Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Suffers Downtimes, Low Boarding Group Progress at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Charly Shelton

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Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Suffers Downtimes, Low Boarding Group Progress at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance has been plagued by downtimes and broken effects since opening. One of the issues with operating the most advanced ride on the planet is that it is very complex. With hundreds of individual effects all lining up to meld seamlessly in one ride experience, it is easy to spot the seams when one or two effects go down. This leads to downtimes while the effect is brought back online rather than admitting guests through a poor experience, which also happens sometimes. And topping off the already difficult system, Florida’s weather hasn’t been kind to the ride. Lightning recently struck the show building, leading to downtimes across two days as the electrical system was repaired.

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But it seems that the garden-variety technical issues continued today, as multiple downtimes led to slow calling of Boarding Groups. When we checked in on “Rise” today at 12:18 PM, Boarding Groups 10 – 13 were being called. At 1:15 PM, it had just reopened from its third downtime of the day and was calling Boarding Groups 14 – 15. As of 3:15 PM, the ride was calling Boarding Groups 23 – 27. And as of press time at around 4:50 PM, the attraction is only up to Boarding Group 36.

No official word on any of the issues being insurmountable or whether there is a plan in place to fix things once-and-for-all with a refurbishment. But after months of closure and ample time to tinker without guests, one may assume that a permanent solution is not readily available.

Do you love “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance” despite the downtime? Let us know in the comments below.

6 thoughts on “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Suffers Downtimes, Low Boarding Group Progress at Disney’s Hollywood Studios”

  1. My husband and I, at 9:55 this morning looked at the virtual queue and questioned how it said the 10am queue was no longer enrolling any more guests?

  2. If you look at Hagrid’s, it has become much more reliable after operating for a year. Patience is key when it comes to super complicated rides.

  3. I visited the Hollywood Studios just before Labor Day and I had a problem with the app and was at Guest Relations around 10:00 a.m. to troubleshoot. Unfortunately, they made things worse and caused me to miss the 10:00 a.m. lottery to join the virtual queue. Thankfully, though, they did some “magic” and got us into the very first boarding group.

    As I was walking away, however, I saw tons of disgruntled guests start storming Guest Relations because they couldn’t get into the boarding groups at 10 a.m. Then, upon leaving the park at 2:45 p.m., we saw a line at Guest Relations wrapped out onto about 50 people deep and I can only preclude that this was because they weren’t able to get onto the 2:00 p.m. boarding group either.

    Disney has got to do something else about this ride. They need to have both a virtual queue and a stand-by line at the same time. I overheard some lady saying this happened to her twice during the week already and they were going home the next day and their son was crying. As much as I’d hate to wait in the line, if it’s four hours long then at least it’s my choice to ride or not ride.

    But, if this ride breaks down every few hours, and let’s face it, the reliability is about as high as Disneyland’s Rocket Rods, then I don’t know what the solution is.

  4. We were there yesterday and were in group 24 (which we were thrilled to score at that morning). As the hours ticked by, we wondered if we weren’t going to make it even with such a low boarding group. We finally were called a little after 4:00! I will say that it was not running as well as earlier in the week (which was our first time to experience it!). That time was so seamless and made you feel like you were part of the action. Yesterday, we stood in lines at two different points during the attraction, and it really disrupted the flow. Still amazing, of course, but not as impactful as on Wednesday. We walked by around 7:15 after a final ride on smugglers run, and groups 38-40 were on the board, so I think that’s how far they got since closing was at 7:00.

  5. I’m glad I was lucky enough to ride in ‘A’ mode at Disneyland before the closure.
    Not sure if I’ll make an effort try to ride it on my upcoming Disney World trip.
    It just seems like a recipe for disappointment.
    I appreciate the Imagineers pushing the envelope. But the constant downtime really is “bad show”.

  6. We went at the end of February and did the whole up-before-dawn to get in line to be at the entrance to hit the button at 8:00:00, and by some miracle it worked and my daughter and I got onto the ride before 11:00am…and it was SO worth the hype! Completely immersive, fun, suspenseful, delightful.

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