Would you please point me to “the steps outlined here” that you feel helped you get in low groups in January? We will be there for late Spring Break, April Fools Day no less! So I have been following this thread for about the last 90 - 100 of the few hundred pages, and read the first page of FAQ posts. When they began talking about one hour return windows....
I have tested from home getting BGs right at open. Seems like it would work 80% of the time to get something if we were actually in the park and not at home eating breakfast! My son has done so too and we have seen the change to Backups happen by 7:01-7:02our time. We have also had the glitches with not all of our party showing up in our F&F list this week and the app stop working for long periods as well. We plan to have all four of us trying from my
MDE based on what I have learned so far. Two iphone 6S, a 7 and my sons X will be working hard for us.
Just want to know where on the thread to find the steps outlined for success that you are referring to. Obviously there is still quite a bit of luck involved in what one gets when all are trying at once, but Im looking for clarification on the process to which you are referring. Thank you!
I should clarify that I was referring to steps in the accounts by various posters of how they got their BGs. Not everyone does exactly the same thing at VQ opening, of course, but the overall pattern is pretty consistent. This is how I did it, keeping in mind that the notorious app "update" hadn't happened yet and as a solo I did not have to do any F&F stuff:
(1) It is essential to be in the park before the official opening time. I always found no-bag security to be 1 or 2 minutes at most. No experience with 'regular' security.
(2) If that green construction wall is still there, head all the way over and line up against it. When people start moving, there will be a branching off to the right beyond that wall and several additional tapstiles will be available. If the wall isn't there, try to enter a far-right side tapstile queue anyway; it should be a little faster.
(3) When I got in, I headed for a bench on Sunset Blvd close to where CMs were holding guests who wanted to rope-drop RnRC and ToT. It was maybe 6:25 a.m. when I reached the bench, with official opening time of 7:00 a.m. At this point, I did some practice with the app, opening it, backing out, closing it, to get some idea of how it would behave on my (really slow) Tracfone with Android 7. Connection strength displayed with full bars on Sunset, which is why I liked to stay there. I think the Tracfone was using Verizon but can't swear to that. I did NOT use wifi, as I have a bad attitude towards Disney wifi.
(4) Around 6:50 a.m., I opened time.gov in my Chrome mobile browser. It displays the U.S. government official time including seconds. The
Unofficial Guide mentioned a few years ago that Disney time seems to be within about a second of U.S. official time.
(5) At 6:55 I opened MDE and scrolled down to the "Find Out More" button. I then followed the time on Chrome until 6:59:50, went back to MDE, counted off a few seconds in my head and clicked Find Out More and the rest of it, which I think was selecting my "party" (i.e., me) and then Join Boarding Group. Three times out of four, I got a BG no higher than the 40s. The fourth time, I blew it when the BGs seemed to open a minute early and I got 87. Even on that day, however, I got to ride. I knew something was wrong when the 'whoop parade' started up around me and I had no BG yet.
Once again, my experience pre-dates the troublesome app update so that is probably best addressed by having as many phones as possible trying for your group. For me, the keys were getting into the park on time, finding a spot with good connectivity, and being ready to tap the instant BGs opened up. It all seems absurdly intricate, but I will say that RotR is so boss that it was worth it every time I had to get up at 5:00 a.m.
