If this ride dropped the Boarding Groups and went to standby lines, I suspect you would be looking at more like 4.5-6 hour waits than 3-4 hours waits. I just can’t see this ride right now being “only” a 3-4 hour wait. And then with all the break downs of this ride currently, you would have guests who waited 4+ hours in line, only to see the ride breakdown before they got a chance to ride.
Would you prefer (a) waiting in line for 4+ hours and then having the ride break down for an hour over (b) the boarding group process where you know in a matter of minutes whether you will get a chance to ride or not?
The whole 2 hours and 17 minutes before the BBG closed should give you hope.
We were in BBG twice and got called. Both days, December 18th and December 23rd, we didn’t get to HS until 8:45 AM. This was by choice. We live in California, 6-7 hour drive to DLR, and both of our kids are in college in Southern California. We felt that we could always catch ROTR in CA at some point.
So we were pleasantly surprised we got called and got to ride, albeit after 5 PM both times.
Ohhh i dont suggest getting rid if boarding groups, just cut by 10-20 percent, and if ride opens at 7, the stand by linr opens 9.30 hell even 10.30 So you can if you don’t get a group. You can chose to join line then 20 percent(ish) of every ride comes from the stand by line. So less boarding groups. But if your prepared to wait 3+ hours you can probably ride. The stand by queue can then be managed. So if gets too big cast can say ok. Probably topped out. But if you turn up at opening, you can join a queue if your desperate enough
If they had a standby line for 20% of the ride’s capacity, it would likely fill to the day’s capacity fast, without knowing if they will get to ride. Wait 8+ hours hoping the ride does not break down.
One does wonder why they don’t build rides that can accomodate the capacities. They’ve had to expand both Soarin’ and Toy Story after the fact. Why not just build a second (or third) track at the beginning? It’s not going to be a failure of a ride. They know that.
Oh ive no Doubt that the stand By queue would FILL SUPER FAST but thats self regulating. Everyone has a Time they are prepared to Wait.
Ride opens at 7 queue opens 9:30 so you know Right way you have a min 2.5 wait. Is that worth it. For many Probably. That quickly grows grows to 5. Is that got as many people willing to? Now the difference between 2.5h and 5h (based on Milllenium falcon figures of 1800 a hour and 10 hour day thats 18000 at day total , so differnence between the 2.5h and 5 hour wait might only be 800-1000 people. Not many but thats the choice people can make. If you join an 8h queue and it fucks up, thats a chance you have taken(and who joins a 8h queue) but you have a choice and a chance the Boarding group that goes in a minutre is a lottery, where as a queue with a time will weed out those who only would like and those who are prepared to spend hours to get a ride. No system is perfect and i like the way the BG reducuces queues generally for all. But if its gonna go in a minute. there needs to be a system where those more dedicated (prepared to turn up at 2am ,or join a 5 hh queue ) get to ride over those who wouldnt botther but got lucky in that minute window
There are around 36,000 rooms onsite, not even sure if that includes DVC. The capacity for DHS is over 40,000.
Even if they only allowed onsite guests to ride, there is no ride that can have that many people riding. If the BGs are closing within minutes of opening, even doubling the capacity wouldn’t be enough.
The cost for this rides runs into the hundreds of millions. Galaxy’s Edge at WDW cost about 1 billion altogether.
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.
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!
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!
