So Hollywood Studios opens to regular guests tomorrow and we are already getting some indications of what the queue for RotR may be like if they ever decide to use standby (right now they don’t plan to). Yesterday and today were CM preview, with no virtual queues used. Here’s what the wait time (and downtime) looks like (source: thrill-data)
As you can see, the 13th was a wild day as far as reporting - this probably wasn’t fully due to actual downtime. The 14th was pretty good with only one measurable instance of downtime and average waits around 90 minutes (not bad!). Waits tapered off a little toward the end of the day. It looks like morning is the worst time to go as usual.
Keep in mind that starting tomorrow, there will be a virtual queue, with three opportunities to join: 10am, 1pm, and 4pm. Park hours are 10am-8pm. It is not clear if they will use a standby queue at some point.
Good luck! I’d love to hear from anyone on the ground who has a chance to go!
I can’t wait to see how things go tomorrow and Thursday. We will be there Friday so I need all the intel I can get. We are planning to arrive and try for the 10 am group first, at least that gives us three chances for the day.
I am concerned though because I have a Samsung and the latest app update still doesn’t show the virtual queue option. Can any android user confirm they see the virtual queue icon (screen shots circulated a while ago for iPhone users but I don’t see it on my iPad either).
This would definitely be my suggestion! I have no idea what time you should arrive but I’ll watch Twitter tomorrow. I’m guessing an hour beforehand? They may not allow buses or cars into the parking lot before a certain time to avoid a mad rush.
We are staying at Pop and my hope is that with the later park opening the sky liner will be running so we can use that. Plan b is the bus (not wanting to take what seems like additional risk of using ride share)
I don’t believe that every time it says in the app that it is temporarily closed that the ride is actually down. I think it says that when the queue hits max capacity. I noticed a blogger who was there who essentially said that was what was happening. Which explains why it seemed to be down a lot…because it wasn’t, actually.
Reports so far have been that they don’t even let people drive past the gates until starting 30 minutes before opening. Skyliner opens 30 minutes early. So I think the process will likely prevent any means for large crowds to be together. They will undoubtedly start letting people in through the gates before 10:00 as they did before, you won’t have a mass of crowds like you did before.
I am not sure when the buses will start dropping off guests.
Yes, this! They aren’t opening parking lots that much earlier than park opening, there are no trams at the parking lots and they are staggering cars so it is preventing hoards of people coming in at the same time. Buses also don’t start running until closer to park opening.
Today will be the real test with all 4 parks open now.
Yes…but in the meantime, MK and AK have walk-ons almost across the entire park. AK, everything is 5 minutes (or less). MK, longest wait is 20 minutes for SDMT.
I guess the concern becomes if WDW manages to fill the parks to the “new capacity”, which is what we’re seeing in HS and EP, then the lovely waits we’ve been seeing up until today aren’t as lovely. Hopefully Disney doesn’t plan to open up any MORE capacity in such a case.
I was watching a couple of livestreams and it looks like people are having trouble getting their whole party into a boarding group. Lots of guest relations lines as a result. Not going to lie, I am dreading HS but it is DH’s favorite so my the force be with us!
I made an attempt at 1:00. It actually went smoothly…aside from the point where it told me everyone isn’t in the park because…well…we weren’t in the park. But I think had we been in the park, we would have managed to get a boarding group. It took a couple minutes after that before it said boarding groups were full again.
