RotR Planning & Daily Boarding Group Discussion - *CLOSED*

[Party.Of.4-NY>>>FL]

A question to anyone with firsthand experience of the ~6:00am park opening these past two days.

Have you witnessed any running, pushing/shoving, or any other rude behavior by guests as they enter the park and head toward SWGE?

I can’t recall reading about any bad behavior by guests these past two mornings. In my opinion, this alone makes the VQ a total win. Not to mention the opportunity to experience other attractions while ‘virtually’ waiting in line for RotR. I really hope Disney continues to implement the VQ for the foreseeable future.

 

[yulilin3]

@yulilin3 appreciate the info you're sharing! What time would you recommend showing up on Wednesday? What time would you guess the park might open given CM schedules?

I would say be at the tapstiles by 7am

Yes, but wasn't the VQ only to get into the land? And wasn’t that dropped by late morning/mid afternoon opening day, and then anyone could get in?

I’m just saying if people are researching and basing what they should do based on opening day experiences for the land itself, I can see why some people would have thought to go later in the day yesterday.

But this is brand new. We knew VQ would kick in on opening day, we didn't know it would be just for the ride. So people should've expected to get in VQ first thing. There's no way to completely plan for something that hasn't opened. You can inform yourself in what had happened before, again Pandora comes to mind, because for that people actually had to wait outside the land. So taking just that piece of info should inform you to be there early
Anyone who thought they could just waltz into RotR on opening day was definitely fooling themselves

 

[SuJo]

My above post should say Wednesday not We’d

 

[sachilles]

I did it 4 timmes on media day. First time it was at 7am when it opened and there was no one. So I'm not counting that
all 3 other times total wait from pre show to exit was about an hour from preshow to exit. with 30 to 40 min wait between hangar and interrogation room (for specifics you can read the RotR review thread)

I'm trying to avoid spoilers if I can. Was the 30-40 minute wait part of the "experience"?

 

[ScubaCat]

The big miss here by Disney is not restricting people to one BG

This is correct. The idea of opening early being "unfair" is absurd. If they'd restrict it to one BG per guest, it would be a non issue. Having the crowd turn into a frustrated, larger mob for 2 more hours is what they're trying to avoid.

Even if they did wait until 8 or 9 to open, the people who were there first would be the only ones to ride anyway.

 

[SuJo]

A question to anyone with firsthand experience of the ~6:00am park opening these past two days.

Have you witnessed any running, pushing/shoving, or any other rude behavior by guests as they enter the park and head toward SWGE?

I can’t recall reading about any bad behavior by guests these past two mornings. In my opinion, this alone makes the VQ a total win. Not to mention the opportunity to experience other attractions while ‘virtually’ waiting in line for RotR. I really hope Disney continues to implement the VQ for the foreseeable future.

No pushing or running pretty easy

 

[yulilin3]

I'm trying to avoid spoilers if I can. Was the 30-40 minute wait part of the "experience"?

yes, but it's a queue. Nothing really to see beyond the hangar. I'm hoping it was just the technical difficulties and once the ride is at 100% this portion would shorten

 

[hiroMYhero]

The big miss here by Disney is not restricting people to one BG.

Especially because they have the technology to limit guests to one BG just as they can limit one initial Tier 1 FP.

Yesterday, guests who had already ridden RotR and then booked in the later BGs that were canceled, received FPs for today plus the comps. Unnecessary Guest Recovery.

 

[sachilles]

yes, but it's a queue. Nothing really to see beyond the hangar. I'm hoping it was just the technical difficulties and once the ride is at 100% this portion would shorten

So I wonder if what happens after the hangar is the bottle neck in terms of what is slowing the attraction down?

 

[wareagle57]

I did it 4 timmes on media day. First time it was at 7am when it opened and there was no one. So I'm not counting that
all 3 other times total wait from pre show to exit was about an hour from preshow to exit. with 30 to 40 min wait between hangar and interrogation room (for specifics you can read the RotR review thread)

that was my experience yesterday but I felt like it was only because our side was broken down. From BB8 all the way to being assigned a color to stand on was very little wait in between. But once we were assigned a color, group after group went ahead of us. So it seemed like you should be able to do the whole thing in 20 minutes.

 

[Garyjames220]

Where do u need to stand to join the boarding group

 

[The Pho]

yes, but it's a queue. Nothing really to see beyond the hangar. I'm hoping it was just the technical difficulties and once the ride is at 100% this portion would shorten

Yesterday I only waited after the hangar once. Other times it was walk on after we were done with our Holoscans.

 

[yulilin3]

This is correct. The idea of opening early being "unfair" is absurd. If they'd restrict it to one BG per guest, it would be a non issue. Having the crowd turn into a frustrated, larger mob for 2 more hours is what they're trying to avoid.

Even if they did wait until 8 or 9 to open, the people who were there first would be the only ones to ride anyway.

Ans just like we saw them changing the way to join a BG today, that you had to have scanned at tapstile first as opposed of yesterday, where some people reported being able to join from bag check, we might see change tomorrow to limit people to only allowing VQ once.
This used to happen at SWW, at first you would queue up for an autograph and once you got the paper fp you could run and queue up again. Once they figured same person could get multiple different autographs, they changed it to get one autograph, you had to wait an hour and if there were still fp left you could get a second

 

[SG131]

For the early opening, my guess is most of the people waiting in line just wanted to be early for the ride. These people were going to be there regardless and opening the gates based on their presence doesn't really change anything because they were going to be there anyway - waiting until the designated 9AM time that the park was to be opened.

I agree that maybe a disclaimer that says the park could possibly open earlier could be useful but I honestly don't think that posting an earlier opening time changes the dynamics that much other than making the people who are determined to ride get there even EARLIER than the new posted opening time.

So you still have the same issues with capacity, you're just shifting the time where it hits that number. I honestly can't think of a better way to do it especially if they're simply gauging whether or not to open the gates based on the crowd that's already arrived.

Actually, the early opening probably improves things for the unprepared guest as well. As you say the people waiting for RotR would be there either way. If they didn't open the park until 9, instead of being greeted by a park already open would be greeted by a very large group of people and a long wait to even get into the park. And still the boarding groups would still most likely fill before they were able to tap into the park.

 

[Jonfw2]

I think one thing we can all agree on here on day two: Galaxy's Edge is going to be just fine.

 

[birostick]

A question to anyone with firsthand experience of the ~6:00am park opening these past two days.

Have you witnessed any running, pushing/shoving, or any other rude behavior by guests as they enter the park and head toward SWGE?

I can’t recall reading about any bad behavior by guests these past two mornings. In my opinion, this alone makes the VQ a total win. Not to mention the opportunity to experience other attractions while ‘virtually’ waiting in line for RotR. I really hope Disney continues to implement the VQ for the foreseeable future.

There were some people running, but for no actual reason as the VQ works as soon as you tap yourself into the park.

 

[yulilin3]

Where do u need to stand to join the boarding group

you do it through the app, once you enter the park it takes about a minute or two to be able to join. Thread about how to join BG is separate on this sub forum

 

[yulilin3]

I think one thing we can all agree on here on day two: Galaxy's Edge is going to be just fine.

And still people will say but look at Falcon it only has a 30 minute wait, it's not popular

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Especially because they have the technology to limit guests to one BG just as they can limit one initial Tier 1 FP.

Yesterday, guests who had already ridden RotR and then booked in the later BGs that were canceled, received FPs for today plus the comps. Unnecessary Guest Recovery.

Yeah lol! And now those guests who ride once or twice are back today using the FP for today plus joining BGs again. And I would be doing it to if I were there.

But the result is some people will ride this 3-4 times between yesterday and today and others won’t ride at all. And if I put my Disney Exec hat on for a minute, that doesn’t seem to be a good result for guest satisfaction...

1 BG per person per day fixes much of this issue. But they must be smarter than us since they make the big bucks, right?

 

[DizFan13]

I’ll give Disney a pass for a few days as they deal with ride opening excitement and such as they figure out how to best operate the ride and deal with crowds, but personally I find opening the entire park at 6am with a posted 9am park opening rather disingenuous on Disney’s part.

Many guests who have done a smidge of research/planning assume/plan for being let in the park early as Disney routinely does, but probably not 3 hours early. Many more guests who don’t follow details closely (which is likely a large majority of park visitors on any given day) would have absolutely no clue.

I doubt the 6am openings will continue for a long period and you’ll see that migrate more towards normal DHS opening procedures (whatever that turns out to be in the post-RotR era), but still.

I do understand why Disney has the early openings for popular, new attractions, such as FoP, and I can see opening GE for people showing up for RotR, but as you say, the whole park opening three hours early (while it's nice for those of you there: take advantage!) does pose a real planning dilemma. What happens for the first crowd of people who show up at 5 expecting to be in at 6 and to have the option to ride everything while they wait for a BG position, only to find a traditional rope drop or that only GE is open? It doesn't seem very likely that Disney will plan a "taper" effect, pullimg back opening time slowly over days.

We'll be in DHS on the 15th, which I guess means I'll be glued to this thread for nine days . . .