Tron Moving to Standby on Monday 9/9

[Babe the Blue Ox]

WDWNT reported that 7DMT has had unusually low early morning wait times since the crush of guests are now headed to Tron standby. That's an added bonus for those that would rather rope drop 7DMT. If anything it can be used to maximize your park touring strategy.

Off topic but I love your avatar picture, Five. That looks just like us a few years back. Daughters are now 29 & 24 and son is 21. Both girls are married and the oldest has a 4 year old of her own. We now travel to Disney as a family of 8.

 

[Gentry2004]

We like to wait until later in the evening for Rise. Our longest wait using this strategy has been 20 minutes in both Florida and California locations. This has been the case since shortly after Rise went from VQ to standby.

I expect Tron to behave similarly.

What time do you recommend getting in line for Rise with this strategy?

 

[Gentry2004]

WDWNT reported that 7DMT has had unusually low early morning wait times since the crush of guests are now headed to Tron standby. That's an added bonus for those that would rather rope drop 7DMT. If anything it can be used to maximize your park touring strategy.

And once Tiana's goes standby, it will on further distribute rope drop guests which I think is good for all.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

What time do you recommend getting in line for Rise with this strategy?

Any time within the last hour or so of operation, especially when Fantasmic is in progress. The posted wait time will be intentionally inflated to discourage late riders, but you can usually gauge the accuracy just be observing how many guests are milling around outside of the attraction.

On our last visit, we hit Rise and hour and 20 minutes before closing time and the posted wait was coincidently 80 minutes. That was obviously inflated as there were very few guests in the area.

We waited 20 minutes for the first ride then hopped in line again. The posted wait was still 80 minutes with an actual wait of 10. We hopped in line again for a 3rd ride which was a walkon. The posted wait had dropped to 70 minutes. We still had plenty of time to make it over to the 2nd performance of Fantasmic which started a half hour after the park closed.

We found this to be a pretty efficient use of our time.

 

[MickeyMice]

Probably easing it in to avoid ropedrop chaos to start and see how things go, I'd guess it eventually opens up early. Standby wait is 30 min now, I know it's not going to be as busy as other times but the waits so far feel like it's not really worth paying for ILL right now unless you REALLY can't wait on line. Certainly not a situation like Rise where you have to grapple with the potential of standing for two hours.

i don't think rise comes close to 2 hours anymore except maybe on very busy days

What time do you recommend getting in line for Rise with this strategy?

1 minute before park close. your only risk is if the ride goes down, but i think rise has been more reliable lately. if you absolutely must ride, rope drop or buy LLSP.

 

[wilkydelts]

What time do you recommend getting in line for Rise with this strategy?

I have done RISE at the end of the night several times. I always suggest 20-25 minutes before park close unless you absolutely don't care about waiting in line as park closes. I have found by doing this I beat the wave of park closers getting in line 5-10 minutes before park closes.

 

[fatmanatee]

i don't think rise comes close to 2 hours anymore except maybe on very busy days

Yeah I should have clarified, I was thinking when Rise shifted from VQ to standby. I visited a few months later and there was way more risk involved there: you could do standby and eat a two hour wait, but on top of that there's a risk that the ride would go down while you're in line. I didn't want to deal with that so I bought ILL, and coincidentally there *was* downtime right before our ILL time was scheduled.

I'm not nearly as worried about the situation with Tron, so at the moment I don't see a point to getting ILL and I'd expect it to eventually be open early.

 

[MickeyMice]

I have done RISE at the end of the night several times. I always suggest 20-25 minutes before park close unless you absolutely don't care about waiting in line as park closes. I have found by doing this I beat the wave of park closers getting in line 5-10 minutes before park closes.

fair. it depends on whether you would rather spend that last 30 minutes on another attraction, at the cost of walking out of the park later.

 

[DisneyFive]

Off topic but I love your avatar picture, Five. That looks just like us a few years back. Daughters are now 29 & 24 and son is 21. Both girls are married and the oldest has a 4 year old of her own. We now travel to Disney as a family of 8.

Awe, thanks. Yeah time flies doesn't it? That avatar picture just might be my very favorite family photo ever. I even had it made into one of those aluminum photos. I think our kids were 8, 6 and 3 at the time, standing there in front of the 'ol sorcerers hat. (which we loved btw ) Now our kids are now 22, 20 and 17. We're still a family of 5, but at least one marriage is in the works so that number will be growing too Planning a summer trip next year. It feels like soooo long since we've been to WDW.

Sounds like your "kids" still love Disney just as much as adults, that's awesome. (We're the same way and it gives us excuses to keep going back ) I don't think we'll ever grow out of it. The most we've ever had to plan for was a party of 7 multiple times when one or the other set of grandparents would come along. It must be so much fun being able to visit with a 4 year old again, seeing the magic for the first time. We can't wait for that.

 

[DisneyFive]

And once Tiana's goes standby, it will on further distribute rope drop guests which I think is good for all.

Good point, and agreed. Doesn't seem like Tiana will stay VQ for as long as Tron considering it's essentially a grand makeover of Splash rather than a new attraction altogether. I could be wrong though, it is still super popular. Looking forward to riding both Tron and Tiana's for the first time.

 

[DisFanDad]

If that's the case, then it appears to be more of a money push by Disney right?

If no VQ and Standby only or purchase the ride.

So that means either most likely a crazy long SB wait or pay to ride.

Many will pay to ride. Where before you could at least get the Free VQ.

This is 100% what they are doing.

For some time they were calling back a LOT of people for VQ at one time, which created really long lines, sometimes 60+ mins, and pushed people to buy Lightning Lane - I had a great conversation with a front line and then a follow up call from guest relations about this - and was told they had heard this concern quite a bit, and were looking at calling back fewer people to shorten that wait.

Sure enough, the next few trips (my last few trips) the VQ wait when called has been 20mins or less (we rode Tron 5 times our last trip), and several times on the previous trip earlier this year and so on. BUT - if I can get a 20 min wait VQ, why would I buy a lightning lane? Making a standby queue means there is going always be a 45 -60+min wait which is going to push people to buy LL.

It's really that simple.

Note: They COULD run both at the same time - VQ and Standby if they didn't want to sell Lightning lanes. Or heck if VQ and LL both entered on the Left and Standby was on the right, or if they just had a space for standby to fill in if the VQ wasn't full (it almost always is though so ...) but they don't want to do this - they want to sell LL

 

[DisFanDad]

I guess what we may be learning is that it's really not as highly in demand as we thought it might be. Current wait time at 10:07AM, day 2 of standby queue is only 30 mins and TP anticipates it's currently an actual wait of around 15 mins!

Its like the slowest part of the year !!! Hilariously someone above you wrote "Anyone reasonable would have already understood (this)" and yet two of you have posted without a seeming clue that - this is literally some of (if not the) lowest crowds of the year.

 

[DisFanDad]

Disney does not disclose how many LL they sell.

Then why is the wait in the VQ line still long?

I decided after our VQ wait we would only do LL for this ride. Now you add all kinds of SB folks in the line ... so it should be longer. AND if many folks decide to buy LL because they don't want to be in SB, then SB gets stopped for all those folks to go first.

So they are basically increasing LL and increasing the VQ/SB line, so I'd expect longer waits.

And that's the point of this - to sell more LL's because VQ offers people an easy option to avoid buying LL - that's why they are taking it away.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Disney likes to do VQ on attractions, even ones most don't think need it. They have an aversion to letting new attractions open as standby. This was the case even before a paid service was around at WDW.

Over at DL Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway used VQ from 1/27/23 to 2/22/23, it never needed VQ from the beginning but yet alas that's how Disney likes to do new attractions and after an incredibly short time of only several weeks it went to standby.

 

[MickeyMice]

And once Tiana's goes standby, it will on further distribute rope drop guests which I think is good for all.

frontierland isn't open for early entry and frankly i'm not sure tiana will ever be reliably running at official park open

 

[HopperFan]

And that's the point of this - to sell more LL's because VQ offers people an easy option to avoid buying LL - that's why they are taking it away.

I can see that. I just hope it works out for them. I am a bit biased as I don't think it is worth the cost of LL nor the long wait that VQ had. I head down next week and unless it is posted 20 minutes or less I won't even bother.

Will SB be even longer than the VQ waits? We won't know that for another month or so because Sept is traditionally slower. I'm sure that is why they picked this month to do the conversion. We also have the impact that everyone wants to ride this at night so will we see even longer waits at night .. a time when folks tend to jump in line because they start to wind down??

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I can see that. I just hope it works out for them. I am a bit biased as I don't think it is worth the cost of LL nor the long wait that VQ had. I head down next week and unless it is posted 20 minutes or less I won't even bother.

Will SB be even longer than the VQ waits? We won't know that for another month or so because Sept is traditionally slower. I'm sure that is why they picked this month to do the conversion. We also have the impact that everyone wants to ride this at night so will we see even longer waits at night .. a time when folks tend to jump in line because they start to wind down??

There have been recent posts from guests riding at night claiming that Tron trains were being dispatched empty or with as few as two guests. Guests were disappointed that they didn’t have the option to jump back in line since literally no one was waiting. This is likely due to guests that got in on the afternoon VQ then couldn’t stay late enough for their group to be called.

And even if there is an unexpected mad dash to the ride at the end of the evening, inflated wait times and line stacking will be in place to discourage many of those late riders. This was evident even on the first night of standby when the posted wait jumped from 35 to 95 at a moments notice.

Tron isn’t going to behave any differently than other popular attractions that came before it.

 

[Minnie84]

Walked on at 9:30am today. Posted wait 30 minutes, actual wait 5 min. For most of today
( day 2 of standby), the waits were super reasonable.

 

[Duanerice]

SHOOT, I was going to WDW in Feb 2025, I was hoping to get a VQ spot guaranteed,

Exactly... looks like we aren't going to get to ride it now. We don't buy the multipass

 

[scrappinginontario]

Its like the slowest part of the year !!! Hilariously someone above you wrote "Anyone reasonable would have already understood (this)" and yet two of you have posted without a seeming clue that - this is literally some of (if not the) lowest crowds of the year.

No need to be unkind. I was purely stating we are not seeing long waits and there are consistently other attractions showing longer wait times.

Yes it’s a slow week but the fact that at 9:30 at night (the ‘prime’ time some want to ride Tron) the posted wait is 30 mins is still surprising to many I believe.

It will get longer waits yes but my point was, at this time Tron is not trending to be the longest wait in the park.

There is a way to post an opposing view without being rude to someone who feels differently from you.