News Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Standby Line and Boarding Groups at Disney's Hollywood Studios

[Touchdown]

1. Early Bird gets the worm

2. Disney should be truthful about when the park is going to open and when resort transportation begins to allow guests that want to make the sacrifice to get there early to ride the ride the facts so they can make an educated choice.

3. Disney probably isn’t doing this because they know their computer system can’t handle the crush of people who would flood their servers.

4.If this is truly the reason, they need to find another way, like say how they handled getting the wristbands at DL this June. At opening direct all guests who wish to ride Rise of the Resistance towards a location with a lot of space on the other end of the park (like Launch Bay or Lightning McQueen.) Have 30ish CMs staffed to give everyone wristbands with BGs and use the app to announce when they can board, when WBs are out they are out.

When you go to ride have the CM manning the gate have a sharpie and mark every band with an X as they enter the line. Boom.

Can we all just agree on this?

 

[wdwmagic]

Imagine everyone running to SWL on ropedrop, that will be utter chaos.

You mean like Pandora at DAK or for the last few years, Toy Story Land.

 

[drizgirl]

Right now the ride can’t handle an 8 hour standby. Based on my experience it breaks down so often that the 8 hour standby would literally you being in line at 6am and maybe getting to ride it at park closing, maybe.... Not a good look, boarding passes is probably the way to go to minimize impact on guests

But the one day PH + FP for the following day is a reasonable guest recovery for that. The way it is now isn't a good look either.

 

[RobWDW1971]

You mean like Pandora at DAK or for the last few years, Toy Story Land.

Telling that Batuu/MFSR pre-ROTR was not on your list.

 

[marni1971]

Imagine everyone running to SWL on ropedrop, that will be utter chaos.

Did you ever do the walking rope drop on Main Street? One thing Disney can do well when they want to is safely control crowds.

 

[donsullivan]

All of this righteousness trying to call out which group of guests are disenfranchised by the excessive demand for this new attraction is really fascinating. No matter what twisted way you try to spin it, every single guest type there is has absolutely the same opportunity to access the attraction. The scenarios some are describing would result in only resort guests having access to ride during a day- how is that a fair way to do things? The fact is the current capacity of the attraction cannot possible meet the demand to ride. The current method achieves multiple reasonable goals.

- Every single guest entering the parks has the exact same opportunity to get into a boarding group to ride the attraction. It doesn't matter if you're a day guest, pass holder, resort guest, everyone is the same.
- By using the boarding group model they are preventing excessively long lines of 8+ hours which would result from the reliability problems the attraction is having in it's early days. Especially when they get late in the day like yesterday. Imagine if you had been waiting for 8 hours and done nothing else in the park and they said it was done for the day. The place would erupt and every single person in the park whether they were in line or not would demand compensation. This way they know exactly who would have been in the line and compensate as the deem appropriate. It dramatically reduces the potential for abuse of the compensation.
- It doesn't matter what the published opening time is, it's not hard to figure out that they are reacting to the crazy demand by pulling the levers of opening the gates and opening the queue early each day. You could see that by the lines when I got there at 5AM yesterday. Folks are figuring it out on their own and if you make a choice not to get up that early that is indeed you choice and there are consequences to that decision. I was with friends yesterday and one overslept- he got there too late to get into a boarding group. There was nothing we could do about, nor should we expect there was- he overslept.
- Disney are adapting each day to improve things. For example, before yesterday once you tapped into the ride you could immediately grab another boarding group to get multiple rides in a day. Starting yesterday you had to tap out as well after riding and only then could you grab another boarding group. Based on the start of the boarding times this all but eliminated the opportunity for all but the very earliest groups to get more than one during a given day. They are monitoring all of this crazy demand closely and making adjustments each and every day.

Yes, the demand for this amazing attraction is off the charts. Yes, everyone who enters the park cannot ride it on any give day. No, the attraction doesn't have the capacity for everyone who wants to ride it to get on in a given day. The boarding groups is a reasonable accomodation to put everyone on a level playing field with equal access no matter who you are. You just have to get there very, very early to achieve it right now.

 

[KevinPage]

I think they also want to avoid everyone mashing their phones at exactly 8:00 am and causing the servers to crash.

Like the Disney app not working never happens.

Valid point, which then creates people complaining about app working and they should be compensated. But they could never admit that would be a problem. Yet anyone with any clue knows this is an issue with any internet thing in life

 

[Crunchie9]

it still is only showing group 1. Has anyone rode it today ?

 

[Crunchie9]

Ps I fish all the time so the early mornings hopefully will be a walk in the park.

 

[WilliamK99]

Exactly. Not everyone is going to be able to ride ROTR each day. Demand is too high.

The fairest thing is to give everyone the opportunity to get there early which Disney is doing.
If they snooze well it's their own fault. There's not much anyone can say about that.

Notice the people complaining haven't even gotten up early or been on the ride or at Disney. It's like that one guy who is 8 hours away and not even staying at a resort complaining about how unfair it is to resort guests.

I missed out first 2 days because I was under wrong assumption 0800 was good enough , corrected it yesterday and got on ride. If someone wants to ride the ride bad enough they will do what they need to. This is the way.... for now

 

[Mouse Trap]

So what time did the parks open this morning/when were people allowed to join boarding groups? Thinking about getting to HS around 7:30AM tomorrow.

 

[tissandtully]

Holy cow boarding groups are moving slow today

 

[kainsel]

Could they assign boarding passes as soon as you are scanned into the park? For example, 1st person in group swipes magic band at turnstile and system assigns you a boarding group. The system waits for maybe 5-10 minutes for anyone else in your mde group to go through the turnstile to join your boarding group. After the time, you get a popup in mde saying you have been assigned to group ***, and asks if you would like to accept and gives the option to remove anyone in your party who does not want to ride on ROTR.

Disney would have to limit emh days to a couple times a week so that non resort guests would get a chance at getting a group.

 

[donsullivan]

So what time did the parks open this morning/when were people allowed to join boarding groups? Thinking about getting to HS around 7:30AM tomorrow.

According to on the ground reports this morning all boarding groups for the entire day were gone by 7:45AM today. 7:30 is likely cutting it too close for anything but the absolute last boarding groups. And when combined with the down time they are experiencing the highest boarding group numbers are commonly not getting to ride.

It's starting to feel like after a few days of operation they are getting a better sense of how many people they can actually move through the attraction each day. And with that number they are are likely reducing the number of boarding passes they give out to reduce late day disappointment and reduce the amount of compensation they need to give to guests with a boarding pass who cannot ride.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

Just wake up early and go ride the ride like everyone else instead of whining about unfairness each day you miss out.

I rode it on media day and then again (twice) on Friday as a guest.

That still doesn't make lying to your guests a good business practise.

 

[Mouse Trap]

According to on the ground reports this morning all boarding groups for the entire day were gone by 7:45AM today. 7:30 is likely cutting it too close for anything but the absolute last boarding groups. And when combined with the down time they are experiencing the highest boarding group numbers are commonly not getting to ride.

It's starting to feel like after a few days of operation they are getting a better sense of how many people they can actually move through the attraction each day. And with that number they are are likely reducing the number of boarding passes they give out to reduce late day disappointment and reduce the amount of compensation they need to give to guests with a boarding pass who cannot ride.

Good to know. I'm trying to get something towards the end of the day anyways.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

I’m sure Disney would love to know that you are accusing them of lying.

Knowingly stating misinformation is the definition of lying.

 

[raven]

But if they have no chance of riding it for the day and are allowed to wait 12 hours in a standby line that will never get called, do you not think the whiners would complain that it's disingenuous and false. That they were led on that they had a chance.

Or they can just simply cut the line off when the ride reaches it’s daily capacity and put a sign at the entrance and update the app stating this.

It’s also no secret that the park with morning EMH is going to have longer lines. Poor planning on regular park guests to expect otherwise.

I’m not even that interested in RotR after Smugglers Run being a disappointment to me. Too much hype leads to extremely high expectations, which I had, and those expectations failed. The ride technology for RotR has been around for many years now so I’ll keep my expectations low.

 

[donsullivan]

I'm seeing reports that today's lever to control demand is a notice in MDE if you try to get a second boarding pass that guests are now officially limited to one boarding pass per day.

 

[Disneyboy021969]

I'm going next Sunday with my kids been planned for a while bottom line is I'm getting there right before 6 a.m. waiting hopefully towards the front of the line and hoping to get a boarding pass if I get one fine if not oh well we don't ride it this time. At this point I dont care anymore , we will watch a ride video on YouTube to hold us over