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

SoFloMagic

SoFloMagic

Well-Known Member
Tom Morrow said:
I do have issues about getting there unnecessarily early.
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I got there at 6:30 a couple weeks ago and got group 26. That's half an hour before opening.
Also, people are going to line up either way. They'll just pull over on the side of Osceola like they do for the airport and block traffic. Isn't that worse? And before you say it, the police have better things to do than write tickets for this. Seems the current option is the least bad option they have.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Tom Morrow said:
The bolded part is the sentiment that many are sharing and it really makes no sense. Disney could have nipped it in the bud early on but instead gave in to the earlier and earlier arrivals, resulting in the stupidly early situation we have now. This is their own private property which they can do whatever they want on. They are NOT, I repeat, NOT powerless to prevent guests from parking and lining up at the gates early. They can prevent them from even taking the exit ramp into the Studios parking lot until the designated arrival time, or they can redirect people out of the parking lot if they try to come in early. Anyone who doesn't comply can deal with the police, it's that simple. It's literally a matter of a handful of extra security CM positions.

If they did not allow a crowd to build up for two hours then there wouldn't be two hours' worth of people ready to stampede into the park, creating a situation much more unsafe than if they just opened the parking lot like normal. The process of stopping at the toll booths and being directed to a parking spot naturally creates enough of a filter to trickle people in, and giving a shorter timeframe prior to allowing guests to enter the park prevents the crowd from getting to large.

Disney is more than capable of handling the resulting crowds - see the traffic on World Drive on New Years Eve. The resulting situation wouldn't be anything even remotely close to that level of craziness and they handled that just fine because they were staffed and prepared for it.

If we want to talk about safety issues - 10,000 people lined up at the park entrance for two hours is far more unsafe than "more traffic than normal when the parking lot opens".
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I still don’t think you get it. 10000 people who are willing to show up before park opening will still be willing to show up before park opening. All you are arguing for is to move the crowds to their cars and have more of them show up at the same time. Is 5000 people backed up in their cars and 5000 people at the gates seriously that much of an improvement? That’s rhetorical I guess and where we disagree.

From a sheer operational perspective it’s way easier to have the bottle neck be a tap-style rather than parking and trams. It’s whole reason the gate was redesigned.

The ONLY thing that safely reduces the bolus is moving the opening time earlier, not the other way around. If the parks opened at 4 in the morning it would probably be a pretty pleasant crowd, because 10000 people are not willing to show up at that time.
 
TrainsOfDisney

TrainsOfDisney

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
The ONLY thing that safely reduces the bolus is moving the opening time earlier, not the other way around. If the parks opened at 4 in the morning it would probably be a pretty pleasant crowd, because 10000 people are not willing to show up at that time.
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I do agree with this. My personal experience was fine with a 6 am opening. Not with a 7 am opening. They really should have just kept the 6 am opening, with opening the gates at 5:30
 
Tom Morrow

Tom Morrow

Well-Known Member
SoFloMagic said:
I got there at 6:30 a couple weeks ago and got group 26. That's half an hour before opening.
Also, people are going to line up either way. They'll just pull over on the side of Osceola like they do for the airport and block traffic. Isn't that worse? And before you say it, the police have better things to do than write tickets for this. Seems the current option is the least bad option they have.
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You wouldn't be having to get there as early as even 6:30 if they hadn't allowed this situation to snowball. Disney is notorious for letting their guests walk all over them so it's no surprise that they're choosing to staff an entire theme park for three extra hours rather than employ a little extra security and crowd control methods to tell people "no, you can't come in yet."

VaderTron said:
Sorry to say, but at this point, I think all those who are going to listen to this argument already believe it. No need to keep harping on it. Those who don't want to see your point aren't going to just because it's constantly brought up.
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Disney themselves might see it, but you're right.

I hope this situation improves after this Sunday when the holiday crowds leave.
 
NickC

NickC

Well-Known Member
disneygeek90 said:
Do we have any reports of how people faired getting there about 6:30 today? Did they get in by 7?
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To answer your question and provide a report for today - we got through security and into the mass of waiting people at around 6:10. They opened the park at around 6:15 and we were through the tapstiles and in the park shortly after 6:30. It moved really quickly, mostly because they were not requiring the fingerprint scan. I'd say if you had gotten there at 6:30 today you'd have had no issues getting in by 7. But of course, it all depends on what time they decide to open the park and how quickly the lines move, so I'd still say get there by 6:15 to be absolutely sure you're in the park.

I Opened the app right at 7a and snagged boarding group 8. Then we made the long, slow shuffle back to Galaxy's Edge. It was wall-to-wall people all the way back - I've never seen it so crowded! Our group was called right at 7:15 as we were still shuffling through the entrance tunnel. This was my fourth time riding and my wife's first (she refused to wake up before 5:30a for a theme park ride while they were still doing boarding groups the old way, haha).

I know the pros and cons of the new system have already been discussed ad nauseam, but overall I like that this new way of distributing groups kinda levels the playing field for those willing to play, (and finally convinced my wife to come and take a shot at the ride) but I did see many more angry/disappointed people today than I did when they were using the old way. That's probably due to the insane number of people and the fact that they were all in a tightly packed area, but at least with the old way you had a rough idea of what group number you'd get. Now people are at the mercy of their ability to efficiently operate their phones within a very small timeframe.
 

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SourcererMark79

SourcererMark79

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
The rain cleared a lot of people out of DHS, wait times down a lot from earlier in the day. Sadly, since I got here at 715am, I missed all the groups. Even though I've done Rise before (520 am arrival), this running out of boarding groups 5 min after open is really unfortunate. I understand both arguments, but the last 3 days have shown this newest iteration of opening operations is not friendly for many of WDW guests.
 
RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
Demarke said:
What’s all this about Disney keeping secrets that boarding groups are a thing? How to work boarding groups has literally been the first thing you see when you open the app since the ride opened, I would be shocked if the app was not available in other languages.
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And if you could show up at noon and ride Hagrid, that means there was capacity for the guests that wanted to ride. The speed of boarding groups going is a pretty good indicator in my opinion that demand exceeds capacity right now for this ride. They can’t reasonably allow people to queue up at the end of the day like at FoP or else the ride would practically never shut down for the night right now. Having standby would just PO a ton of people each time the ride shut down and the queue was cleared or (like today) massive amounts of people couldn’t ride. I know some people are frustrated that this impacts their plans for FPs and such at other parks, but if it was standby, those same people would be waiting in line all day and not have an opportunity to do any rides at other parks anyway.
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But what if I don't know about the app? Oh, everything runs the app now? Perhaps if I make this point that the app is the issue than I can come up with a more defensible argument? The app is bad and they opened the ride too early so clearly this is the virtual queue's fault.
 
disneygeek90

disneygeek90

Well-Known Member
NickC said:
To answer your question and provide a report for today - we got through security and into the mass of waiting people at around 6:10. They opened the park at around 6:15 and we were through the tapstiles and in the park shortly after 6:30. It moved really quickly, mostly because they were not requiring the fingerprint scan. I'd say if you had gotten there at 6:30 today you'd have had no issues getting in by 7. But of course, it all depends on what time they decide to open the park and how quickly the lines move, so I'd still say get there by 6:15 to be absolutely sure you're in the park.

I Opened the app right at 7a and snagged boarding group 8. Then we made the long, slow shuffle back to Galaxy's Edge. It was wall-to-wall people all the way back - I've never seen it so crowded! Our group was called right at 7:15 as we were still shuffling through the entrance tunnel. This was my fourth time riding and my wife's first (she refused to wake up before 5:30a for a theme park ride while they were still doing boarding groups the old way, haha).

I know the pros and cons of the new system have already been discussed ad nauseam, but overall I like that this new way of distributing groups kinda levels the playing field for those willing to play, (and finally convinced my wife to come and take a shot at the ride) but I did see many more angry/disappointed people today than I did when they were using the old way. That's probably due to the insane number of people and the fact that they were all in a tightly packed area, but at least with the old way you had a rough idea of what group number you'd get. Now people are at the mercy of their ability to efficiently operate their phones within a very small timeframe.
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Wow group 8 that’s fantastic! Thanks for the info.
 

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