RotR Planning & Daily Boarding Group Discussion - *CLOSED*

[Lewisc]

From reports they actually haven't been using the finger scan, but the person still needs to be there to scan the mb obviously

Our fingers were scanned today, Sunday at DHS and EPCOT.

Official park opening tomorrow is 8. Do you think 630 -7 is early enough?

 

[ofcabbagesandkings]

Has anyone used rider swap for this ride? What was your experience? We will be there in 2 weeks and will have to swap out as our 2 year old is not tall enough. It has been a long time since we have used rider swap, but have never used it in a situation like this.

I would like to know this as well. Our 3 year old is a shrimp so am hoping I will get to ride with eldest DS in a morning boarding group and then maybe my mom could go with RS after lunch. Does it work like other RS where you can bring a tall-enough child?

 

[Tink1987]

No, DL is on schedule and well into testing. Star Wars cast rode last week.

Thanks, knew you would have a handle on what was happening!

 

[Tink1987]

We are planning on leaving YC at 6am to walk over. I think it’s a little late but we’ve already ridden it once and that’s all we ever expected to ride so anything else is now a bonus.

 

[Paul Francis]

At POFQ now, what is the suggested time to get over there tomorrow? With the way things have gone the last few days are they letting people in early (to join boarding groups)? TIA for any help!

 

[Dan1]

You can leave AFTER tapping your magic band for entry, going into the park, and joining a boarding group. You must be physically in the park to join a boarding group.

This is what we did today.........only to find out after we had walked back to HS that RotR had Stopped working five minutes prior.

 

[DGsAtBLT]

At POFQ now, what is the suggested time to get over there tomorrow? With the way things have gone the last few days are they letting people in early (to join boarding groups)? TIA for any help!

They have been letting people in early and joining right away, with the exception of today with EMH.

If it were me I would aim for a 530 AM or so arrival until Disney has shown a consistent time they are letting people in the gates. On a day without EMH I would personally take an Uber/lyft if you don’t have a car.

ETA: Although I think yulilin (hope I spelled that right!) posted that CMs don’t start until later this week, it comes back to the whole trust thing and I would want to be there at the gates until they’ve shown they are no longer opening early.

 

[SirBill]

Our fingers were scanned today, Sunday at DHS and EPCOT.

Official park opening tomorrow is 8. Do you think 630 -7 is early enough?

Tomorrow is I think the day that determines what the trend is for the month - as more and more people see the gushing press about this ride, I think more people will try to get over there early to get on.

It seems like 6:30am would be early enough, but a big unknown is if tomorrow is a 6am or 8am opening. The great thing is if you are there at 6am and they really open then, not only can you get an early boarding group but you get such great access to the rest of the park hours before lots of other people show. So there is a lot of potential upside to getting there on the early side, with the only downside being a longish wait before getting through a kiosk - but even then you still get the benefit of an early boarding pass time, which affords for a lot of possible issues if the ride goes down and you end up actually getting on later.

I still think for all of December a good rule of thumb to be totally sure of an early boarding pass is to get there at least two hours before announced entry times. 6:30am will probably work but every morning since Thursday there have been a ton of people already in line starting at 5am, enough to consume the boarding passes earlier and earlier...

 

[Boardwalk III]

I am SO sorry to hear this! I sure hope they compensate you. It's 9:25, and RotR says the land is closed, and they're boarding 73-95. It *just* moved from 72 to 73, so something is moving.

How was Morimoto? I have a ADR for that while I'm there.

Sayhello

Thanks, Yeah crazy, and we were resort guests this morning who got up at 6 and were in the park by 7:30 (before the communicated time of the VQ opening) and apparently missed the earlier opening of the VQ by about 10 minutes. Certainly frustrating.

However Morimoto was great!

 

[DGsAtBLT]

At POFQ now, what is the suggested time to get over there tomorrow? With the way things have gone the last few days are they letting people in early (to join boarding groups)? TIA for any help!

Here is a thread with the actual opening times (in the 2nd post) if you haven’t seen it yet:

https://www.disboards.com/threads/dhs-actual-opening-time-rotr-boarding-group-time-tracking.3781557/

 

[unveilmyeyes]

Official park opening tomorrow is 8. Do you think 630 -7 is early enough?

yes, back to being a work day!

 

[SG131]

Anyone know if they got through all of the boarding groups today?

 

[intertile]

I would like to know this as well. Our 3 year old is a shrimp so am hoping I will get to ride with eldest DS in a morning boarding group and then maybe my mom could go with RS after lunch. Does it work like other RS where you can bring a tall-enough child?

I've seen this asked a few times since the ride opened. I dont believe that they are doing a traditional RS with this ride. Since you have a 2 hour window in your BG, you could ride with son first and then your mom would have to go solo when you get off.

 

[rteetz]

Anyone know if they got through all of the boarding groups today?

I never saw a definitive at what the highest boarding group given out was.

 

[PolyRob]

Finally back at my resort and getting ready to call it a night! Thanks to all that followed along today. Sadly, I will NOT be attempting RotR tomorrow (technically today LOL). While it was a truly great experience, I have some nice plans that I do not want to throw out the window. This morning worked out great and I got a lot accomplished. I ended up taking a nice little nap and heading to Epcot at night to replace what I skipped last night to make it to EMH super early. I am here through the end of the week so I think I may try for the ride again on Saturday. Go out with a bang! I will be at Poly then so more logistics involved, but I will be following along to see how the crowds are and what time DHS actually opens. I will be back in the springtime so I can always try riding it again.

Just thinking about the whole experience, EMH is a terrible idea right now for RotR. If Disney keeps utilizing the virtual queue and you have no idea what time it will open, it really isn't worth it. I much prefer knowing how many people are in front of me at the tapstile and what my chances of riding are. I would surely have been on sooner than my boarding group if it went that way, but as a result of the delays I got some pretty yummy snacks

If I were attempting it again, I would still head over by 5am regardless of the posted 8am opening time. Sadly we have no idea what Disney is doing. BC still has an EMH sign up in it's lobby I also have a friend who checked-out today and she said the CMs at Poly told her that the virtual queue would open at 9am this morning. I guess they didn't get the memo about the updated EMH.

Good luck to everyone attempting it tomorrow! It can be difficult to keep up on all the threads while away, but I will definitely be checking this one!

 

[chicagodisfan]

Rider swap update!

First, a little about our experience today. We (DH, DS 13, DS 10 and DD 6) left Beach Club around 5:40 am and got in the park around 6:07 am. No one was saying anything about boarding groups at the entrance but I had been reading posts on the way over and had read about it being 7:45 am. I asked and that was confirmed by a CM holding an iPad at the entrance. I went to Smugglers Run with my sons, my husband and daughter went to Toy Story Land. Smugglers Run was already posting an 80 minute wait which I couldn’t believe. Touring Plans app was saying 37 minutes so we jumped in. It ended up being about 50 including ride time so that was about right. While we were waiting, a cast member was circulating the outside portion of the line yelling that boarding groups for RofR would open at 8 am. I would be really bummed if we had listened to her because we all know now how it went, but we didn’t, so all good there. I was actually on the ride at 7:20 so I never heard the announcement but DH did as he was in line to meet Bo Peep and Woody. He texted me at 7:20 to check the app and then texted me at 7:21 that he was in and got boarding group 32. He later mentioned that the woman ahead of him in line went directly to the app after the announcement and got boarding group 24 and in the time it took him to text me and get back in and join, he got 32. So, today at least, every minute really counted.

We ended up getting called around 12:30 pm. Of course, we had Brown Derby reservations at noon for my son’s birthday and we could see that they were 3 groups away when they called us, so we asked if we could come back later and they ended up holding the reservation open for us. In addition, we had a Slinky FP starting at 1:40pm which made me nervous but what can you do?!

On to Rider Swap. DD is tall enough to ride but freaks out a bit when she sees Kylo Ren and the Stormtroopers and I knew enough about the ride to know that this would be a no go. When our boarding group got called, we all went to the CM’s standing at the entrance to the attraction, which had a perimeter blocked off with rope, and asked about Rider Swap. They were extremely nice, scanned our bands and then asked who was staying back (me) and who was riding with me later (both sons). Then they scanned our bands to add a Rise of the Resistance FP on there good for today only but with no time listed. Then, here’s where things got a little different. They asked me and DD to stay in the stroller parking area to wait which was a very large cement area within the roped off area for the ride guarded by 5-10 CMs and several security guards. They said we could leave if we needed to but exchanged looks with each other like they weren’t sure it would really be okay for us to leave. (I have no doubt we could have left to use the washroom or get a water/snack, but I think the expectation was that we would stay put). I didn’t want to rock the boat either way and we had a ton of stuff (droids and lightsabers) so we set up camp in the stroller parking. They warned us that it could be up to an hour and it was almost exactly an hour by the time they came out. I was fortunate that DD was content to play with her new droid (they did not want her actually moving him remotely) and we were able to make that last the whole hour. But I would say that if you are planning to Rider Swap RofR in the near future, make sure to have enough activities to keep the little ones busy for awhile.

According to DH, he was in line for about 35-40 minutes once inside and then 20 minutes or so of ride time. When they came out, he left with DD, our stuff and the stroller and I got scanned along with my boys for the Rider Swap pass and went right into the FP line. So, I never left the roped area the entire hour and a half or so I was there. The FP line went right into the pre-show area so I didn’t have to wait that 35-40 minutes which was nice. We ended up making it to our Slinky FP with 5 minutes left on the grace period. DH had gone ahead to tell them the situation and they told me when we got there that they would have let us ride either way.

All in all, we thought the VQ was great and were thrilled we got the chance to ride! It was really probably the only way we could have done it with all our other plans. The ride is great and the CM’s were so friendly and helpful about rider swap. That being said, the day did kind of eat us alive. Because it was my son’s birthday we had a ton of things scheduled (ADRs, light sabers/droid builds and FPs) and weren’t planning on a 6 am start to the day. But we are huge Star Wars fans and figured we had to try! We ended getting back to our Brown Derby reservation 3 hours later and they couldn’t have been nicer and sat us right away, so then we moved our dinner reservation several hours later and everyone pretty much fell asleep in their meal. But not much you can do when you book everything 180/60 days out. We’re coming back in the spring and I’ll be following here to see what the current status is, but if it’s still a VQ, I think we’ll plan for counter service and no other activities on our Studios day. Hope this helps! Let me know if anyone has any questions.

 

[osufeth24]

Leaving my apartment now.

Would update while there, but when I access this site on my phone I get redirected to ads and stuff that has viruses and all that fun stuff. So will update whenever I come back home

 

[MJ NH]

Leaving my apartment now.

Would update while there, but when I access this site on my phone I get redirected to ads and stuff that has viruses and all that fun stuff. So will update whenever I come back home

Good Luck and may the force be with you

 

[fivefourdis]

In line at 4:40 am. Waiting at security. Skyliner looks to be running.

 

[TongaToast21]

Heading over soon from Poly. If anyone else is going / already there let me know how it looks. I’ll try and update as well