The only way to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is by obtaining a Boarding Group via the My Disney Experience app, and with constantly-changing park hours and opening operations, it’s hard enough for locals and Annual Passholders to obtain a reasonable Boarding Group (if one at all), and practically Byzantine for guests attempting to obtain a Boarding Group on vacation.
Today, the attraction saw its shortest Boarding Group distribution time to date.
According to our calculations, all Boarding Groups (including Backup Boarding Groups) were distributed within 23 minutes after park open. That’s 7 minutes shorter than yesterday, which clocked in at 30 minutes. Overall, Boarding Group distribution has been subject to blips and trends. On Tuesday, groups were available until 11:19 AM, and New Year’s Eve is notorious for high-level crowding.
https://twitter.com/SoyVanillaMisto/status/1213215794118774784
Waiting in another exit line after Rise of the Resistance broke AGAIN while we were on it… will we ever get to ride? @DisneyParks pic.twitter.com/G8GDbaF6V5
— Erin Lammers (@naomiandeliza) January 3, 2020
Reports on social media indicate that issues with the My Disney Experience app crashing, combined with extended downtime for the attraction due to various breakdowns, has wrought havoc on today’s Boarding Group process.
In HS before 7 and trying to get boarding passes for Rise of the Resistance when HS opened (kept crashing for second day). Finally got one at 7:02 – group 140. Frustrating, @WaltDisneyWorld! There are many unhappy guests who were up early and did everything right. pic.twitter.com/sgSNayqoPe
— Jennifer Harter (@jenniferharter) January 3, 2020
Guests who were issued a Backup Boarding Group have since received notifications stating that their groups will not be able to be accommodated due to downtime.
As of time of publishing, the attraction is now boarding Groups 71 – 73.
Do you think this rush will end after this New Years week? We are coming the last week of January, which is usually a quiet time of year, but do you think Rise will still have these early morning waits and early virtual queue closures?
I am going the exact same time, and plan to be at HS on the 25th. Fingers crossed we have more than 20 minutes to try to join a boarding group.
Yes, we went the Monday after the Thursday opening. We got there at 5:00am we waited in the security line which opened at 6:00 am, then waited in the ticket line until 6:30 am. Once the park opens You have to have your entire group in the park before you can get in the queue. We went two different days as they allow only one ride per day we were in queue 14 one day and 9 the next we were 1st in line for our ticket line. The best part was the rest of the park was open, so we rode all rides in toyland in 15 minutes one day and rode Rock and Roll roller coaster and tower of terror 3 times each the next time in under an hour. We then rode Rise of the Resistance the hour and a half wait in the early morning was worth it. This was one of our best experiences at Disney!
Did you use the parks wifi or did you use cellular?
It’s time to just distribute the fast passes!
I was there yesterday and got group 13. It was really not that difficult if you were prepared.
What does “if you’re prepared,” translate to? I’m going with a large family with kids and grandparents… waiting in line at the crack of dawn isn’t realistic for us. Do you think In a few weeks we could show up at or just after opening time and get a boarding group?
I’m right there with you, Greg. We have 4 kids under the age of 10, and we will be traveling with another family with 3 little kids as well. All of us are big Star Wars fans and it will be terribly difficult to wake EVERYONE (4 adults/7 children) up at 4am to stand in line for 2 hours to HOPE to get a boarding pass bc they all have to have their wrist bands scanned in order to be included. That’s why I say, it’s time to just distribute the fast passes.
Well, if ” waiting in line at the crack of dawn isn’t realistic” for you then it’s very doubtful that you could show up at/just after rope drop and get a boarding group anytime in the next few weeks. It’ll be months. Just think about Pandora.
Can you run through how it all works? We are going in two weeks and it will make our lifetime if we can get an early boarding pass!
We went today (Jan 4) and were able to get boarding group 15. Here’s what we did: downloaded the Disney Exp app on each of our family member’s phone and ensured that all of our accounts/passes were linked to a single account; got to the park (we Ubered
so we’re dropped off right at the security gates) just before 6am; entered the park at about 6:25 and immediately made our way to the ride we wanted to do most but didn’t have a Fast Pass for (Rock n’ Roll Coaster); as we waited for the 7am official opening time we turned off WiFi and closed the Disney app; at about 5 secs before 7am, each in our party launched the app and selected the Rise of the Resistance page until one of us got a boarding group number. A few tips that seems to help: (1) getting to the park around 6am gave us comfort that we would be in the park by 7am (the official park opening time) and would be able to get a decent standby spot for a ride we didn’t already have a fast pass for. By the time the gates opened just after 6:10am or so the waiting area was packed; I doubt that people who arrived much after 6:35ish made it into the park before 7:00am. (2) Having multiple logins to the same account gave us more chances to get a good boarding spot. (3) don’t use the park WiFi to login in to the app to get your boarding pass. We heard that the WiFi, not surprisingly, crashed on other days with people loading and reloading the Disney app on the same day. Not saying Verizon has a better network, but that’s we we all had ;).
Oh, and by the way, the ride was absolutely fantastic. All of the above was completely worth it!
I just went thru this with my family of 5 on Dec 24. We got there around 6:30am to line up to enter the park. They started letting people in around 6:40-45am and we got thru the turnstiles (scanning of your ticket) at 6:50am. I had a couple of phones ready with the Disney experience app for the virtual queue. The virtual queue was opened promptly at 7am (or whatever official park opening time is) for you to join. The key is to make sure you are there early enough to get thru the turnstiles before virtual queue is opened (which is when the park officially opens). We got boarding group 22.
We were boarding group 59. We got our BG assignment just after 7am. Highly recommend not using Disney WiFi to run the app. We were unable to ride the ride in its entirety until 8pm.
So that me get this straight. You spend $150 to get in and probably 1 out of 10 can get into star wars. All the hype to get u there with little chance of riding, so instead u walk around bantu shop and eat spending more money from the Disney cash grap. Nice business plan disney screw the guest and make more money. It’s not fun to go to the parks anymore, miss the days 15 plus yrs ago when u could fo there get a few parr tandy pasd and enjoy the park. No i need to book and my app weeks in advance, no spontaneous disney trip now. Disney sucks big time now.
Thank you for your tips! We went today. We are in the park at 6 am. They opened the doors at 6:15 am, and we were in by 6:45 am. We found a spot on the main street and waited. We use Apple’s watch with seconds, which was spot on sync with the park. Click the app 2 seconds after 7 am, and we got board group 19. Groups stars at 9, not 1, so we were lucky. One minute and the lady next to us got boarding group 86. I don’t think there were any groups left after 5 min. It was a great experience and an awesome ride! But be prepared, use your own internet, have all your party ready on the app, etc.
We got thru security/ticket scan & officially in HS at 6:55AM. I waited for the clock to tick over to 7:00:00 and then cycled back/forth between screens until Request Boarding Pass was enabled (un-ghosted). Within ~10-15 seconds after 7:00:00, I got my request in and at about 7:00:25 (~5-15 seconds after Rise-Resistance queue opened), I got Group # 59 !! That was half way into their stated nominal 125 Groups per day.
Around noon, we got our call back Push Notice. We arrived and found the ride was Down. We waited nearby for ~1hr, it opened and we got in the Boarding queue line, and waited in all ~ 2.5 hrs while the Resistance was Up & Down, and Up/Down, and after the 4th Down, we ALL were asked to asked to leave the queue/bldg, given FastPasses, and to return later. I understood from one of the Staff that had also happened earlier in the day before we every started our attempts. We did come back about 5 more times…always down every time we returned !! In all, I think I counted it breaking down some 8 times just while I was around checking, not counting anyone else. In all, we committed some 5+ hrs of our HS day just being in the line or standing nearby for the next re-start.
When I asked Staff (Cast Member) how can we know if it has restarted, if any Push notices would be sent out (NO), their only response was to look at the MyDisney APP HS screen, Boarding ‘My Status’ and see if the ‘Now Boarding’ # has changed any…At 8:30PM we gave up, cut our losses, and used the FastPasses elsewere. VERY disappointed that despite all our efforts, the Ride broke down seemingly more than it was up…and this was our last day in WDW & HS.
I was there on 12/22. They just changed the way of distributing boarding group to the official opening time each day. But we arrive early any way. Got in around 6:30am. Waiting by seconds at the Main Street inside the star bucks.
It was definitely not as crazy as the news I read recently. We were able to get group 24. And the boarding group was called back at around 7:30am. And once we are in the line. About 10 minutes, we ride this amazing ride. We finished all before 8am. And was able to go back to the resort for a nap.
A guy next to us got the group about 30 seconds after us, he got 27. But from what I read recently, sound like all group is gone within minutes. I am just glad that we did it earlier at the Christmas week.