Just got home from WDW, wanted to share my gratitude to you all for the intel or else our perfect Star Wars day wouldn't have happened! Here's how the day went down.
My wife, daughter and I visited HS on Wednesday, 2/19. Every park was packed all week, believe the Presidents Day week crowd projections, they were spot on. Being our 5th year in a row visiting, my family has a pretty good handle on how to navigate all things Disney parks. Having visited so many times it also allowed us to focus on specific things versus trying to cover too much of the parks.
Left Beach Club on foot at 6:50am and got to HS about 7:10am. STAY RIGHT STAY RIGHT STAY RIGHT at Security and we got in the park at 7:25am.
Headed right up Sunset and found a nice spot behind the DVC booth, sitting on the wall behind it (next to a CM entrance). Hundreds gathered further up Sunset and piled in the street. I don't see that (piling together) as a good signal strategy, but to each their own. I also had a hunch there would be a wifi router or extender in the CM area we were sitting in front of.
Wife and I were logged into park wifi, iPhone 7 plus. Between 3-4 bars the entire time we sat there. At 7:57, we opened our MDE apps, and clicked Find Out More and then My Status. Our strategy was to start at 7:59 (wife was peeping seconds on her Apple watch) and do a pull down refresh on the Boarding Status page, check results, then hit the back arrow, check results, hit My Status, pull down refresh on Boarding Status page, back arrow, rinse repeat. We started right at 7:59 and after 3 rotations we both got the Join Boarding Group after hitting the back arrow on the same rotation. I was a bit quicker and got BG 47 (BG 45 was first backup group issued).
Once our BG was secured, wifey headed to Starbucks for caffeine and calories for the gang while my daughter and I headed straight to Jedi Training signups at about 8:20. Line was about 15 minutes and only shows after 1pm were available, we picked 3pm. We fueled up in front of the lake and headed to Launch Bay. Vader line was a solid 45 and frankly I thought the visit was super rushed once we got in. After that killed some time shopping and a visit with Olaf then headed to Star Tours (11:30 FastPass) when I got the notification at 11:47 that we were ready to board Rise. Hopped off Star Tours and straight to GE. Didn't even look around as I walked in because I was too amped about RoTR. Walked in at Noon and was SERIOUSLY surprised how quickly we got on the ride from that point. It was no more than 25 minutes before we were fully on the ride. I expected a bit more queuing to be honest.
As for the ride, it truly is a masterpiece. If I'm a Universal exec I'd be pretty worried - LOL.
Got off Rise about 12:40pm perfectly in time for our Oga's ADR at 1pm. Oga's is super fun, got out of there about 2:10 and headed straight back to the Lake for Jedi Training checkin at 2:30pm. My daughter whooped Vader's butt while the wife and I started feeling the heat. Headed straight after to our favorite cooldown spot with Muppets and snagged a 4:15 table at Mama Melroses.
After some Sunday gravy, headed back to GE for more exploring and MFSR (5:30pm FastPass) before closing the night in Toy Story land (6:30pm TSM FastPass).
For what it's worth, I don't think wifi vs data is a differentiator. I'd say get to a clearing early, figure out how your phone is performing best and ride with it. The "cycle" strategy seemed to work because we were already in the flow when the clock ticked 8am. From what I heard regular BGs were gone in 20 seconds and backups in 90 so we considered ourselves pretty damn lucky.
May the force be with you all in your travels to ride this ride!!
