Rider Swap

[mel373]

I heard that rider swap now limits the number of people to bring back with the second rider. I have 3 kids. 2 who ride everything- 1 who is too small/scared of everything! It used to be that my husband and I could each ride with the 2 that will ride. What are some recent experiences? Do they still allow you to take back 2 children on the rides? I hope so since it was nice for us to each experience the ride with our children and see their faces on the rides.

 

[lanejudy]

Only 2 are allowed in the 2nd party — the adult who waits with the small child plus 1 other. Your kids will need to take turns getting a second ride.

 

[pineapplepalms]

We have 3 kids and we were just at DL where we did Rider Switch many times, and were able to ride with both older kids the second time. Unfortunately it seems like WDW has a different policy and only allows one kid to ride the second time. Not great for a family with 3 kids.

 

[marthachick]

We will have 4 adults and 1 small child (2 years old). For rides he can’t do, will 2 of us be able to wait with him while the other 2 ride? First time going with a little one. Thanks!

 

[Dulcee]

We will have 4 adults and 1 small child (2 years old). For rides he can’t do, will 2 of us be able to wait with him while the other 2 ride? First time going with a little one. Thanks!

On our most recent trip they limited the second group of riders to 2 individuals. You should be ok.

Side note: this was SUPER frustrating for us. We had a larger group and two kids who were too small to ride. What we wanted to do was have the grandparents, and aunt/uncle ride first (wait in standby), and then myself, husband, and oldest kiddo ride as the second group. We specifically wanted to do it that way so that the clingy/cranky baby and crazy toddler we were swapping spent more time with us than having to be entertained by the non-parents. We were consistently given a hard time about it and it was frustrating because our oldest kiddo (7) often wanted to do more intense rides with both of his parents. No one wanted to ride twice, we just wanted to split our group into 4/3 instead of 5/2.

Eventually got around it by forming "two" initial groups and two sets of swaps...same end result but more scanning and annoyance for zero good reasons.

 

[covington]

Do you have to ride the ride right after the first group gets off or are you allowed to come back?

 

[Disturbia]

I just want to see if anything has changed for Rider switch with standby (not LL) as we exclusively used LL this past Mar 2022 trip

In Nov 2021 they were making everyone stand in the outdoor extended portion of the queue (official queue is after the ride sign). At Expedition Everest we had to get behind 10 people and then approach the CM at the official ride entrance to get a rider swap issued.

At SDMT (June 2021) we had been asked to stand outside together (25 mins of the 45-50 min wait) with our baby. At FOP we were asked to do the same and the line was fast moving and we stood 5 mins outside.

See Tim trackers video below: he does the swap and the CM tells him to stand with his entire family outside and when he nears the entrance (near the sign/official queue) he will get a rider swap issued:

 

[Disturbia]

Do you have to ride the ride right after the first group gets off or are you allowed to come back?

Our rider swap was valid until the end of day, so anytime and it activated immediately (vs time restraints and CMs added 15-30 mins extra to the standby time (ridiculous!) before you could enter the ride in the past)