I’m organizing a family trip of 8 adults. Half haven’t been to Disney since 1996, and it’s unlikely they will return again within the next decade or so (most likely not until there are grandkids in the picture). Unlike my wife and I, the rest of my Nutmegger in-laws are more likely to go camping on the cape for a week than return to Disney. My father-in-law and 2 brother-in-laws are 100% Star Wars fans though, so I’ll take a BBG and hope they get to ride if that’s what we get, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for a standard boarding group. I’ve never seen my father-in-law this excited. This is their first real family vacation with all 3 ‘kids’ in 18 years (and all 3 spouses/partners are coming along, too). I’m doing my best to make as much of our my own pixie dust for them as I can.
I hope you have time to let some of the craziness shake out!
What if they go back to morning EMH, allow EMH guests to reserve a BG at start of day. Once they hit a comfortable number of BG (let’s say 100 for giggles) or regular park hours begin, they switch over to backup boarding groups. If they are reserving BBGs at a high rate during EMH, hold back a percentage until normal park opening.
Any of those EMH guests who did not secure a BG or backup BG can now try with the general population for the remaining backup BG.
This would satisfy the onsite guest paying a premium, encourage others to stay onsite, and still give an opprtunity for a backup boarding group to all other guests.
The time shifted BG call-time averages(all time) and averages (7day) appear to be getting closer and closer. Looks like we are narrowing in on an average BG call time/rate.
Of course, this will all change once we can get to full capacity!. But for the approximate “2/3 capacity” we are experiencing right now, we appear to be finding the BG rates.
1000% agree with this! I’m reading all of these comments and shocked at how many people are giving data for the 5 different days they showed up early at HS to ride this ride. 
Thanks again for this data! Since we scored a BG22, we didn’t really end up needing to use it ourselves, but I shared it with the group behind us that was part of a larger party that were struggling with logistics of multiple BG times and FOP FPs at AK. They were thankful to have ANY idea the earliest their BG might be called. And it was hugely helpful in thinking through all the various scenarios ahead of time on how I would adapt to various BG possibilities!
My pleasure…I am just really good at spreadsheets and consolidating…I can’t take credit for any of the raw data.
Plus I have self-serving motives…I will be there in a couple of days and want at least an idea on how to attack this beast of a ride!
What’s your day? We’ll be there next Wednesday (the 15th)! I am hoping to score a BG that would be called mid afternoon (3 or 4pm) so DH can ride together alone while the kids hang with a sitter back at the hotel. I’m thinking we need to aim for a number around 90, so will plan to be there at park opening but don’t think we need to be one of the first through. Thanks so much to you and @Jeff_AZ for all the work and data over the last month. I feel as absolutely prepared as I possibly could be for it.
Arrive evening of 9th, Half Marathon on 11th,
Home evening of 14th…will miss your day in the park. Sounds like an awesome date night…the moon, the spires, the first order.
The BG reservations are so volatile right now that it is pretty tough to guess how long to delay before hitting the join boarding group button. A couple of seconds of delay could make a large difference in BG numbers. Over the past 7 days, the BG per minute range from 6.2 - 94. So trying to hit 90 could range from 57 seconds to 14.5 minutes. This is of course during the busiest time of the year, and very high crowd levels.
For the 15th, it looks like a low crowd day that should work in your favor. Looking at historical numbers, you could range from 1.3 to 3.1 BG per minute. However, I think more people are aware of the process now, so the groups should go quicker than that.
My plan is to attempt RotR on 10th, 12th, 13th, 14th. I should be lucky at least one of those mornings.
I 1000% agree @Jeff_AZ had been a crucial part of figuring this all out. Also cant forget what @SteveBloom is putting together…I am amazed at how precise his numbers are above…must have built his own data collection bot!
You have closing time as 8 am today 
fixed
Really interesting, thanks!
One question, and I apologise if it’s already answered but how big is each boarding group?
Another question, roughly how many BBGs are given out? That is, what is your actual chance of riding if you get a BBG later in the process? This question is based on my (perhaps incorrect??) assumption that the “last” group on the table is the last BG called and not the last BBG distributed.
We don’t know the size of each boarding group. It is possible that the boarding group size changes between days and within a day.
If I was designing the system I would have the boarding groups decrease through the day so the rate of calling boarding groups has less of a chance of slowing down.
Another unknown. We can see the time the Backup Boarding Groups ends, but we don’t know the last Backup Boarding Group number distributed.
When Backup Boarding Group distribution last longer, could just be a sign that Disney is distributing more Backup Boarding Group.
Our trip coming up - Jan 19-29. Just got notice from TP that HS is now open at 7 AM every day Jan 20-26…
The virtual queue is a very sneaky way for Disney to camouflage the operations of Rise of the Resistance. When the ride breaks down, they don’t stop calling boarding groups, he rate of calling boarding groups just slow down.
We can see that the initial boarding group varies each day. There is nothing stopping Disney from skipping numbers so it looks like boarding groups are progressing faster. Smaller boarding group sizes would do the same.
We are going to have Touringplans Staff in the park counting people exiting the ride. This is the only way we can determine capacity and reliability.