I think the current BG set-up achieves two important crowd management goals: there is no stampede to RotR at RD and there is no 5 hour physical line.
Since many visitors have kids in tow, this in my view is much more preferable than typical rope drop.
And even without kids, would you rather wait at park entrance for couple hours and then wait a few hours more in line?
Personally, I am very happy that BG are utilized and hope it will continue until FPP is introduced.
Down again, dam this is going to be a problem moving forward. 3rd time today
I also feel bad about the average Disney visitor, I was one of them in 2017 (when I thought arriving at park opening was RDing FOP). Is just that with the current demand and the current ride availability, I can’t think of a way in which the average Disney visitor gets to experience the ride, given the people who showed up before 9am would go there with the park opening early or not, just to guarantee a boarding group and they would have priority in line anyway. Hopefully demand will quiet down soon and there will be enough boarding groups for everyone.
Same as long as they fine tuned the times the park opened and when you are able to get a BP for better planning. But I much rather reserve and get an approximate on when I get to ride instead of RD and still waiting upwards to 2 hours instead of visiting the rest of the park
So far it looks like approximate time to ride is hard to predict due to reliability issues. Hopefully it will get better over time.
Day 2 Timeline 12/6/19
Link to OP
6:15am Park reported open
6:30am @galuchies_463555 arrives at HS - BG 22
6:50am Ride down
7:05am @youcanfly arrives at HS - BG 37
7:10am @thedownsfamily arrives at HS - BG 41
7:50am Ride back up; Youcanfly swaps for BG 57 (drop old, get new)
8:00am @Randall1028 arrives at HS - BG 75
8:03am Accepting BGs 10-25
8:04am Galuchies joins queue and gets second BG 75 (evening)
8:15am All BGs distributed for the day (highest BG is 100)
8:41am Galuchies arrives in preshow
8:45am (Approx) Ride down; Galuchies evacuated from interrogation room
8:57am Ride down
10:02am Ride back up; Accepting BG 26
10:05am Randall joins queue
10:22am Galuchies completes ride
11:15am Accepting BGs 26-29
11:39am Ride down; Randall completes ride and submits a Debbie Downer review 
12:30pm Ride back up; Accepting BGs 27-31
1:00pm Accepting BGs 29-34
2:00pm Accepting BGs 30-46
2:25pm Downs completes ride
3:00pm Accepting BGs 35-50
4:00pm Accepting BGs 48-62
4:50pm Youcanfly joins queue (BG 57)
5:00pm Accepting BGs 53-70
6:00pm Accepting BGs 63-80
7:00pm Accepting BGs 69-91
7:45pm Ride down
8:00pm Accepting BGs 79-91
8:40pm MDE: “All BGs for the attraction have been called for today and we are not assigning new BGs at this time.”
At 6:30 hot BG 22
Great rundown I am sure this will be a big help to everyone
Getting closer for you
I just hope I get in before the dessert party, lol.
I am curious if Disney will adjust park hours at all. Looks like not… A published 6am open would certainly give more people a chance to consider joining the early bird pack. But maybe the people who have been salivating over the ride and following the bloggers deserve to be rewarded for their loyalty. Who do you think is in charge around there? The First Order doesn’t really care for your feelings.
But in all seriousness, I’ve been watching December hours closely and am very surprised they didn’t at least switch to 8am opens at DHS.
So it seems to take just over an hour for them to reboot whatever needs rebooting and run through whatever dry runs and get the line moving again? That’s good information to know.
My objection to rope-dropping is that I like to close parks — and for a variety of reasons. Many of them look better at night. The big shows (HEA, etc.) are at night. It’s cooler at night. In the summer, MK closes at 10pm typically. Then you’ve got the horror of getting a bus to your resort. You’re not in bed much before midnight. I’m not getting up at 6am (or earlier) to then possibly wait in a cold, dark, line waiting for a park to open two hours before its published opening time in order to get a “ticket” for a ride.
There have to be better ways than this.
I hope it is great!
I open and close parks… but I’m also not one for sleeping on vacation and we typically don’t do more than two days in a row before we have a day off the parks.
I’d rather wait before it opens than after it opens. It’s not everyone’s preference.
I do NOT wake up early when I don’t have to … except when I’m at Disney. However, I try not to overdo the wake-up times. I don’t like to wait around before the parks are open. I like to arrive “just in time.” That said … I would 1000% wake up at 3am to ride RotR.
The ride being down this much is a larger area of contention to me. It’s a quality issue and it bugs me when a company says “good enough” when it really isn’t. That bugs me.
A new ride should work all the time.
