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.
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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.
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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.
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I was up everyday before my 5AM alarm on our recent vacation and had my girls up at 6AM for the 9AM daily openings. That was for five days with only one actual rope-drop-run; (wanted two, but broken monorail messed up one.)
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I agree with the sentiment but at the same time, a ride system as complex as Hagrid’s or RotR is going to require some trial and error to find all the ways it can go wrong, especially when you inject non-expert riders into the equation (people trying to stand up or leave vehicles, etc.).
Even a simple ride like Snow White breaks down from time to time - and when you have multiple ride systems that are interdependent, the impact of a breakdown in one place has a domino effect down the line.
So my conclusion is that they should do all the testing and design necessary to have a a reliable ride, but as guests we should be slightly forgiving, especially in the first month or so when they are testing how the ride functions with actual humans. As frustrating as Hagrid’s is, I’m sympathetic. If you try to do something mind-blowingly complex, there will be kinks to work out. But when it works, it’s magic.
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Then maybe a window of being open, then close until it’s ready for prime time.
Test Track and 7D shouldn’t go down either. Close them and fix them.
(Keep in mind I’m a nurse and DH has been in quality control for 34 years. To me things working is a big deal.)
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I have seen reports that rider swap is available but CMs are apparently strictly enforcing the rule that all riders must have a boarding group (non-riders, including non-riding children, do not need a BG). I added this info to the summary above.
Through the ride and off by 2:25pm. It was INCREDIBLE.
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Without giving away spoilers… any one take there kids on it? DD will be almost 7 we go. DH wants to ride with her. Any reason not to? Feel free to be vague. I can watch ride videos as well, curious how you think a child would do. Thanks!
There was a kid on our ride vehicle, maybe 12y. There are some intense action moments on the ride, but nothing more intense than the movies themselves. There are some motion simulator moments, and a lot of back and forth and spinning. If she’s fine with the movies, amd can do most kinds of rides, she’ll be fine on the ride.
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Thank you!
Just a general note - you can tell how quickly boarding groups are being cycled through by the width of the band. Since a BG is active for 2 hours, the lowest number BG has been active for 2 hours, while the highest BG is essentially just starting. i.e., right now they are accepting 35-50, which is 15 BGs. 35 was first called 2 hours ago. They have called 15 BGs in those 2 hours. 15 / 2 = 7.5 BGs / hour. Yesterday they were calling closer to 10 per hour. (The decrease makes sense because they had about 40 BGs or 25% of total issued that didn’t get called yesterday and were issued FP for today.)
So if you are in BG 65, you will have to wait about 2 hours to be called (65-50 = 15 / 7.5 = 2 hours)
(I’m an accountant so I can do arithmetic but don’t ask me to do real math. 
)
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New restaurants take months until operations work smoothly and consistently. New theme park attractions tend to be the same. There are a lot of problems that aren’t evident until you run tens of thousands of guests through an attraction for hours and hours at a time. Disney sometimes sorta does this with Cast and Passholder previews, which they chose not to do here. I can only guess at their motives, but part of that may have been that they had hard deadline with a press event where they wanted to promote Galaxy’s Edge and other new things coming to the parks and part of the decision may have been to get the ride open before Christmas crowds to hopefully have reliable systems in place for how to operate the attraction and manage crowds before things get really crazy.
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Nah. You’ll be totally fine. Nothin scary at all.
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I was going to post something like this, but different because disagreeing with the masses gets me into trouble sometimes, no matter how right I may be. 
But since you already said, I will add that my DS20 went to Cedar Point to ride Steel Vengeance on opening day. Wait was five hours. They got in line and waited 2 hours, with 3 more to go when the ride broke down for the day. People were not happy. At all.
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It will be interesting to see what Disney does on Sunday 12/8. Official HS opening is 9am, which we now know may not be the actual opening.
Except, it is also listed as EMH 8am. So is Disney going to let everyone in before 9am when it has put out there that on-property resort guests get EMH?
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I am betting they will honor EMH and only resort guests will be allowed earlier. Now, will it be at 6am like on EEMH? Or 8am? Betting on 6am, only resort guests.
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Now that will be interesting.
I don’t think they will. If EMH is listed, they really should keep everyone else out until 9am.
What will be interesting is if they open up the boarding groups during EMH, or even open the ride.
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Disney did put out there that EMH would not include RotR, so maybe boarding groups won’t activate till 9am
Which would be fair. I was thinking about the earlier discussion on letting people in early to manage security and capacity but the BGs being gone before official opening time. A fair way to manage that would be to let guests in early – EMH or otherwise – yet hold the BG opening process to 9am park opening.
Anyway, I will be there and I will report! I don’t know how early I will be there. I’d be there at 6am but I have a family to manage and not totally annoy and if there is a revolt I will choose family harmony over Liner strategy.
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