How you and your party can easily get on the Rise of the Resistance ride at Disney World.
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is widely considered to be the best ride at Disney World. As a consequence, hordes of people try to ride it over and over, and the wait times can be incredibly long. Here are some tips World Class VIP has compiled to help you get a ride on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, including how to reserve Rise of the Resistance at Disney World.
Disney VIP tour
If you want to enjoy your trip to Disney World instead of spending the entire time standing in lines, book a Disney VIP tour with World Class VIP. Our Disney VIP tour guides spend all day every day in the park, and they know how to get you into all of the attractions you want to see with the least amount of waiting time.
Before you go, our tour guides will help you put together a list of your desired experiences, and we will come up with the best strategy to see them all, including how to reserve Rise of the Resistance at Disney World or another strategy, such as early entry, to ensure you get a ride on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. It’s like having a really good, living version of the Disney Experience app at your side throughout your visit.
Lightning Lane: how to reserve Rise of the Resistance at Disney World
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is one of Disney World’s Individual Lightning Lane (ILL) attractions. Visitors to the park can purchase an ILL to Rise of the Resistance for $20. This is how to reserve Rise of the Resistance at Disney World. Guests staying on-site can purchase an ILL for Rise of the Resistance at 7 a.m.; off-site guests have to wait until the official park opening to purchase an ILL.
Usually, the ILLs for Rise of the Resistance are completely sold out the day before the park opens. If you purchase an ILL and manage to book a time before they sell out, you can reserve up to two seats on Rise of the Resistance at your preferred time.
You may not be able to actually select your preferred time, though; you have to choose from among the unbooked available time slots. ILLs earlier in the day fill faster than ILLs later in the day. If for some reason you miss your return time, if you show your ILL boarding pass at the gate, they will let you ride anyway.
Early theme park entry
If you are an on-site hotel guest, you get to enter Disney World 30 minutes before it officially opens. This advantage used to be called “Extra Magic Hours,” but is now just called “Early Entry.” Obviously, this gives you a chance to go stand in line at Rise of the Resistance before the line gets really long. You may even be able to get on Rise of the Resistance before the park officially opens; Disney World often starts running Rise of the Resistance during early theme park entry.
This means if you just show up, you might even be able to beat out the ILL purchasers and get a ride before the first ILL slot opens up. This frees up the rest of your day to enjoy the other attractions instead of standing in line. Your Disney VIP tour guide will then lead you through the park to the attractions you want to see, such as the Millennium Falcon, Smuggler’s Run, and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Trail.
Just go and stand in line
If you have no strategies to get on Rise of the Resistance or don’t want to pay for an ILL or an on-site hotel, your only option is to go stand in line. The wait time can be as long as seven hours on some days. Observers have noted that there are two peak wait times during the day: about 30 minutes after the park officially opens and then again in the early afternoon.
These peaks can be explained by many visitors lining up in the morning when they first arrive at the park and then many visitors lining up after lunch. The optimal time to go stand in line is around 11 a.m. You will probably have to stand in line through lunch, but you will end up waiting for less time than if you join the line first thing in the morning or immediately after lunch.
You can also try joining the line later in the day, but you do run the risk of waiting and then not making it onto the ride that day. Another risk of joining the line later in the day is if the ride breaks down. It breaks down often and has to be temporarily closed for repair, and if it breaks down later in the day, the park will usually just close it for the day.
If you have spent hours standing in line, missing the rest of the park, and then the ride closes, you will regret not signing up for a Disney VIP tour, which caused you to miss out on the VIP experience, and you will wish you had learned how to reserve Rise of the Resistance at Disney World.
What is Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance?
Rise of the Resistance is part of the Star Wars: Galaxy Edge attraction at Disney World from Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It combines a walk-through with a trackless ride, a motion simulator, and a rope drop ride. It uses animatronics, projection mapping, and screens to place the visitor inside a battle between the First Order and the Resistance. The ride first opened in December 2019 and has been wildly popular ever since.
The attraction has visitors play the role of new recruits to the Resistance. The visitors are given a briefing, and then they walk past spaceships to board a transport ship. The transport ship is attacked and captured by the First Order.
The visitors are taken off the ship and placed in prison cells. They escape and ride a transport vehicle through the First Order spaceship to an escape pod while a space battle rages around them and stormtroopers try to recapture them. Motion simulators make the blast-off of the escape pod feel very realistic.
Rise of the Resistance is currently the most complicated, technically advanced experience simulator in existence. The experience is very realistic, and visitors say they actually feel like they are present in the simulated setting. There are two Rise of the Resistances, one at Disneyland in California and one at Walt Disney World in Florida.
What was the “virtual queue”?
Originally, due to the popularity of Rise of the Resistance, the park instituted a “virtual queue” system. Visitors signed up for the ride on their smartphones or at a kiosk in the park and then waited for their boarding group to be called. Once they were called, they had an hour to arrive at the ride and join the real-life line or lose their place.
However, the “virtual queue” would fill up within seconds of the park opening each day, and the visitors had to be physically present in the park before it officially opened to have any chance at all of getting on the ride.
After the park reopened after COVID, they put in two queue windows, one for the morning slots and one for the afternoon slots. Both queues filled up within seconds every single day. In September 2021, the “virtual queues” were discontinued, and now visitors have to physically join the standby line in order to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
Many travel agents still point to the “virtual queue” when explaining how to reserve Rise of the Resistance at Disney World, leaving park visitors completely confused and without any means of getting a ride on Rise of the Resistance when they arrive at the park. At World Class VIP; we stay current on the best strategies for visiting Disney World.
Are there any physical or emotional restrictions to riding Rise of the Resistance?
Rise of the Resistance isn’t very physically demanding to ride. Visitors have to walk short distances, sit in seats, and endure a simulated drop. Children taller than 40 centimeters (around age five) are allowed on the ride, but experienced riders warn that riding Rise of the Resistance may be too realistic and emotionally intense for young children.
For this reason, Rise of the Resistance has a rider switch program where one parent can wait with a young child while the other parent takes the older children on the ride, and when that parent finishes the ride, the first parent can then take the ride without having to go stand in line again.
Book your VIP Disney tour today!
Work with World Class VIP to book a tour! Our tour guides are experienced in guiding parties through Disney World, avoiding long lines for rides and attractions, booking tickets for shows, and more!
If you are excited to visit Disney World, take a ride on Rise of the Resistance, and have a super VIP experience with your very own personal VIP Disney tour guide, give us a call today for a free quote.