Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opening reports and using Boarding Groups at Disneyland

[flutas]

DHS calls 30 groups per hour as they have for weeks, but Disneyland suddenly only calls 10 groups per hour.

I'm going way out on a limb here, but I'm wondering if it's staffing based.

The week of a busy holiday would make sense to have more staff on hand, and that 10 groups an hour number is what they seem to have been averaging going back since opening. It would be an awfully big coincidence to me that the 5 best days of DLRs version just happened to line up with a "holiday" week.

I need to dig into the data I have a bit more to get an accurate number for avg groups per hour on days, until then here's a pretty picture with a few charts.

 

[THE 1HAPPY HAUNT]

Enough with the “newbie” schtick. You yourself haven’t even been here a whole two years; stop acting like you’re a veteran, or something. Have you even been on Rise, yet? Didn’t you admit you haven’t been to the DLR in at least a decade or more?

Enough with the immaturity already. It’s ridiculous. Stop it.

It's not a schtick but a way of life. This is the way.

 

[IMixHits]

⬆ Forums are a funny place. Like the analogy that some people have 10 years experience, yet others have a years experience 10 times. I guess since the White House gardener has been tending the grounds for years he's qualified to be President. Activity does not equal productivity my friend. Be kind.

 

[Californian Elitist]

It's not a schtick but a way of life. This is the way.

Leave people alone and drop the schtick, newbie.

 

[TP2000]

My schtick is to report the daily experience at Rise Before Dawn. And today wasn't a very good day for them.

I have included the past three Saturdays in addition to today, Saturday the 22nd. As you can see, this is the least successful busy Saturday they've had in the past month. And it's quite apparent that ever since the nearly three hour delayed opening on Friday, they have been running at a reduced capacity and are calling far fewer Boarding Groups each hour and each day.

Saturday 2/22 is noted as the purple line, with the three previous Saturdays in 2/15 green, 2/8 red, and 2/1 blue.

Saturday 2/22: Open 8:50am, Closed 7:45pm at Boarding Group 103, Closed 6 Hours, Open 10 Hours

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[DLR>WDW]

Anyone know what time they've been usually opening up Mickey and Friends? Disney says 1.5 hours before the earliest park opening time, but honestly that doesn't seem like enough, especially if you're using EMH that day.

 

[shipley731]

Hi. I’ve been following this thread for a couple of weeks. I’m a long time WDW passholder, and will be making my second ever trip to DL in about a week. I haven’t attempted Rise Before Dawn on this coast as looking at the pictures & reading the accounts from DHS during the first few weeks completely turned me off. (Not interested in fighting the traffic, getting a parking space, etc to attempt this.). That being said, I figured I’d try my luck in DL. We’re staying in the Grand Californian and plan on taking advantage of extra magic hours. (DCA on March 2 & DL on March 3). I know from reading first hand accounts that it seems one of the best places to play the RBD lottery is near the entrance, outside next to the train station. Since we have early access to the park, I really don’t want to waste my time sitting at the train station for an hour with the sea of humanity waiting for the stroke of park opening to attempt the lottery. I’m pretty sure we can get in 3-4 rides in that hour & I don’t want to waste that time. From the touring plan we have we should probably be somewhere in the vicinity of fantasyland / Tomorrowland. I’m thinking I need not to be inside a building, be watching the atomic clock for the stroke of 9 am, open up the app at 8:59.30, and wait to hit “find out more” right at 9 am. I got a brand new iPhone 11 for Christmas (so my phone processing speed is good) & my call phone carrier runs on AT&T towers. I know that it’s suggested to use my cellular data rather than the park wi-fi. Are there any spots beyond the front of the park where my chances might be a little better?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Rich Brownn]

I returned from S.E. Asia a couple days ago, so I have been out of the loop on how things are going with boarding groups. Forgive me if a lot of this has already ben discussed. I tried to secure a Boarding Group today and this was my experience and will be followed by how I think it can be improved.

I got through the security gates at 7AM, 1 hour before opening. It was a mass of humanity. DL had magic morning hours and all but 2 gates were being used for MM guests. The regular guest lines were the last two gates nearest to DTD. The lines were backed up all the way to World of Disney. Keep in mind this was an hour before opening.

I said no thanks and figure they would eventually open up other gates to regular guests. After a few minutes they did and there was a mad rush towards the new gates. Using this strategy of waiting saved a lot of time and I was in DL by 7:20. At 8AM DL was jammed with people all on their phones. My phone got the spinning wheel of death after confirming my party for 5 whole minutes. I tried everything to unfreeze it, but it was stuck. After finally getting through I got boarding group 147. Likely will not be riding today. After this I got a message saying the app was experiencing technical difficulties. Other people were reporting also the app crashing.

After 8AM there is a flood of people leaving the park either waiting out their boarding group outside DL or didn't get a boarding group and leaving the park.

Overall the whole process is chaotic and it seems like Disney is not prepared to deal with the crowd levels this early in the morning. The communication on where to go and what to expect is virtually non existent. If you didn't do a lot of research beforehand, you are lost. Disney has really dropped the ball with this virtual queue. It's dependent on getting up extremely early and still relies on luck to make sure you get in the park before opening and hope the app doesn't freeze or crash on you. I would really like to get on this ride once, but I don't envision trying to go through all this hassle very often. No attraction is simply worth this much effort and aggravation.

What I would change
​

Those who have been to Tokyo know they employ a lottery system for a couple of their most popular shows. For each showtime they distribute a certain number of tickets. You put your ticket media into a kiosk and pick your showtime. It randomly decides if you win and get tickets or lose and get nothing. You can only apply once per day. The key is you don't have to do it first thing. You can show up at 4PM for the late show and then try your luck. With a tweak this I feel would be the best option for boarding groups for ROTR.

- Once per day when in the park you and your party can attempt to get a boarding group.
- It lets you know if you win and assigns you either a boarding group # or scheduled time to ride.
- It doesn't matter when you try. The system will automatically distribute so many wins per hour. You can try your luck at 9AM or 9PM.

Other things I would add

- Multi day tickets can only ride once per ticket. For example a 3 days ticket can only ride once.
- AP's can only ride once every 30 days (or whatever is decided.)

This seems like the most fair way to distribute the limited number of rides. There will certainly be disappointments but would eliminate several problems that exist now. These include:

- Overloading the app for 10 minutes at the beginning of every day.
- Forcing people to get up extremely early and hurriedly try to get in the park before open time only to get lucky and not have the app crash on you.
- If they do not get a boarding group, at least they didn't have to get up really early to do so.
- Those who don't know about all boarding groups being gone within 10 minutes of park open have a chance still to ride
- Not strain Disney infrastructure with highly unusual patterns. This includes thousands of cars showing up earlier than usual at Disney parking, masses of people leaving the park 5 minutes after the park opens, and then getting in their cars and leaving the park when Disney parking lots are not prepared for people leaving.

The easy thing for Disney to do would be just go standby only and have 8 hour lines. It's nice they are trying something different, but at this point the solution they have is simply not cutting it.

The problem here is with downtime. Suppose you choose a 2pm return but at 11am it goes down for 2 hours. Now, what do you do with the people at 11, 12 am 1pm times? Three choices -- everyone gets pushed back 3 hours, the 11,12 and 1 have to wait till the end of the day, or someone with a confirmed time doesn't get to ride.

 

[choco choco]

I mean, the truth is there are probably a dozen different blue sky proposals for any given Disney project that look way cooler on paper than whatever ends up actually being built.

With all the drama they've had with other bridge and hotel ideas, we'd probably still be years away from groundbreaking if they'd decided to pursue an idea like that.

Not really. When Disney throws their weight around, there is very little that Anaheim won't kow-tow to. Both the Eastern Gateway or the hotel project could have been rammed through by Disney's political might, but they decided not to.

 

[choco choco]

?? Can I read more about this somewhere?

It was part of the scuttlebutt of that era. The ultimate reveal that Star Wars land was going to go into Disneyland was so baffling that it basically demanded somebody leak what the heck was going on.

 

[themeparkchat]

It's quite apparent that for the second day in a row they either aren't using as many vehicles on the linoleum floor, or some other operational problem has required them to slow way down on their Boarding Group progression.

By my unofficial observation this is actually the 6th straight day of reduced vehicles. Not good.

 

[Nirya]

Anyone know what time they've been usually opening up Mickey and Friends? Disney says 1.5 hours before the earliest park opening time, but honestly that doesn't seem like enough, especially if you're using EMH that day.

I’ve gotten into the parking structure 2 hours before park opening (an hour before EMH), and it tends to be plenty of time to get into the park way early, especially if you have an idea of what you’re doing. For example, I park at M&F, but I walk over to DTD instead of taking the tram whichgets you to a much easier security line, and using one of the turnstiles hidden behind the monorail pylons gets you in way faster.

 

[Darkbeer1]

Anyone know what time they've been usually opening up Mickey and Friends? Disney says 1.5 hours before the earliest park opening time, but honestly that doesn't seem like enough, especially if you're using EMH that day.

Use Toy Story. If going South on the I-5 take Disney Way, or for a Carpool, Gene Autry Way.

 

[choco choco]

The vehicles at Indiana Jones are almost twice the size and throw you around like a rag doll. On purpose. And they don't have to staff a nurse at the unload dock to tend to the wounded.

Something tells me they could design a 20 passenger vehicle that can glide around Darth Vader's linoleum floor without snapping necks.

Yes, but you would ruin the scale of the ride. Let's say it one more time: the single most important aspect that makes Disneyland work is the scale.

Let's take a look at what the ride vehicles on Shanghai's Pirates looks like:

Yeesh. That is not a good ride experience for the people in the middle of the middle rows. You know where is about the only place where you could herd people into oversized moving pens like that? China, cuz the scale of a country that has to take care of 1.7 billion citizens makes sights like that common.

So they built Shanghai Disneyland at an ENORMOUS, almost mind-boggling scale, and the ride vehicle is a reflection of that. At charming, miniature scale Disneyland it would be absolute mental dissonance with the rest of the place.

And if you want to mention Indiana Jones again, Indy only has 12 people per dispatch, while Rise has 16...so it seems the Imagineers found a better solution than "one large vehicle."

 

[socalifornian]

Hi. I’ve been following this thread for a couple of weeks. I’m a long time WDW passholder, and will be making my second ever trip to DL in about a week. I haven’t attempted Rise Before Dawn on this coast as looking at the pictures & reading the accounts from DHS during the first few weeks completely turned me off. (Not interested in fighting the traffic, getting a parking space, etc to attempt this.). That being said, I figured I’d try my luck in DL. We’re staying in the Grand Californian and plan on taking advantage of extra magic hours. (DCA on March 2 & DL on March 3). I know from reading first hand accounts that it seems one of the best places to play the RBD lottery is near the entrance, outside next to the train station. Since we have early access to the park, I really don’t want to waste my time sitting at the train station for an hour with the sea of humanity waiting for the stroke of park opening to attempt the lottery. I’m pretty sure we can get in 3-4 rides in that hour & I don’t want to waste that time. From the touring plan we have we should probably be somewhere in the vicinity of fantasyland / Tomorrowland. I’m thinking I need not to be inside a building, be watching the atomic clock for the stroke of 9 am, open up the app at 8:59.30, and wait to hit “find out more” right at 9 am. I got a brand new iPhone 11 for Christmas (so my phone processing speed is good) & my call phone carrier runs on AT&T towers. I know that it’s suggested to use my cellular data rather than the park wi-fi. Are there any spots beyond the front of the park where my chances might be a little better?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

The further away you are from the crowds the better your data can be. Just try not to be on a ride or in a queue, especially Indiana Jones. Your phone has more LTE bands than older phones too

 

[Darkbeer1]

Not really. When Disney throws their weight around, there is very little that Anaheim won't kow-tow to. Both the Eastern Gateway or the hotel project could have been rammed through by Disney's political might, but they decided not to.

Look, the DVC tower will go through without a problem, it has already been mentioned at a City Council Meeting.

As for the Eastern Gateway, that open a can of worms. It is important to keep the current 5-2 Majority.

There is currently a petition gathering signatures to recall the Mayor, and 3 council seats are up for grabs in November.

The timing of presenting the revised Eastern Gateway project has major effects on those 4 seats, currently 3 that Disney likes, and one that isn't.

There are reasons why. The first attempt of the Eastern Gateway was when there was an anti majority of 4-3, and you see it failed due to stacking the deck of Planning Commission members.

 

[SoCalMort]

...From the touring plan we have we should probably be somewhere in the vicinity of fantasyland / Tomorrowland...

So long as you're in that area, stand near the Autopia / Railroad boarding platform. It will place you in an isolated area as close as possible to Harbor Blvd and any nearby cell towers. I use ATT and have an iPhone 6 and it work perfectly.

 

[Darkbeer1]

In a December interview, Cedar Point General Manager Jason McClure said : “Anytime a guest comes to the park, we want it to be a good experience. If we sell a lot of passes and no one has fun — that is not what we want.”

 

[TP2000]

Today is the third day in a row where the ride has really struggled. It's neck-and-neck right now with Friday as the worst day ever. Disneyland is open 8am to Midnight today and the ride didn't open until 9am this morning and then has had about six hours worth of break downs and worked for about three hours so far.

Here's today so far as the green line, with yesterday as the red line and Friday as the blue line.

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[Californian Elitist]

I look at the Twitter picture and can’t help but giggle a bit.

No ride is worth this hassle.