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You’re headed to Walt Disney World. You have scheduled your Park Pass Reservations for Disney’s Hollywood Studios because you’re ready to get your Star Wars on. And then… the scary part sets in! If you’re interested in riding the most popular attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios – Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – then you know you need to join a boarding group. Here’s the kicker. Boarding groups first open at 7 am. You get on your My Disney Experience App and click to join a boarding group as soon as 7:00am hits your cell phone. If you push one wrong button, however, or are too slow, you may find that by 7:01 am, all boarding groups are full. It’s an extremely stressful way to start the morning. If you don’t get in at 7:00 am you have a second chance to join a boarding group at 1:00 pm with the same stressful minute timeframe for booking. It’s difficult and nerve-wracking, to say the least. Now, imagine Cast Members inviting you to ride Rise of the Resistance WITHOUT needing a join a boarding group?! It would be a dream come true! And yes, it recently happened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Apparently, Sunday, August 15 was THE day to be in the parks! Wait times across all four parks were low and Disney’s Hollywood Studios was no exception. We aren’t sure if it is the fact that Orange County (where much of Walt Disney World is located) is under a state of emergency due to the rise of COVID cases; if people were scared of Tropical Storm Fred causing too much rain; or if it was just an all-around random low crowd level day in the parks.
At first, the reports stated that you could still join a boarding group for Star Wars: Rise of Resistance late in the day. As shared via reporter, Scott Gustin on August 15, “It’s 6:37 p.m. and you can still get a Rise of the Resistance boarding group at DHS. Welcome to the upside-down.” Later Gustin updated the post commenting, “Update: Distribution ended at 7 p.m. Wild.”
Shortly after that post, Gustin provided one more update sharing, “Another update – after 7 pm, Guests WITHOUT BOARDING GROUPS were allowed to ride. As of 830pm, Rise was a walk-on.” That’s right – guests were able to ride the popular Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance as WALK ON riders!
Can you image? This would make our day! While we try to be understanding of Walt Disney World’s boarding group process for Rise of the Resistance, we personally aren’t huge fans of the added stressor. Rise of the Resistance is however a fantastic attraction which makes dealing with the process to get on the attraction a little better. We are curious to see (and hopeful) if it will reopen as a standby line once again in the near future. Best of luck, Star Wars fans!
