RotR Planning & Daily Boarding Group Discussion - *CLOSED*

[Lydia S]

Hi everyone! Just wanted to ask everyone’s opinions about the December 5th opening of Rise of the Resistance.

We booked our vacation early this year, before the opening of SW:GE was announced. Then we pre-planned the parks we were going to visit for our Dec 2nd-8th trip. We were all set to go to HS on the 5th (Thursday) until it was announced that RotR would open. I’m both overjoyed and a bit anxious that this will open while we are there.

In order for us to experience RotR before the end of the trip, we’d have to go either on Opening Day, the following day-a Friday, or Saturday the 7th. Which day of the 3 do you all think would be best? Will crowds be any less on the Friday or Saturday or do more locals tend to go on those days?

Not sure if we should stick with our original plan of visiting HS on the 5th, so What Would You Do?

 

[Buddy40]

We will be there 12/4-9. We booked this trip 400+ days out, expecting SWGE would be fully open before a Thanksgiving. Opening date for RotR threw a curve into our plans. Right now our plan is to do DHS on 12/6. Might change once We see how they plan to manage the crowds. If they use virtual boarding passes like DL did, then it might not matter much which day. I would still avoid the opening day of 12/5 as that will probably have the largest crowds with people arriving hours before RD.

 

[bd410]

this is exactly my question!
We are heading down again dec 3-11. 2adults, 7 and 5year olds not new to disney parks.
plans were to hit up HS on dec 5...
Our plans were to do non SW stuff on that day....but...given this news, i'm debating on changing our plans.
What does everyone think we can anticipate for crowds at HS on that day? Avoid at all costs? or do you think the
rest of HS will be manageable? Thanks!
i'm leaning on changing to 12/4 HS day, but quite honestly, i think any day around the 5th is going to be problematic with lots of families trying to outsmart one another!!

 

[fatmanatee]

If I had a choice between those three days I would prob guess that Friday would be the best bet (not opening day, not weekend where locals might be more of an issue) but who knows, it might be messy all three days no matter what. Good luck!

 

[Lydia S]

this is exactly my question!
Our plans were to do non SW stuff on that day....but...given this news, i'm debating on changing our plans.
What does everyone think we can anticipate for crowds at HS on that day? Avoid at all costs? or do you think the rest of HS will be manageable? Thanks!
i'm leaning on changing to 12/4 HS day.

I'm thinking I will change our day as well to go on the Friday instead of opening day. My thinking is that the rest of the park will be really quiet. I know when we went to AK a few months after Pandora opened, we had a Fastpass for FoP, so didn’t need to rope-drop the area that day. There was EMM hour from 8-9AM the day we went (a Saturday!) and the rest of the park was dead! We got some fantastic pics, and could have went on EE multiple times as a walk on if we had wanted to.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see how opening day goes for SW:GE? I’m hoping by the time December rolls around, we’ll at least be able to experience the rest of the land and the other rides with less crowds if everyone rushes to RotR first thing in the morning. Fingers crossed that something is announced for either extended hours or fastpasses for the SW rides.

 

[wendy1974]

Hi everyone! Just wanted to ask everyone’s opinions about the December 5th opening of Rise of the Resistance.

We booked our vacation early this year, before the opening of SW:GE was announced. Then we pre-planned the parks we were going to visit for our Dec 2nd-8th trip. We were all set to go to HS on the 5th (Thursday) until it was announced that RotR would open. I’m both overjoyed and a bit anxious that this will open while we are there.

In order for us to experience RotR before the end of the trip, we’d have to go either on Opening Day, the following day-a Friday, or Saturday the 7th. Which day of the 3 do you all think would be best? Will crowds be any less on the Friday or Saturday or do more locals tend to go on those days?

Not sure if we should stick with our original plan of visiting HS on the 5th, so What Would You Do?

Even if you go Friday I would still plan to get there at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours before official park opening if you want to ride RotR. If you're not planning to ride it or go into Galaxy's Edge you could probably get there closer to park opening. Hopefully they will extend EEMH for a couple of months after opening.

 

[Lydia S]

Even if you go Friday I would still plan to get there at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours before official park opening if you want to ride RotR. If you're not planning to ride it or go into Galaxy's Edge you could probably get there closer to park opening. Hopefully they will extend EEMH for a couple of months after opening.

I am really really hoping we get 6-9AM hours. It's great that they have already started reservations for Savi's/Droid building/Oga's. Maybe additional announcements on hours and crowd control are coming soon?

 

[Elias1901]

We have a Disney Cruise out of Miami on December 2nd. We are now also visiting WDW from November 28th - Dec 1st (being our last day in the parks). It will be over the US Thanksgiving weekend which is a time at the parks that we would normally avoid but due to a hiccup with our flights, we were refunded and ultimately re-booked to land in Orlando several days beforehand and just drive up to the port early on the 2nd.

Of course, after the fact, they announced ROTR to open on December 5th to which audible sighs from my travel party could be heard all around. So my question is this... how likely would it be for Disney to potentially do any soft opens on the week leading up to opening (over US Thanksgiving weekend)? Have they done any soft openings of new attractions as of late?? I can't seem to recall a time they've done this since the opening of Expedition Everest or something like that... maybe New Fantasyland? Not certain.

Thoughts?

 

[mstevenson]

We booked in January for 11/30-12/7. We plan to go to HS / GE on the 2nd, and I think we are keeping that plan. But we want to try to go back just for RotR. Have to decide between Thursday or Friday morning.

 

[Elias1901]

Since this will be a multi-stage attraction, I wonder how they'll keep lines/bottlenecks in between the "ride" portions to a minimum... unless the first stages of the ride are more-so just extra elaborate pre-shows, opposed to sit down and buckle up type of attractions... I tend to think that is most likely the case there...

 

[Elias1901]

We have a Disney Cruise out of Miami on December 2nd. We are now also visiting WDW from November 28th - Dec 1st (being our last day in the parks). It will be over the US Thanksgiving weekend which is a time at the parks that we would normally avoid but due to a hiccup with our flights, we were refunded and ultimately re-booked to land in Orlando several days beforehand and just drive up to the port early on the 2nd.

Of course, after the fact, they announced ROTR to open on December 5th to which audible sighs from my travel party could be heard all around. So my question is this... how likely would it be for Disney to potentially do any soft opens on the week leading up to opening (over US Thanksgiving weekend)? Have they done any soft openings of new attractions as of late?? I can't seem to recall a time they've done this since the opening of Expedition Everest or something like that... maybe New Fantasyland? Not certain.

Thoughts?

Does anybody have any thoughts toward this... or does the whole concept really just seem pretty unlikely? I'm not sure what sort of conditions Disney considers when deciding to conduct any sort of soft openings... I'd really like to be pleasantly surprised with a slight bit of an early opening, especially since our dates at WDW fall soooooo close to the actual opening date of the attraction but I'm not sure how unrealistic holding out hope for something like that might be.

You'd think perhaps that, if any time to do a soft opening, that Disney would consider having it open over the Thanksgiving weekend, which is not all that many days away from the officially advertised opening date...

Thoughts??

 

[TinkSassy]

Since this will be a multi-stage attraction, I wonder how they'll keep lines/bottlenecks in between the "ride" portions to a minimum... unless the first stages of the ride are more-so just extra elaborate pre-shows, opposed to sit down and buckle up type of attractions... I tend to think that is most likely the case there...

My theory is that they are timed like the pre-shows so that you are entering next areas immediately after another group has moved on. This seems more exciting as so far (proof will be at opening) that this is a totally new attraction concept.

 

[Lydia S]

You'd think perhaps that, if any time to do a soft opening, that Disney would consider having it open over the Thanksgiving weekend, which is not all that many days away from the officially advertised opening date...

Not sure about Soft openings for the public, but won't they at least do a media day ahead of time? I'm also really surprised that the park times haven't been exteded for HS for that week yet.

 

[dceirish]

Not sure about Soft openings for the public, but won't they at least do a media day ahead of time? I'm also really surprised that the park times haven't been exteded for HS for that week yet.

Already gotten word from Disney rep that they're doing a media event for the ROTR opening starting at 5:00 on 12/4.

 

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

I will be hitting DHS on both Thursday and Friday because that's how my reservations shook out (so far. I know better now that plans can change around). Opening day is probably the worst but...

I "lucked into" a late reservation with Oga's at 7:45PM on 12/5 which I realize is RotR opening day. This was before they extended hours. I figured that was going to close out the night for me after a day at EPCOT (heading over to DHS for the ressie around 6:00 or so), no attempting to get onto RotR opening day.

With that one hour extension, I have half an hour to play with assuming all goes well with Oga's and I get out by the 45min time. So I will be trying to get onto RotR before line close. I know I run the risk of them closing the line off early but it's worth a try. Otherwise, I'll try SDD as I've never been on it and the night time pics look great. If not that then ToT (never been on that at night either).

 

[Alicialee05]

I will be hitting DHS on both Thursday and Friday because that's how my reservations shook out (so far. I know better now that plans can change around). Opening day is probably the worst but...

I "lucked into" a late reservation with Oga's at 7:45PM on 12/5 which I realize is RotR opening day. This was before they extended hours. I figured that was going to close out the night for me after a day at EPCOT (heading over to DHS for the ressie around 6:00 or so), no attempting to get onto RotR opening day.

With that one hour extension, I have half an hour to play with assuming all goes well with Oga's and I get out by the 45min time. So I will be trying to get onto RotR before line close. I know I run the risk of them closing the line off early but it's worth a try. Otherwise, I'll try SDD as I've never been on it and the night time pics look great. If not that then ToT (never been on that at night either).

We have a droid depot reservation at around 7:30 and then we are also hitting up Ogas late (I think our reservation is 7:55) might be cutting it close but I figured Oga's wouldn't be a huge miss. We aren't getting our hopes up on the attractions as we arrive into the park around 3:30pm (just me and DH)-- but I figure if by some miracle ROTR is under 3h wait when we get there I would totally do it just to say I did it.

 

[toonaspie]

Here's what I expect would happen (even though nothing has been announced):

- No soft openings. (I don't think these were done for SWGE or Skyliner which makes me think soft openings for new rides in general might be gone for good).
- Cast member previews 1-2 weeks leading up to official opening. (If you know of any CMs at WDW, it's time to butter up to them. )
- An announced 6am opening (which will actually open around 4am) similar with SWGE as a whole.

Disney has been really bad with announcing things last minute so I would prepare for all three of those things now if you intend to ride this as early as possible.

 

[Spridell]

Here's what I expect would happen (even though nothing has been announced):

- No soft openings. (I don't think these were done for SWGE or Skyliner which makes me think soft openings for new rides in general might be gone for good).
- Cast member previews 1-2 weeks leading up to official opening. (If you know of any CMs at WDW, it's time to butter up to them. )
- An announced 6am opening (which will actually open around 4am) similar with SWGE as a whole.

Disney has been really bad with announcing things last minute so I would prepare for all three of those things now if you intend to ride this as early as possible.

I spoke to a CM outside of ROTR the other day and they said 9am opening on the 5th but to get there very very early. I bet it will be 9am but they will let people in around 7am or so.

Dec 4th will be media day.

 

[qv09vvp]

We booked in January for 11/30-12/7. We plan to go to HS / GE on the 2nd, and I think we are keeping that plan. But we want to try to go back just for RotR. Have to decide between Thursday or Friday morning.

this is us exactly 26 days out and still wonderimg

 

[Crazyhorse]

When I made our FP, I didn't know about the ROTR opening date. It just so happens we have a 12/5 10:30 am Oga's reservation. I had also picked a FP for Rockin' Roller at 9:45. Being the likely opening date, is that gonna totally blow us out of the park? I don't want to cancel Oga's but is the park gonna just be crazy....as in we're gonna have to get there a bazillion hours early just to get in the park to meet our reservation/FP times???