Disney World's Most Popular Ride Has Huge Wait Times on First Day of Standby Lines

The most popular ride in Walt Disney World is experiencing extremely long lines today after switching to a traditional standby line system. Today marks the first day that Walt Disney World has opened its Star Wars - Rise of the Resistance ride up to spontaneous visitors. While Disney's Hollywood Studios has only been open for a few minutes, the line for its most popular ride has exploded, with the official Walt Disney World app listing a 180 minute wait time. This wait time is impressive given the lighter-than-usual crowd size within Walt Disney World due to most children being in school and the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wait times for the ride are expected to grow in size as the crowd size increases throughout the day.

By comparison, the next longest line at Disney World (the Slinky Dog Dash, also at Disney's Hollywood Studios) has a 50 minute wait time. Only four other attractions at Disney World have wait times longer than 30 minutes and none of those rides have a wait time of an hour or greater.

Previously, visitors had to sign up for a virtual queue to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. The virtual queue would assign them a boarding group number and an estimated arrival time, which helped prevent large lines at the attraction. The downside to this method is that visitors would need to wake up at 7 AM in the morning for a chance at a spot and the ride slots would often fill up, robbing many visitors of their chance to ride the new ride. Disney Parks announced that it would be switching to a more traditional standby queue for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance earlier this month. The virtual queue system won't entirely be going away - the upcoming Remy's Ratatouille Adventure at EPCOT will also use a virtual queue and Disney didn't rule out bringing back the virtual queue system for Rise of the Resistance when crowd sizes increased.

The popular Hollywood Studios ride isn't the only place seeing longer-than-normal waits. The recently opened Space 220 restaurant at EPCOT had a multi-hour wait time for walk-up seating when it opened earlier this month.