getting too complex and convoluted, especially for first-timers and infrequent visitors. This is one way to scale back on that ahead of the launch of the Genie system.
We also theorized that this change would advantage tourists and casual guests. That’s because Annual Passholders and other repeat visitors have honed their skills at joining the virtual queue, but would never consider waiting 90 to 120 minutes for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
Our final prediction was that the this would change the crowd dynamic at DHS. The bulk of guests would once again arrive for rope drop, and more people will leave early after being frustrating by long lines early in the morning. The silver lining would be that Park Hopping to DHS for the last two hours of the day should once again be a great option if you don’t mind not having a real nighttime spectacular.
It’s still very early–the standby line has only existed for a week–but let’s see how those predictions have played out thus far with the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance standby line and at Disney’s Hollywood Studios as a whole…
The first morning was predictably bad. The attraction peaked at 180 or 220 minutes (there was a discrepancy between the My Disney Experience wait and the posted wait at the attraction entrance) before 10 am.
As with any WDW debut day, there’s always a ton of people who want to be the first to experience something…even if that something is a line. In any case, the wait time settled around 90 minutes in the afternoon, with guests reporting actual wait times that were considerably lower—sometimes less than half of that.
We continued watching wait times over the weekend, thinking that would be a more accurate window into what Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance lines might look like going forward. After all, 50th Anniversary visitors have started to arrive and the prevailing theory is that this week is the start of bad crowds at Walt Disney World.
Additionally, Early Theme Park Entry soft opened for eligible resort guests over the weekend. We haven’t been able to participate in that yet (as you’re likely aware, hotel prices are prohibitively expensive right now), but will in the near future. Social media reports have shown more chaos for on-site and off-site guests alike at their respective park opening times.
However, we noticed something surprising over the weekend: low wait times in the last couple hours of the day for Rise of the Resistance.
Granted, we predicted that DHS crowds would subside later in the day due to early arriving guests running out of things to do. Never did we expect to see 35 minute posted wait times for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance during the week of Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary.
With that in mind, we headed to Disney’s Hollywood Studios the other night just before sunset–one of the most stunning we’ve seen recently–to experience the park for the last two hours of the day.
It’s worth noting that it was a beautiful evening with cool weather (by September standards) only a few days before October 1st. Not to rub it in your face if you’re not here, but rather to point out that conditions were right for a post-work pop-in for locals and that there are likely a lot of fans already in town.
Crowds were low throughout our time at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, so it doesn’t seem like that was happening. As we arrived, there was a flood of people exiting with only a slow trickle entering.
After I ran around taking sunset and dusk photos, we took advantage of these low crowds.
Aside from Slinky Dog Dash and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, pretty much everything was a walk-on by 7:30 pm.
We did the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, both with essentially no wait. Slinky Dog Dash looked like it had a really short line, but the posted wait was 45 minutes. If its actual wait were above 30 minutes (which I doubt), we would not have been able to do Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Since that was the whole reason we visited, we opted against Slinky.
At 8:45 pm, we got in line for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
The posted wait time was 35 minutes.
No line in the extended queue or anywhere outside.
Already off to a great start, as we’ve been this far back on a few occasions when using the virtual queue.
We finally met up with the line in this room, which was pretty much the best case scenario with the virtual queue.
Our total wait time ended up being 14 minutes. 14 MINUTES.
Above is a look at daily posted wait times for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance over the course of the last week, courtesy of Thrill-Data.com. As you can see, the attraction peaks around 10 am (!!!) and steadily declines from there. The shortest waits of the day are consistently in the evening, with an average wait under 60 minutes after 6 pm.
This same trend can be observed throughout Disney’s Hollywood Studios. You could literally do every ride in the park with a 5 pm arrival right now. This certainly corroborates our theory that people would rope drop DHS, run out of things to do, and leave early.
At least for now, you’re far better off staying off-site and having Park Hopper tickets than you are staying on-site, taking advantage of Early Theme Park Entry and having one-park per day tickets. This will likely be true until a lot more entertainment returns to DHS (and even then, still true to some extent–it was pre-closure).
Again, it’s still early and you should not expect identical results if you visit in October, November, or December. However, what you probably should expect is that wait times for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance will peak in the morning and drop later in the day–you might just encounter higher numbers across the board than we did.
I didn’t expect these results only days before Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary. I would’ve been very happy with an actual wait time 4-5x this high at the end of the night. Given the attraction’s quality and duration, I think a wait time of 90 minutes is entirely reasonable for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. (Even though I’d seldom personally wait in a line that long for it.) I’m guessing most of you would agree with that, and are likewise at least cautiously optimistic about the ‘results’ of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance’s standby experiment thus far?
One thing I did notice before the final pre-show was this holding area was moving much more efficiently, and it appeared that more pre-show rooms in use than normal. (Archival photo above.) Sorry for the vagueness, still trying to keep this spoiler free. We’ve done Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance a lot, and I don’t recall ever seeing all of these pre-show rooms in use.
As we’ve noted several times now, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance’s reliability improved pretty significantly in mid-December of last year. The attraction started processing more boarding groups per day on average and began having less downtime problems. Anecdotally, we’ve noticed even less downtime in the last week, and now this. It makes me wonder whether another fix occurred with the attraction that made Disney comfortable moving away from the virtual queue. (I have no further insight or rumors to back that up–just speculating.)
Ultimately, I don’t want to get ahead of myself drawing any sweeping conclusions as it’s only been a week. Back in December 2019 when Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened, our initial reaction to the virtual queue was resoundingly positive. Within weeks, not only did guest behavior change, but so too did Walt Disney World policies. It went from “awesome” to “awful” in the span of a month or less.
Consequently, I hesitate to make any bold proclamations here. I will say that it’s going way better than I expected thus far–pretty much the best case scenario has played out over the last week. How that’ll change when the 50th Anniversary crowds arrive remains to be seen. Ditto when Genie+ and Lightning Lanes launch. Then there’s the Christmas season and also the strongly-rumored possibility of more entertainment returning to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which is a very good thing, but would also spread crowds throughout the day. We’ll keep you posted on how all of that changes the dynamic and wait time trends with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, so stay tuned!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of standby wait times thus far at Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance? Does this change your opinion at all about Walt Disney World’s decision to pause use of the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue? Or, is it still too early to draw any conclusions whatsoever? Do you agree or disagree with anything in this ride report? 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!
We were there on Sunday and besides an early morning hours Slinky Dog break down, which we got passes to experience later in the day when it was back up, the wait times have been great! We were worried bc we have to rider switch a lot with the 2 older ones since we also have an 8-month old. We rode everything we wanted before lunch then came back after a nap break to ride again. Did RotR around 8:15 pm. We were through the queue and ride by 8:45 pm. Around that time a cast member started coming around asking if people were waiting on rider switch, had gotten one if needed, and if we were the 1st or 2nd set of riders. They did this 3 times total to make sure everyone who wanted to ride and rider switch was covered. I was very impressed. We’re going to try again tonight closer to 8:45 pm and see how it goes!
I got to the resort on Monday and can corroborate what many of the comments are saying: its Thursday, and I have not waited in any line for longer than 20 minutes. I came at the end of August when the parks were dead and it is not much different now. The parks aren’t dead–they are very busy, but with wait times you wouldn’t notice this and I am shocked.
We are staying at the Swan and Dolphin and walked over to rope drop Rise yesterday with early entry. For those staying at the Disney resorts, they scan your magic band before you get to the turnstiles (At Animal kingdom, they did it after you got through the turnstiles). As Swan guests we really confused the system though and many cast members don’t know what to ask for. One wanted to see it in our Disney Experience, the other wanted our room key, and a third said it didn’t count if it wasn’t in our magic band. We pushed back on that one and she was told by another associate to get our room key. Just wanted to note that for anyone in a similar position!
Thank you for this report, Tom! I’m heading to WDW in the second week of October and have HS reservations for M, W, F that week. Originally intended that to give us 6 chances at the Virtual Queue but now I’m wondering if I should make reservations at a different park for two of those days and just plan on Park Hopping to do RotR if we miss out on our HS day for any reason. I’m going to watch actual standby times next week VERY closely and maybe swap an HS day or two for MK or Epcot if I can.
I wonder if the answer to the “full hotels but low wait times” conundrum is fully utilised loading and well trained staff – as they are all new and keen. We know that if a station has two load bays (like the Mountains) and only 1 is used at Rope Drop it takes ages for the queue times to adjust when the 2nd load area opens. If it ever does. There’s probably a host of contributory factors at play here but it makes no sense for Disney to claim their hotels are full and they’re not. Disneyland Paris is the same for our half term week. Zero availability.
We were there today as hotel guests. Took Tiom’s advise and did slinky dog ,mania and then ran on rock n roller and Tower all by 9:15 an. Odd thing Rise. Got in line at 230 line posted at 60 min. Went really fast but then they started only taking 2 people from the line and lots of people coming in from LL lane. We asked why as this went on for over 20 min. When we got loaded they were only putting 3 or so guests on the ride. We asked again why they were not loading fully. No comment. When we got off line was over 100 min. Seemed they wanted line to be longer
We did Rise of the Resistance today during early entry and thought I’d share in case it might help anyone else planning on doing the same.
We arrived at 7:25 and there was 20-30 other people already waiting to get into the park. At 7:30 we were allowed into the park to line up outside the entrance to Galaxy’s Edge. Around 7:45 it started getting much more crowded and cast members rerouted the line through a backstage area to the right of the entrance to Galaxy’s Edge. Apparently it stretched all the way back to Woody’s lunchbox around that time. When we got off the ride, the line was very long. At least an hour wait would be my guess, maybe longer. Meanwhile Millennium Falcon had a wait of 5 minutes. Definitely a better use of early entry time if you’re not planning on showing up very early. We also saw a 35 minute wait for Rise in the app around 5pm.
I rode Rise twice on the day it switched to standby, at around 3 in the afternoon. Posted wait time was 55 minutes but both times I was on the ride in less than 30 (that’s why I turned right around and reentered the queue for the second ride). I was pretty much amazed; I was prepared to be in that line all day, since I hadn’t been able to ride it before.
@Troy thats scary to think Disney would go that far, but now i can’t help but think thats possible. its simply inflating the wait time which guests around the park see to increase sales of Genie+ and individual LL. its borderline false advertising
Been here since Sunday. Walking onto pretty much anything. Sunday walked onto the Rat ride twice (in fairness this was an AP special) But the first three days have been stunning. Space Mountain walk on, Pirates walk on Carousel pf Progress walk on Seven Dwarfs 15 minutes Haunted Mansion 10 minutes People mover …wasn’t moving. Only line that I saw 50 minutes was Jungle Cruise. After walking onto Pirates I wasn’t about to wait for anything. We’ll see how tonight at MK goes since it’s the last night for the old fireworks show. HS tomorrow so I’ll let you know.
@Troy J – My friend and I just had this very conversation! We agree completely, and would rather give Len Testa $17.95 a year than rely on Disney’s line forecasts to make our touring decisions.
@Ramon and Tom, I totally agree with these comments. I have been wondering why people would rush to WDW in the next few months. I’m sure it will be amazing to be there on the actual 50th anniversary on Friday, but I don’t feel like the celebratory additions are any more compelling than what has already been in place. I love WDW, and anytime I can spare the time and money for a trip, I’m happy to be there. I just don’t feel like anything I could see there post-October 1 is all that much better than what I could have done last week. Statues? New Epcot trash cans? Shinier desserts? Meh, meh and meh. I’m hopeful that Disney will finally have to reckon with the limits of brand loyalty in the face of consecutive cost increases and reduction of services.
It’s nice to hear what’s been happening with the stand-by lines thus far. As long as it remains this efficient I’d say it was a much better move (even if it was to encourage LL sales) to “pause” the virtual queue. At least people have the option to wait (albeit long times in the mornings) to experience it rather than hope they get one of the golden tickets to ride it. I think things will more or less be this good throughout the rest of the year with some increase overall in wait times. As previously mentioned on here, things are very odd with the hotel availability. It’s weird, but maybe, just maybe Disney is manipulating the market to buy less rooms because of their lack of housekeeping staff. I just can’t see how people’s normal vacationing habits are changed so much that it defies trends in vacationing simply because of the 50th. I get COVID was an impact, but all the families with children in school were able to go this past summer to “scratch the itch” and get back for school.
The wait times have been madness lately.
I wonder if the price hikes and lack of live entertainment and all the endless cutbacks are finally starting to make a dent in Disney attendance. I have no doibt that come the 50th anniversary crowds will increaee but there could be a ROTR effeft as well with many avoiding it because they thought the crowds would be unmanageable.
I am not the type of person that would ever swear off Disney forever everytime they raise their prices, but I know anecdotally, the recent Genie+ combined with all the other cutbacks has really made a huge change in mentality for many people. Are these people swearing off Disney, no. But is it causing some diehard people to rethink vacation plans. Yes. Personally we have cut down on our Disney trips and I know many who were planning on going who have either cancelled or chose other vacation options. And these were diehards who didnt blink with all the other changes.
Its become such a money grab it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Disney will be fine, and there is always someone there to take your place.
Agree with all of this. In particular, the possibility that people avoid the start of WDW’s 50th because they think the crowds will be unmanageable.
That would make the lack of hotel inventory even more odd, though. We expressed skepticism about all rooms actually being sold out, but I’m still not expecting low or even moderate crowds October through December. It’ll be weird if that’s how things play out, and yet, hotels are unavailable and there are no discounts.
Things are certainly odd right now.
At this point, I don’t want them to start any type of line skipping and ruin everything. These wait times have been insane (on the low side) across the board. I’ve been nervously checking the wait times all week and keep thinking, ok today’s the day the anniversary crowds arrive and wait times skyrocket. I’m shocked that today, two days before 10/1, when I checked around noon, the longest wait resort-wide was 40 minutes for Splash (RotR is also down right now, so it likely would have been longer). I really think those cancellations were bigger than anyone thought.
We arrived at DHS around 5:30 on Sunday 9/26, and proceeded to:
-Wait 0 minutes for Star Tours
-Wait <5 mins for Smuggler's Run and Toy Story Mania
-Eat a relaxed dinner
-Wait 0 minutes for Tower of Terror
-Wait <5 minutes for Runaway Railway
-Wait ~15 minutes for Slinky Dash
-Arrive at Rise of the Resistance at 8:50 and walk right on; we literally didn't stop walking until we were standing in front of BB8.
Incredible evening!
I’m also trying to keep expectations in check but I HOPE IT STAYS LIKE THIS! We have a single Disney day in November and I have been a bit worried about how we would juggle the virtual queues of this (the ride I’m most excited about) and Remy (the ride my husband is most excited about). If we only have to worry about one virtual queue – or even better, the next month shows Disney they don’t need it for Remy either – it would make things so much simpler!
Bob Chapek, Disney CEO said if guests want to experience that attraction or our fireworks, we’ll make them pay for it. This man is bringing down Disney.
Last night I got off work and we drive over to DHS. Walked in at 825 and got on Rise at 857. We figured the standby line would benefit us locals lol.
Another cynical comment: I am a little concerned that the posted wait times after the morning rush are inflated. As you mentioned in the article, many people report writing it in less than half the posted wait time. When lightning Lanes launch, I can anticipate people buying a lightning Lane to bypass a 90-minute wait but would actually just wait in the line if they knew it was only 30 to 45 minutes.
Was there this weekend. Did rise around 2pm on a Saturday and waiting only 60min. After all the research i did, I couldn’t believe it was that simple. Much easier than early 2020 when I rode last.
I read that the attraction can process as many guests as Pirates. That’s a huge amount, over 3k per hour. Once guardians and tron open, it wouldn’t shock me if this had a pretty normal wait! Although LL will change literally everything.