Just an FYI if it hasn’t been reported or understood already…we are here now and snagged a VQ for TRON on the 1pm release. It said we were boarding group 110 and estimated boarding time was 8:35pm. Around 5pm we noticed the boarding groups were 80-89 and then every 10 mins or so it would jump another 2-3 groups. Moving quick! We are at BLT so around group 91 boarding we decided to walk over to get near. When we arrived it was still moving up a group number each 5-6 minutes. We asked at the bottom of the ride ramp if we should go on up or wait until our group was called and were told to just get on the VQ line. It was looonnng so we figured by the time we got up there it would be at our boarding number anyway. About an hour and thirty minutes! later we got to the official VQ entrance and it was at boarding group 108. One cast member told us we would have to go back to the beginning of the line at the bottom of the ramp. Ummm…no. Another cast member asked us to wait there until 110 showed up. We noticed the cast members opened up two chains to increase the loops in the queue and the line was much longer. Boarding groups were not moving at the speed of one or two a minute. About 15-20 mins later boarding group 110 came up and we got past the check in. It was probably another 25 minutes before we actually got on the cycles. SO even though we got VQ, the wait was about 2 hours. The ride was super fun but over very quick! This was a huge surprise for us because we did the VQ for Guardians and when our boarding group was called, our wait in VQ was only about 20 minutes. Hope this info helps! Though I will say by the time we got off the ride, it looked like the line had decreased substantially.
Wow! Was this a product of letting people wait in that line whose BG hadn’t been called? It seems like most of your wait was before you even scanned in, right?
Yes, the majority of the time we were waiting was before the entrance. I think they are refining the process during this soft opening. My guess is the cast member at the bottom of the ramp should not have told us to go ahead and jump on line. She was the only one there and there were tons of people asking her questions. When we did Guardians in January, they had been doing VQ for 5-6 months and it went very smoothly. You didn’t get in line until your BG was called. We weren’t the only ones that got to the entrance of TRON and were told to go back or stand aside.
I get that wait times are always approximate…but at least with a standby line, you are told pretty much from the point you get in line what they estimate the wait to be, and you can make a sound decision about whether it is worth it or not. With a VQ, all you really have to go by is what people report as expected wait times…but 2 hours, without indication it would be that long, is very problematic. If you think it would only be an hour, and you have an ADR to be at, say, in 1 1/2 hours, but you are still in line, you have to decide whether to bail on the line (wasting time) or not, etc.
In your case…even if you had waited to get in line until your actual VQ had been called, it still would have been 1 hour 40+ minutes.
I do think Disney eventually figures things out pretty effectively, so hopefully this will not prove to be an issue going forward. Allowing people to get in line before the line, for example, creates a self-perpetuating problem…people see that the line is super long, and think, “Oh, we should get in line now because our BG will be called!” and then the line before the line grows…as it grows, more people will start doing this.
Fundamentally, I think this was likely caused more by Disney not adequately estimating the times for each BG. I kind of suspect that being later in the day also played a role, in terms of guests themselves wanting to finish out their day at the park as soon as possible, despite having a later BG.