Limiting the number of times a person can ride is another potential solution (don’t hit me!) until things slow down a bit. So each person could be allowed 1 BG per 3 days/7 days/whatever time is determined to be appropriate. Kind of similar to how Disneyland’s opening of SWGE had only one specific entrance time per person, though that was short lived.
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The reality is that there are far more people wanting to ride than there is capacity. Just like for every other ride at WDW.
The virtual queue has levelled the playing field for everyone, whether onsite or offsite, thus enabling local AP holders to have a chance at riding. It’s been a complete lottery the last few days, but the crowds will reduce as of today.
Eventually they will introduce FP+ for the ride, and then “normal business” will resume, where only those staying onsite for more than a week will be able to book one. Unless you pay extra for an upcharge event, of course.
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DO we know why on the day it got subscribed fastest we had lowest BG numbers, Did it break down a lot that day? Or bigger Boarding groups.
Agree. They at least limited the number of BGs people could get the same day after the first few days of the ride being open. I understand it is a great ride and everyone wants to ride multiple times, but getting new people on the ride should take priority over second or third rides.
I also think they should have done EMH (traditional ones for resort guests only, not the weird openings they are doing now). It doesn’t need to be every day, but 2 or 3 a week for the first bit would have been reasonable. Isn’t one of the major perks of staying on property that you get access to the rides that can be hard to get FPs for like SDD and FOP? They are making it more difficult to justify staying on property with the rising costs.
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Thy just took extra magic morning hours away from my holiday in Feb 
which is really annoying as my whole weeks planning was based around them, if they had done it before my fast passes it would have been fine, but after ive got all my fast passes makes it too difficult to change
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I agree with this whole-heartedly. I don’t stay on property…but really, it is only fair if on-property guests get priority access, at least on EMH days.
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You, sir, have made my whole entire morning. That little 15 minute window gives me hope for my trip next week. Although we’ll see how things go with an 8am park opening…
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I’m interested to see the CL today. I expect it will be back to normal starting today…although, I’ll admit that yesterday’s 10 is a surprise to me. I figured with kids returning to school this week, crowds would have been low yesterday as people return home from their trips. Although, it was a race weekend, right?
Yesterday at Universal was quite a bit more crowded than Friday or Saturday. I guess not as many people had to work and go to school today as I thought! But maybe many are like us, we are flying home as we speak even though the kids are missing school and my DH is missing work (I don’t work until Wednesday), because yesterdays flight prices were insane. Today was half the price for us.
I think the weekend coming up is the race weekend.
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I’m visiting in the middle of March and mostly 10/9 CL days. I’m concerned it’s going to be the BG like we saw the last 4-5 days with a pure lottery system. I really hope there is an improved system by then b/c a pure lottery based web system seems unreasonable.
I think the logistics of this are too complicated, which is probably why they haven’t done it. They would either have to 1) open up a standby line during EMH, with some sort of cutoff so that it is only long enough to last the duration of EMH; 2) issue BGs, but only enough to last the duration of EMH before reopening BGs (the BG system may not be designed to open/close/reopen so there are probably IT risks to this as well); or 3) Issue BGs continuously but risk having few or none available for non-EMH guests by the time the park opens to the general public.
And the success of each of these options would be jeopardized if the ride was down for some or all of the EMH period. If the ride were operating reliably, they could probably overcome the other impediments. Better to keep expectations in check for now. I’m sure they will open the ride during EMH eventually. In the meantime, EMH guests still have the benefit of getting to ride all the other rides so they can focus their regular park hours on RotR and whatever else they missed. As I’ve said before, the EMH benefit is fungible. Unless you don’t plan to ride any of the rides available during EMH, it’s still a net benefit without RotR.
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correct
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I would think it would be easier than that. Only allow people to obtain a BG during EMH if they are in the park. Only on-site guests can get into the park during EMH. This means that on-site guests get first dips on a BG, thereby mostly guaranteeing a chance to ride. An hour later (or whenever the EMH window ends), if there are any BGs left, off-site guests can try for a BG once they tap into the park.
The use of evening EMH is a problem, actually.
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Funny that the backup boarding groups closed so quickly today considering the normal ones took longer to go. Wonder if they issued less today for some reason
Edit, ignore me, thought it said 7.17, not 9.17
What you described is what I had in mind for option 3. That seems like an outsized EMH benefit though. You could end up with a scenario where no off-site guests get a chance to ride. That isn’t true for any other attraction, even FoP or SDD. Once the ride is operating reliably I think it will be possible to do this though. They should be able to get through all EMH guests in a couple of hours.
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True…which is why if they did it, Disney would need to advetise it ahead of time so that off-site guests would know not to show up on EMH days.
But I’m okay with off-site guests not getting to ride on EMH days. If riding was that important to me, I should stay on site.
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If the ride had been fully tested and therefore more reliable when it opened, they could have ran the ride as stand-by during EMH for onsite guests and then opened up boarding groups when the queue became too long.
That way anyone arriving for EMH would have got a BG, and with it operating during EMH there should also have been BGs available for others.
It was fears over the ride reliability and capacity that led them to use BGs in the first place.
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There are many more guests than there is ride capacity so any way Disney sets up access to the ride there will be many, many guests (who have paid thousands and planned trips for months) who will not get to ride. Sure, there are other ways to do it (FP, only a stand-by line, random lottery), but the capacity of the ride doesn’t change, it only changes which guests get to ride and which guests are disappointed.
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