TRON Lightcycle Run Virtual Queue Ending!

For the first time in over 2 years, Walt Disney World is dropping a virtual queue instead of adding one! TRON Lightcycle Run will discontinue its boarding group system and switch to standby soon. This post shares official announcement details, plus our commentary about Magic Kingdom finally dropping one of its two VQs.

The last time Walt Disney World dropped a virtual queue for a ride was a few months after the opening of Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure. (Yes, it’s been that long.) That change came only a few months after Disney’s Hollywood Studios “paused” the virtual queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. That pause, thankfully, turned out to be permanent.

Given how promptly the virtual queue for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure was ended, we were optimistic about Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind doing likewise. After all, that virtual queue wasn’t strictly necessary to manage crowds by late Summer 2022. And yet, here we are over two years later, and it’s still in use. But that’s another story for another day…

For now, Walt Disney World has announced that starting September 9, 2024, a standby queue will be available at TRON Lightcycle / Run presented by Enterprise. A virtual queue will be in place for TRON Lightcycle Run from now through September 8, 2024.

During this time, guests can request to enter the virtual queue no more than once per day during regular park hours. Notably, both TRON Lightcycle Run and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure currently use virtual queues, and you cannot be in both simultaneously. Meaning that you potentially have to make a hard choice about which to pick.

There are 2 daily opportunities to request to join the virtual queues for TRON Lightcycle / Run or Tiana’s Bayou Adventure:

• 7:00 AM (Guests do not need to be in Magic Kingdom to join the virtual queue at this time)
• 1:00 PM (Guests must have entered Magic Kingdom to join the virtual queue at this time)

Please be aware that as of September 9, 2024, the virtual queue will no longer be available for TRON Lightcycle Run.

Extended Evening Theme Park Hours

An opportunity to request to join the virtual queue will be available at 6:00 PM for TRON Lightcycle Run on select dates through September 8, 2024, during extended evening theme park hours—a benefit for registered Guests staying at a Disney Deluxe Resort, Disney Deluxe Villa Resort or other select hotels.

After this, TRON Lightcycle Run will use a standby line during Extending Evening Hours, too.

As noted above, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is still using a virtual queue for its “initial opening period.” While a standby queue will not be available during the attraction’s initial opening days, Walt Disney World expects to open a standby line soon after the attraction’s opening.

That’s what Walt Disney World said when first announcing the opening date and details for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure back in May. Disney’s language at the time strongly suggested Tiana’s Bayou Adventure wouldn’t have a virtual queue for nearly as long as any other ride at Walt Disney World. In fact, we predicted it would be dropped by July 8. That was almost two months ago.

What we didn’t predict–and what no one could’ve predicted–was that the reimagined ride would have so many reliability and downtime woes. It is somehow much, much worse than Splash Mountain. Don’t even get me started on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure’s issues. After encountering repeated headaches with that during the course of field testing last week, I’m at my wits’ end with that attraction. Another story for another day, though.

Suffice to say, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure absolutely needs to continue using a virtual queue at this point. It is not the same as TRON or Cosmic Rewind, and I think fans underestimate just how much more frustrating it would be with a traditional standby line during daily ops. Which is really saying something because, again, it’s very frustrating right now!

As for why TRON Lightcycle Run is dropping its virtual queue before Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, which opened almost a full year earlier, my gut is that it comes down to two virtual queues in Magic Kingdom and resulting complaints and guest satisfaction.

Right now, it’s very difficult to score boarding passes for both attractions due to the downtime at Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Even if you have fast fingers and are excellent at scoring low boarding groups (thus enabling you, in theory, to be done with one before 1 pm), you’re at the mercy of TBA downtime. (Ask me how I know!!!)

Compounding matters is that Lightning Lane Single Pass is Selling Out Faster and that Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is the firm #1 pick on our list of the Top 10 Toughest Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World. This means that many/most guests are left with no same-day option for doing both Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and TRON Lightcycle Run. It’s ridiculous, and a problem EPCOT doesn’t have right now.

To be clear, this is absolutely not a defense of the virtual queue at Cosmic Rewind–please don’t read it that way. Rather, it’s an indictment of the abysmal system that’s been in use at Magic Kingdom for the last couple months. Dropping the virtual queue at TRON Lightcycle Run is thus a big step in the right direction.

TRON Lightcycle Run switching to standby has huge strategic ramifications for rope drop and Early Entry, as well as the end of the night and even Extended Evening Hours. The big one, for us, is the morning.

We’ve been saying for years now that Magic Kingdom is the worst park for Early Entry. The combination of the 9 a.m. opening plus a limited ride roster plus Walt Disney World’s most popular park is a recipe for crowds and surprisingly long lines. I’ll have a full report soon, but suffice to say, my most recent Early Entry test runs only went okay–and that was despite low crowds during the day at MK.

There are a few possible fixes for this, but the most realistic one is running TRON Lightcycle Run during Early Entry. Once it drops the virtual queue, it should operate during Early Entry since it’s in Tomorrowland. Although it would induce some added demand, I’d hazard a guess that the extra capacity would be a net positive, relieving pressure on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Space Mountain. That extra 30 minutes also means more guests could ride over the course of the day. It’s a win-win move.

Of course, Walt Disney World hasn’t announced anything beyond dropping the virtual queue for TRON Lightcycle Run, so we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We’ll have more thorough strategy updates once more is actually announced or the standby line debuts.

As is well-documented in our many posts, our perspective on virtual queues has evolved over time. In large part, this was motivated by Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance improving its reliability and uptime, meaning guests in the standby queue were less likely to endure a breakdown. (Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is just like RotR was in 2019-2021.)

The shift to a standby line for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance was largely vindicated. Although it still has too much downtime, it’s more or less on the outer bounds of what’s acceptable. Same goes for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, which isn’t even above average in terms of ride breakdowns. (They do happen, just not as often as RotR or TBA.)

Suffice to say, it’s hard to see any reason why TRON Lightcycle Run still “needs” a virtual queue so long after its initial launch season. The attraction has plenty of queue space, and it’s not like the virtual queue is being used to keep wait times down–because of how aggressive they are in calling boarding groups, there line is still routinely over an hour long.

Cosmic Rewind is a bit of a different beast since there is less physical queue space, but they installed overflow outside (complete with umbrellas!) last summer, and it’s just been sitting there since. As mentioned above, it stopped “needing” a virtual queue only a few months after it debuted, so back around late Summer 2022.

In our view, virtual queues are guest unfriendly and should only be used when absolutely necessary. Whenever they can be dropped, they should be dropped. It is patently obvious to me that the VQ can be dropped at not just TRON Lightcycle Run, but also Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. Again, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is a different story for now–its VQ is needed at least until the reliability problems are fixed or the winter off-season arrives.

As Walt Disney World has undertaken initiatives to simplify and improve the guest experience, eliminating the remaining virtual queues seems like an obvious next-step. And I say all of this as someone who selfishly likes virtual queues because they give me (and other knowledgeable, frequent guests) an advantage over the average visitors. But I also recognize that what’s good for me is not always good for the park-going public.

The thing is that ride capacity is a zero-sum game. If the virtual queue is filling up with a bunch of APs and locals who would skip a triple-digit standby wait, those spots are coming at the expense of someone else. The losers in this scenario are likely disproportionately first-timers and other low-knowledge or technology-averse guests.

Whereas these people often are oblivious to virtual queues or are unsuccessful at joining, many of them are able or more inclined to wait in a long standby line. The balking point is higher for them–they’ve never done the ride, so their tolerance for lines or threshold for waiting is higher than the average AP who skips any standby line that’s over 30 minutes.

First-timers or infrequent visitors are the very demographics that, in my opinion even as a biased and self-interested AP, Walt Disney World should be favoring. It’s better for the sake of guest satisfaction and creating new fans to make things easier for these people, and removing one layer of friction.

This is doubly true when it comes to newer attractions that are the focus of marketing campaigns. There are people who have booked trips after seeing ads for Cosmic Rewind or TRON Lightcycle Run…who haven’t been able to ride because they failed at the virtual queue, or didn’t understand how to ‘play’ in the first place. Or maybe those are just the rides they really, really want to experience over and over again–in which case, they should be able to do so if they’re willing to endure multiple 100+ minute waits. That should be their choice!

As most of us have complained about the amount of screen time and overreliance on technology in visiting Walt Disney World, we should likewise continue to support the retirement of virtual queues. They may benefit us on an individual level, but are bad on a holistic level.

Overall and in aggregate, virtual queues are a negative for the guest experience–and one that leads to more complaints and opportunities for disappointment that has no potential resolution. Virtual queues add yet another unnecessary layer of friction and make things overwhelming and intimidating for inexperienced and older guests.

As such, we applaud the end of the virtual queue at TRON Lightcycle Run in Magic Kingdom. It should’ve happened a full year ago, but better late than never. Next up, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. I don’t care what the operational excuse is for keeping that 2 years longer than necessary–it’s a bad one and also needs to go.

When Walt Disney World has removed virtual queues in the past, a subset of fans has complained that they’ve done so out of “greed” and as a way to push Lightning Lane sales. Ironically, another subset has complained that this is what virtual queues do. There really is no pleasing everyone.

For our part, we are skeptical that Lightning Lane sales have any bearing on virtual queues. If they did, more attractions would add or remove them, as the case may be. With the benefit of hindsight from the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance change, it’s safe to say that was/is not the driving motivation. Lightning Lanes sell out for most attractions on a daily basis, regardless–it doesn’t appear that the virtual queue changes the calculus for prospective buyers one way or the other.

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.

Not everything is a conspiracy or done by Disney with ulterior motives to make even more money. That’s not just a cynical perspective, but one that makes our collective voice as fans easier to ignore. If we complain about everything, there’s no point in the company listening to us.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of this news that Walt Disney World will end of the TRON Lightcycle Run 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!