This may be a not-so-smart question, but are virtual queues/boarding groups strictly in place so that people are not standing in line for long periods of time? Do they allow more or less people to ride vs. standby lines? I’m just curious as to why Disney does not allow a standby line for ROTR vs being boarding group only? I wouldn’t normally want to wait in line for hours for a ride, but if I had one day at HS (and had done everything else I wanted to do), I might be willing to stand in line for a ride like ROTR–I just would like the chance if we don’t get a BG during our upcoming trip. It is what it is, but I was just curious as to the rationale behind boarding groups only?
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They don’t want people standing gin line for hours on end - they want you out and about spending money. There also just isn’t enough time in the day to put everyone who wants to ride on the ride; so the VQ lets them manage who is actually in queue therefore will actually get to ride. Otherwise they maybe be stuck with a crazy long ride at close which would interfere with their end of park hours procedure.
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Yep the main reason RotR has a virtual queue still is because the ride is so popular and not reliable enough to allow everyone who wants to ride to ride. They are worried there will be a 3-6 hour line, only for people at the end of it not to get to ride. A customer service nightmare.
That said, I think they are getting close to the point where they could do a standby queue and it wouldn’t be too bad. However, the Boarding Group process works well enough that if you know what you are doing, you will probably get to ride. We had 100% success rate on our three days - all at the 7am drop. The 1pm drop is a little easier to score a BG on.
Make sure to study and use @bebe80’s instructions!
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Thank for the reply. Right after I posted, I thought about the money/spending aspect. I guess Disney just banks on the guests who aren’t happy when they don’t get a boarding group being less happy than those who would stand in line and not get to ride with breakdowns, etc…b/c at least the former can know going forward that riding isn’t an option? I just wish there was a choice to wait if my group wanted to badly enough.
Thanks for the reply! I will make sure I look that up and cross our fingers on that day–we are only at HS one day, so it’ll be pressure, but I’ve already told one of my sons that we won’t let it ruin our day (or trip) if we don’t get one and that we will hope for the best but go into it expecting not to get one, so as to lessen any disappointment and we will move on with the other rides.
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How many times do most people here practice? I only have one other person in my party (DD) to try to get a BG and she doesn’t want to practice more than once. I’m nervous.
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I would recommend practicing until you get it right (the instructions tell you how you can tell if you would have been successful if you had valid admission / park res). But once is enough to get the feel of it and identify if you have any issues (like your party isn’t linked properly). The key is the timing - I assume a majority of the people who fail don’t have the exact time handy, or they waste time checking their party instead of just pushing “Join” three times.
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The THEORY about FP and VQ is that it will lead to people spending more money. But in practice, this has not been shown to be the case. So, it isn’t really a reason, I don’t think, any longer.
But, as mentioned, it is a customer service (not to mention logistics) nightmare to have such long standby lines, and then end up with the ride breaking down. This actually happened to my son a couple years back when Steal Vengeance opened at CP. He was there opening week, and waited in line more than 2 hours before the ride shut down for the rest of the day…and he was actually only in the PRE line. The PRE line was about 3 hours long before you got into the ACTUAL line, which was another 3 hours long.
Anyhow, even if reliability was 100% with ROTR, you also have the issue of ride capacity. The maximum ride capacity for ROTR is such that it cannot accommodate everyone in the park on any given day who wants to ride it. So even if they opened a SB line, they couldn’t get through everyone who is standing in line before closing for the day…and typical policy of letting anyone who is in line before they close to still ride could mean the staff would have HOURS of riders, potentially to manage.
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The VQ also allows them to enforce one ride per person per day.
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True. Good point.
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good point–that would at least, in theory, allow more people to ride it at least once so that is a definite positive
they are picking the lesser of the two evils, which makes sense