Star Wars Rise of the Resistance: The new boarding process explained

Beginning this week, some changes are taking place in the way Disney World guests ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Hollywood Studios.

Just last week, the Disney Parks Blog announced that Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance would be pausing its virtual queue system. In lieu of that pause, Disney will be using a standby queue. In other words, you simply show up to the ride, and you wait in line as you normally would for any other ride in the park. That change will take effect on Thursday, Sept. 23.

This is a big difference compared to the virtual queue system, which was basically an online lottery that granted people access to the ride via boarding groups in the Disney World app.

Groups would get two chances each day to enter the lottery, once in the morning from anywhere and once in the afternoon only if you were in the park. And because of the way the virtual queue system was set up, not everyone who entered would be able to land a boarding group. Or, sometimes, if you had a late-day boarding group, you were not guaranteed to ride Rise of the Resistance.

Is the standby queue better?

What remains to be seen right now is whether or not the standby queue will be better than the virtual queue. With school back in session, that means you won’t have the usual summer crowds at Disney World. But at the same time, other events like the Halloween celebration, the winter holidays celebration, and even the 50th anniversary mean that the parks certainly won’t be empty through the end of the year.

So, on one hand, we may see an increase in the number of people being able to ride Rise of the Resistance. But now, we’re looking at potentially long wait times. Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run has typically hovered around 45 minutes, which in Disney World terms isn’t awful. But if it reaches peak Slinky Dog Dash numbers like 60+ minutes, then it might not be worth it. (Seriously, I pulled my longest in-queue time waiting for Slinky Dog Dash at 65 minutes. And waiting that long really changes a person.)

What remains unclear is if Disney will try to bundle Rise of the Resistance into its new Lightning Lane feature using Disney Genie. It’s the hotly debated feature that’s been recently introduced to Disney Parks under Bob Chapek’s run as Disney’s CEO. And only time will tell if all of these moves combined will be good for Disney parkgoers at the end of the day.

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