RotR Planning & Daily Boarding Group Discussion - *CLOSED*

[OhhBother]

Just woke up from our nap at OKW and caught up on this thread.

It’s interesting to see the common theme of not being able to “trust” Disney communication on this matter. That’s exactly the word I used this morning when my husband asked me why I wouldn’t put my phone down from 6-7:20 am. Given all the known factors (past three days of operation, historical opening of major rides, unreliability of IT) it never made sense to me they’d open the floodgates at a set time. So I made an educated guess the groups would open early.

For us, checking constantly paid off with a Group 3 spot. And it wasn’t annoying to keep checking or anything. It was easier to do than “pound the app,” which I also do every visit.

It was interesting to watch people in the park this morning. There were people like me on their phones nonstop. And there were people whose phones were nowhere to be seen. It was easy to identify my fellow non-trusters. LOL

 

[WIll C]

So if EMH is from 6am to 8am and while they let non-resort guests in just after 7am and open the BGs up around 7:20. Unless you want to ride other attractions, there is no reason to get to EMH before 6am. Get there and tap in, wait until 7ish and start refreshing for the queue. You'll still beat all the non-resort guests to tap in and get noticed that you are there and don't have to wake up insanely early to get into the park because you can't get into the BGs until they open it for everyone.
Of course, this is a single day of data and we won't know more until at least next weekend.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Just woke up from our nap at OKW and caught up on this thread.

It’s interesting to see the common theme of not being able to “trust” Disney communication on this matter. That’s exactly the word I used this morning when my husband asked me why I wouldn’t put my phone down from 6-7:20 am. Given all the known factors (past three days of operation, historical opening of major rides, unreliability of IT) it never made sense to me they’d open the floodgates at a set time. So I made an educated guess the groups would open early.

For us, checking constantly paid off with a Group 3 spot. And it wasn’t annoying to keep checking or anything. It was easier to do than “pound the app,” which I also do every visit.

It was interesting to watch people in the park this morning. There were people like me on their phones nonstop. And there were people whose phones were nowhere to be seen. It was easy to identify my fellow non-trusters. LOL

"Trust" is probably the best term to use. I don't think Disney is necessarily lying or being deceitful - just so many moving parts and trying to figure out what is going to work the best and adjusting and adapting ... but they are just making it worse by trying to put out their concrete timeframes but then not sticking to them

I think they should just post something like "Rise of the Resistance will open to guests starting on December 5th. Given the sophisticated state of the art technology employed in this first-of-it's kind attraction, there may be operational downtime experienced. We will be utilizing boarding parties as a virtual queue to make this as positive of an experience for guests, but note that operation of these boarding parties will evolve as we determine the optimal system."

(I am sure a lawyer could come up with better wording)

And then not give any specifics so people know the general process but know things can and will change but don't get hung up on any set timeframe

 

[TheMaxRebo]

So if EMH is from 6am to 8am and while they let non-resort guests in just after 7am and open the BGs up around 7:20. Unless you want to ride other attractions, there is no reason to get to EMH before 6am. Get there and tap in, wait until 7ish and start refreshing for the queue. You'll still beat all the non-resort guests to tap in and get noticed that you are there and don't have to wake up insanely early to get into the park because you can't get into the BGs until they open it for everyone.
Of course, this is a single day of data and we won't know more until at least next weekend.

at least that is how it went today - who knows how it will work next time

(and you could use the first hour just to ride other rides and do meet and greets and eat, etc - but yeah, if just going for RotR no benefit to being there prior to 7

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Just noting that there aren't any more two hour (6-8am) EMHs scheduled at the moment. While possible they do last minute adjustments like what they did yesterday (making today's EMH two hours instead of one), much of today's logistics may not matter much. TBD of course.

 

[ThistleMae]

As far as we could tell, it would have been difficult for an offsite guest to get an early boarding group. The groups were open for several minutes before they let any off site guest scan into the park.

Wow, several minutes! Really gave on site guests an advantage, didn't it?

 

[focusondisney]

I think they should just post something like "Rise of the Resistance will open to guests starting on December 5th. Given the sophisticated state of the art technology employed in this first-of-it's kind attraction, there may be operational downtime experienced. We will be utilizing boarding parties as a virtual queue to make this as positive of an experience for guests, but note that operation of these boarding parties will evolve as we determine the optimal system."

Or use a soft opening. This is what they did for years. Periodically open the new ride, everyone knows it is a luck of the draw situation if you will ride or not. When things are good & you’re in the area, you might get on. Something goes wrong, close the line. No harm no foul. But if you announce a specific opening date & then post definite admission times, people get upset when you deviate from them.

 

[Sargeant Tibbs]

I'd like to see how this goes in the next few EMHs. After today, I'm thinking EMH really does give the onsite guest an advantage, providing the guest is savvy. At least an onsite guest doesn't have to be up so early to be in the park in order to secure a BG. Now we'll wait and see if the VQ continues for the long term. I think it will.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Or use a soft opening. This is what they did for years. Periodically open the new ride, everyone knows it is a luck of the draw situation if you will ride or not. When things are good & you’re in the area, you might get on. Something goes wrong, close the line. No harm no foul. But if you announce a specific opening date & then post definite admission times, people get upset when you deviate from them.

yeah, I definitely both Disney for this and Universal for Hagrids should have termed this a "soft" or "technical" opening or something (and then given sometihng like the above wording for what that means". Ok to announce a date for that starting, but very clearly indicate that there might be issues and we are using this time to work out all the kinks but only way to do that is to open it to full crowds - we've tested what we can in controlled situations

 

[snappy]

Just woke up from our nap at OKW and caught up on this thread.

It’s interesting to see the common theme of not being able to “trust” Disney communication on this matter. That’s exactly the word I used this morning when my husband asked me why I wouldn’t put my phone down from 6-7:20 am. Given all the known factors (past three days of operation, historical opening of major rides, unreliability of IT) it never made sense to me they’d open the floodgates at a set time. So I made an educated guess the groups would open early.

For us, checking constantly paid off with a Group 3 spot. And it wasn’t annoying to keep checking or anything. It was easier to do than “pound the app,” which I also do every visit.

It was interesting to watch people in the park this morning. There were people like me on their phones nonstop. And there were people whose phones were nowhere to be seen. It was easy to identify my fellow non-trusters. LOL

I know it pays off to utilize MDE efficiently (I try to when I am at WDW) but I am not feeling the love with the idea of yet another incentive to be constantly refreshing to stay ahead of the pack. Maybe after successfully riding it once or twice I’ll appreciate it but I hope it’s not the way of the future.

 

[DavidNYC]

I think they should just post something like "Rise of the Resistance will open to guests starting on December 5th. Given the sophisticated state of the art technology employed in this first-of-it's kind attraction, there may be operational downtime experienced. We will be utilizing boarding parties as a virtual queue to make this as positive of an experience for guests, but note that operation of these boarding parties will evolve as we determine the optimal system."

(I am sure a lawyer could come up with better wording)

I am a lawyer and your wording was pretty darn good! That’s exactly what they should have done. Every complaint would pretty much be alleviated by them just saying something like this! I’d still be annoyed at the breakdowns but a statement like this pretty much disarms most complaints when they just say “Hey - this is so much bigger than anything we’ve done and we just can’t guarantee anything right now.” At the very least - no one can say “but you told me this and then didn’t do it”.

 

[pinkxray]

We will be there for marathon weekend and can only hit DHS on Sunday, so I will be following this thread closely. We will be at Yacht club that morning so we will walk over super early.
I hate not knowing how this will play out. I hope they continue to open earlier on Sundays into Jan. We have a 9am adr for Ogas so it would be cool to get another tier one knocked out before heading there.
We also have an adr for sci fi at noon. I don’t know if I want to keep that or not yet. I was hoping to hop over to EPCOT in the afternoon.

 

[MJ NH]

My take always from this thread: the ride is worth the wait, there are nice people taking time to update us, people thought it would be a huge technical failure at 8am, it wasn’t due to a early start, so then people think Disney lies. I would rather take an early refresh action, then a crashed system.

 

[vwdisney]

I will be joining you on Marathon Sunday at HS. Hopefully, that only describes the race being held that morning, not the day at the parks!

 

[kae11]

Wow, several minutes! Really gave on site guests an advantage, didn't it?

It wasn’t a large advantage but by the time we got in and the app registered we were in, we got group 70. Given the fact that the passes were gone in about 30 minutes today, the extra time clearly made a difference

 

[Dznefreek]

Attraction times and availability are subject to change without notice.
I believe this is on all tickets . . . . FWIW

 

[vwdisney]

My take always from this thread: the ride is worth the wait, there are nice people taking time to update us, people thought it would be a huge technical failure at 8am, it wasn’t due to a early start, so then people think Disney lies. I would rather take an early refresh action, then a crashed system.

Nicely said! Disney is learning and adapting trying to make the system work best for as many people as possible. Every day they have made some changes to the system. Some work out, some don't. My hope is that after a few more days they will have most of the kinks worked out and will settle into a more consistent procedure. The only way to figure out the best way of doing things is through a bit of experimentation. Not everyone will be happy with what they do, especially while they are still trying to work it out. We all need to have some patience. (I know that is easier for me in my living room than for those of you living the experiment this week!) I plan to continue watching this thread to see how things are going. That way I will be better informed and ready to go when I come in January. I am so looking forward to going on the ride!

 

[krayzie]

My take always from this thread: the ride is worth the wait, there are nice people taking time to update us, people thought it would be a huge technical failure at 8am, it wasn’t due to a early start, so then people think Disney lies. I would rather take an early refresh action, then a crashed system.

They should not have said 8am if they didn't plan on doing it at 8am.

 

[DGsAtBLT]

They should not have said 8am if they didn't plan on doing it at 8am.

Exactly.

No kidding a set time was going to crash the system. That wasn’t something that should have crept up on them this morning. They never should have said 8 AM start time, they especially shouldn’t have even further specified 7:45 by way of in park announcements. They could have easily left it open ended letting people know it would not be open immediately at the beginning of EMH and left it at that.

At this point it probably doesn’t matter much, my guess is things are handled slightly different each EMH with nothing consistent to count on except refreshing that app until it settles a bit.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

One thing clear from today, in my opinion.... AM Extra Magic Hours and the Virtual Queue are two concepts that do not go well together. Or at the very least it's a scheduling nuance that needs more thought / communication from Disney with just how things will happen (and then they should stick to it).

I've said before that I really hope that SWGE ultimately ushers in the return of regularly-scheduled PM EMHs to DHS. While easy for me to say sitting here as an armchair park ops expert, it seems like switching currently scheduled AM EMHs to PM EMHs would be a good solution on an interim basis until things settle down - if the intent is to continue to use the VQ on a daily basis.

Just too many issues with AM EMHs... the volume of people already in the park... off site folks kind of in the park but not fully... more problems than solutions, unfortunately. Scrap the whole thing and make them PM EMHs, problem solved.