Two great experiences on RoTR this week (with one annoying interlude…)
Thursday - flew from Ohio, landed at SNA at 9:30, then had to pick up my sister in law before arriving at DLH. We were walking to the park about 11:30. Had lunch at Jolly Holiday, then arrived at RoTR at about 12:30. My wonderful TA had nabbed us a boarding group while we were airborne, Group 15. So we arrived about 3 hours after our group had officially “expired”. The cast member just scanned our passes and said they allow anyone who has a boarding group anytime that day use it late, anytime that operating day. I was ready to plead travel issues if needed, but he did not ask for a reason at all.
Once we were about halfway through the internal queue, it stopped moving, and soon an announcement was made that the ride was not operating and there was no estimate when it might resume. They said we could choose to wait, or depart the queue. No word about receiving a pass for later. We hung out and caught up with my sister in law for about 20 minutes, then decided to bail. My SIL was in an ECV, so it was quite comical trying to get past everyone still waiting. When we got to the entrance, the cast member there stopped us to scan our tickets to allow us to return anytime later, if the ride resumed operation. Man, if we had known that would happen, we would have bailed immediately. Not a big deal, though, and happy they did that.
We enjoyed the park, went to DLH for a lovely swim, and had dinner at Tortilla Joe’s before returning to the park. At that point, the app was saying the attraction was still down (I had not monitored it through the afternoon, so I don’t know if that downtime was continuous or intermittent.) But as we headed to Galaxy’s Edge to do Smuggler’s Run, I took another look, and Rise was back up. We went immediately there, scanned our passes, and walked through the queue to the experience. We walked by an hour or so later, and the queue was back in the outside queue. Our timing was lucky, but great! I am assuming that when they first reopened, they didn’t call new groups at first, just accommodated us “leftovers”. Whether that was the case or not, we were happy to have it work out.
Saturday - Went to the edge of the parking lot in front of DLH, where a speed test showed a strong signal, and got Group 9. We had a lovely breakfast at Tangeroa Terrace, then arrived at the park about 8:30. Groups were not boarding, so I was worried there were maintenance issues, but then I noticed the app shows the operating times to be 9-9 anyway. We rode Buzz Lightyear, and our group was called right at 9:00.
We headed there and entered the queue, and it was not only a walk-on, the Internal queue was not fully in use yet, so we were almost immediately in the first preshow room.
We were off the attraction by 9:45, so I could have tried for a Webslingers group at noon, but we were leaving after lunch. We had done WS on Friday, and even if we were not leaving early, I doubt we would have done it again anyway. We enjoyed the attraction, a lot, but had no desire to experience that queue again. There is no reason I can think of for that disaster. But I digress…
Rise is such a great attraction! I am a frequent WDW visitor, and have been able to get a Rise boarding group every time I have tried. I do have a fast new phone (iPhone 12 Pro Max), and I know all the “tips”, but I’m 63, so it’s not as if I have fast teenage fingers!
