Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened up quite some time ago at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but it remains an incredibly popular ride.

Right now, if you want to ride Rise of the Resistance, you need to sign up for a boarding group (a.k.a. join a virtual queue). Getting a boarding group can be an incredibly difficult task that requires VERY speedy fingers. But, soon, guests will be able to ride Rise of the Resistance WITHOUT a boarding group. This is a huge change and it could cause some pretty big impacts on your Disney World trip.

Right Now

First, let’s briefly talk about how Rise of the Resistance works right now. If you want to ride Rise of the Resistance at the moment, you’ll have to sign up for a boarding group (as we mentioned before).

Boarding groups are distributed only twice per day — once at 7AM and again at 1PM. Sometimes we’ve seen the crowds so low that boarding groups stay open for quite some time, but generally boarding groups can fill up in minutes, sometimes SECONDS.

In order to get a boarding group at 7AM or 1PM, you need to have a Park Pass for Disney’s Hollywood Studios and it must be the first park you visit. That’s because Park Hopping doesn’t start until 2PM each day. On a day with particularly low crowds you might be able to hop to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and get a boarding group at or after 2PM, if they’re available. But, that’s not typically the case.

You can sign up for a boarding group at 7AM or 1PM from outside the park (a.k.a. from your hotel room as you sleepily awaken to try and get a morning group, or from a restaurant in Disney Springs as you try to grab a 1PM spot, etc.). For the 1PM spot, however, you MUST have tapped into Hollywood Studios at some point earlier in the day in order to get the Boarding Group at that time.

So, right now the process usually looks like this: (1) get a Park Pass for Disney’s Hollywood Studios; (2) wake up at the crack of dawn (a.k.a. 6:50 or sooner) to try and get a morning group; (3) if you’re unsuccessful, try to get a boarding group at 1PM; (4) if you get a group, wait until your time arrives, and then go ride OR if you don’t get a group, do other things that day (a.k.a. you won’t be able to ride without a boarding group typically — we’ve seen LOW crowds that allowed non-boarding group riding one day).

So, how are things changing and how could it impact your trip?

The Change

Starting September 23rd, Disney is PAUSING the use of Boarding Groups for Rise of the Resistance. That means, starting September 23rd, guests will be able to ride Rise of the Resistance by simply joining the standard, standby queue.

But, Disney has noted that guests should keep an eye out for updates on the My Disney Experience app as the virtual queue may return or may pop up and be used from time to time.

This change could impact your trip in a number of ways.

1 — Should You Rope Drop?

You might have thought that the pause on virtual queues meant you could FINALLY sleep in more on those vacation mornings and it might, or it might not. Disney’s Hollywood Studios generally opens at 9AM each day (though hours can change). Traditional rope drops are now in place for the most part at Disney’s theme parks, meaning you may be let into the park a little bit before its opening time, but you’re typically held at certain points along the way before Cast Members let you fully into the park.

If you want to “rope drop” this park and try to be one of the first guests there (ideally cutting down on your wait time for Rise of the Resistance), you’re going to want to get there EARLY. We’re talking about 45 minutes before opening time. Disney buses start running about 45 minutes before park opening time.

If you’re driving, we’d typically recommend you plan to arrive about an hour before opening time, but sometimes Cast Members do not let guests into the parking lot until closer to 45 minutes before the park’s official opening time. So you might want to arrive a little bit closer to that 45 minute mark or arrive an hour before and just be prepared to be turned away.

If Hollywood Studios opens at 9AM, you’ll probably be getting up around 7AM (or earlier) anyway to make sure you can get ready and get on the bus in time. So, you might not save that much time in terms of sleep!

2 — Should You Wait Until Later?

We have seen some wait times get lower in the parks near the end of the night at times. So, hopping into the line for Rise of the Resistance just before the park closes, or any time in the afternoon once crowds have died down, might also be a good choice.

If you’re willing to wait until the evening (and take the chance that the line might still be long, the ride may be broken, or something else might happen), then you might be able to sleep in a bit and still get on Rise of the Resistance.

And if waiting is no issue to you, then you could definitely sleep in and just arrive whenever you want and join the line, regardless of how long the wait is.

Just keep in mind that Rise can experience technical difficulties. Sometimes this ride has experienced issues that have caused it to close for lengthy periods of time during the day. If you wait until much later in the day to ride it, it could experience a problem that could prevent you from riding it at all that day.

If you’re okay with that possibility, then you might be fine. If the ride is a MUST-VISIT for you though, you’ll want to consider visiting it earlier in the day to give yourself the best chance to get on it.

 3 — You Won’t Need a Park Pass for Disney’s Hollywood Studios to Ride Rise of the Resistance Anymore

Another interesting thing about this change is that you won’t need a park pass for Hollywood Studios anymore in order to ride Rise of the Resistance. Because the ride will be available through the traditional queue, you should be able to jump in line whenever you arrive — whether that’s at 10AM or 5PM.

This means you could visit another park in the morning and HOP to Hollywood Studios starting at 2PM, and then ride Rise of the Resistance at that time.

We’re curious to see how or if this changes things when it comes to park pass availability. Park Passes tend to fill for Hollywood Studios fairly quickly (one potential reason for which could be the popularity of Rise of the Resistance and the fact that a park pass has been, until now, necessary to get a boarding group and ride the attraction).

Now that a park pass won’t be needed for this park, how could things change? Will park passes still fill quickly with people trying to be one of the first in line? Will fewer people feel inclined to spend their day at Hollywood Studios knowing they can visit another park and just hop there later?

Will park hopping become more difficult if LOTS of people who couldn’t get a park pass can now hop there to ride rise at any time they want (after 2PM)? Remember park hopping is based on availability/capacity. Though we’ve never experienced an issue with capacity before, it could become an issue in the future. Or will things just stay the same? We’ll have to wait and see.

4 — Pay Per Ride

Could this change also impact the way you view Disney’s pay-per-ride system that will be coming soon? We think it could.

Knowing now that you could ride Rise of the Resistance through the standby line may make you LESS inclined to pay to use this ride’s Lightning Lane when Individual Attraction Selection becomes available. You no longer have to rely on the “chance” of getting a Boarding Group, instead, you can just wait in line. So, you may no longer feel like you need to pay a price to “guarantee” a ride on this attraction.

On the other hand, if the standby line is consistently several hours long, you may now be MORE inclined to pay to use this ride’s Lightning Lane and skip the long wait.

Click here for more of our thoughts on how this could impact the pay-per-ride system.

Overall, you may have to adjust some of your plans or the way you think about Rise of the Resistance as this change takes place. Just keep in mind that boarding groups could return or could pop up from time to time, changing your strategy once again.

We’re curious to see just how long the lines get when the standby line starts. Will we see waits stretching several hours? Will long waits potentially go away after a bit of time as guests no longer feel the strong “need” to ride Rise, knowing it’ll be available for them at any time using the standby line? Will the removal of the boarding groups take a bit of the exclusive, hard-to-get nature away from this ride, potentially lowering demand a tiny bit?

There’s a lot that remains to be seen, but we’ll be keeping an eye out for all of these updates and we’ll let you know what we find.

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How will you adjust your plans based on this Rise of the Resistance change? Tell us in the comments!

The post How the Rise of the Resistance Update Will CHANGE Your Disney World Vacation first appeared on the disney food blog.