ROTR- End of day after all parades or rope drop?

[wallyeva123]

I've been reading the posts on rope drop strategy and it all seems really intense. Has anyone just waited to do it at the end of the night after all the parades but before the park closes?

 

[sweethannah]

ROTR closes quite early, long before park closure. Tonight for example it closes at 9pm but the Park is open until 12a. (https://disneyland.disney.go.com/en-ca/attractions/disneyland/star-wars-rise-of-the-resistance/)

 

[Obi-J Kenobi]

The PP is correct that ROTR closes early. Please remember too that ROTR, although a newer DL attraction, has a history of not being ready for guests as DL park opens. I realize that any attraction is at risk of being closed for maintenance at rope drop, it's just that ROTR seemingly has this issue more so than other rides.

 

[dina444444]

At Disneyland unless you’re there on like an actual holiday RTR typically runs between a 50 to 80 minute wait on a regular basis after the rope drop rush. And as noted above the ride closes a few hours before the park does.

 

[Becca1007]

Here is how we did it... we waited until it went down in the app for a while and then wandered over to Galaxy's Edge. We got snacks and looked around and kept an eye out on the queue, they opened the line probably 15 minutes before they published that it was open on the app. We waited 45 minutes to ride in the standby line.

 

[FeistyDisneyMom]

There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference between being mid- to back-of-the-pack rope drop, and midday waits. We plan on just doing standby sometime midday/early afternoon.

 

[yensid's offspring]

Here is how we did it... we waited until it went down in the app for a while and then wandered over to Galaxy's Edge. We got snacks and looked around and kept an eye out on the queue, they opened the line probably 15 minutes before they published that it was open on the app. We waited 45 minutes to ride in the standby line.

GARSH I hope you got a blue milk (with the rum) and a ronto wrap for the wait, that would be quite pleasurable.

 

[twodogs]

The PP is correct that ROTR closes early. Please remember too that ROTR, although a newer DL attraction, has a history of not being ready for guests as DL park opens. I realize that any attraction is at risk of being closed for maintenance at rope drop, it's just that ROTR seemingly has this issue more so than other rides.

In addition, if the ride is having trouble close to the ride's closure time for the night, they will just close it earlier than planned. So while it may save you some wait to try to get in line right before they close the line for the night, you may miss the ride entirely if it is down at that time. No big deal if you can just try it another day; not great when it is the last chance for your trip...

 

[gelatoni fan]

Like people have said, it's not possible to do after the night shows. If you are OK not having the best spots for the night shows, the line tends to start getting shorter sometime after 7. I sometimes go around 8 when they have a posted wait of 60 minutes but wait only about 1/2 an hour to 40 minutes. Crowd patterns could change in the summer though and there is a potential risk of downtime.

You'd probably wait around the same amount of time at rope drop unless you're good at getting to the front of the pack. Otherwise you'll have to eat the 60-90 minute wait.

 

[Kit Jackson]

I would say do it earlier in the day because Galaxy's Edge is better in the daylight. It's easier to see all of the details on the Falcon parked outside. Seeing the Falcon outside was the best part of Galaxy's Edge (aside from the rides. Rise of the Resistance is next level amazing, and Smuggler's Run is one of my Star Wars fantasies come true).

 

[Beatitude]

Definitely the rope drop - the standby line is more manageable than much of the day. More importantly, if you have carefully planned out your day, it’s a much safer and less risky call. ROTR goes offline all the time - it can (and has) messed up our attraction-riding strategy on a number of occasions (both standby and Genie+) - most recently this past Saturday (5/14).

 

[Obi-J Kenobi]

I tend to agree with many of the points being made on this thread about the unreliability of ROTR and that it goes down morning, noon and night. No quarrel here.

But back to the OP's question about the best time to visit ROTR. For me, the question is this: do I rope drop ROTR versus a bunch of other attractions we may also want to hit up? Because if it were me, I want to utilize that precious rope drop time to knock out 3-4 other attractions with lower waits before I go back to ROTR, especially if I "wasted" rope drop time for an attraction that has a history of being down for maintenance at park opening. That event is the double whammy. You don't get ROTR because it is down and you missed the opportunity to ride several other attractions with low wait at the rope drop because you went straight to ROTR. I really think that is the analysis you have to do as a park guest.

But, in the end, just remember two things:

1.) A bad day at Disneyland is far, far better than any other day outside of Disneyland.

2.) There's always a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow!

 

[ironband74]

Agree with much of what has been said. It really depends on how badly you want to experience it and what your risk tolerance is for missing it.

We had hoped to ride it twice during our 3 day trip.

Day one I planned a later ride on it and it worked splendidly - we hopped into line around 7:30 with a posted 45 minute wait and it took about 25 minutes to get to the pre-show.

Day three we tried the same thing, but found it to be down around 7pm. We hung out in GE and it came back up at 8pm - we hopped into line and waited 20 minutes before we got the dreaded message that recruiting would cease for the day.

So we got one ride in for which I'm happy, but it was a bummer to miss a second one.

There is a fair possibility of it going down on a given evening. If it is super important to you to do it with a minimum wait, and you want to be sure to get on in a given day, you kind of have to buy the ILL.

If you have the risk tolerance, then doing it in the evening is a good strategy. Sometimes if the ride is running well and/or they had significant downtime earlier in the day, they will extend the operating hours by an extra hour...but you can't count on that.

I wouldn't touch it for rope drop. Too much uncertainty, competition, and time commitment (even if it is running and you are first on...It'll be 30-40 minutes after open by the time you get off, and you'll be in the back corner of the park). But that's just me - I like to min/max my hours and that first hour is golden for getting on multiple rides.

YMMV.