On Friday Disneyland Resort will open its theme parks for the first time in over a year. While guests will finally be able to return to the happiest place on earth, Disneyland will certainly be a different place than it was when it closed in march of last year. People will be wearing face coverings throughout the parks, many dining locations will be closed, and social distancing will make many queue and attraction experiences different. However, those won't be the only changes as one of Disneyland Park's newest attractions, Rise of the Resistance, will also be modified in order to make it a few minutes shorter, in order to get it in line with state guidelines.
When California first announced back in March that theme parks could reopen beginning in April, the rules for doing so were still fairly strict and included some guidelines not found elsewhere. One of the new rules was that indoor attractions could not exceed 15 minutes in length. This was a problem for Rise of the Resistance, as the attraction clocks in at about 18 minutes from end to end. Disneyland has now confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that elements of Rise of the Resistance will, in fact, be shortened in order to get the popular attraction in under the limit.
The shortening will be handled by reducing what Disneyland is calling the "dwelling points" of the attraction. While the "ride" portion of Rise of the Resistance can't really be shortened, about half the experience takes place on foot with stops in various locations. It seems the plan is to trim these points of the ride by a few minutes.
First there's a "mission briefing" from Daisy Ridley as Rey, and some of that could be cut. From there, guests board a transport that is captured by the First Order. Then they're ushered past a platoon of Stormtroopers, and then placed into a holding cell where they're met by Kylo Ren.
At Walt Disney World's Rise of the Resistance, each of these points are socially distanced, as they certainly will be at Disneyland as well, but Rise of the Resistance is unique in that it's one of the few attractions where the pre-show is even still happening. At most other Disney World attractions the pre-show space is simply used to handle the socially distanced line, This was likely done simply because Rise was so new and so many people would be very upset if they couldn't have the full experience.
That's all the more true at Disneyland, as the ride was only open for a couple months before the park shutdown. However, it seems that guests there won't get quite the full Rise of the Resistance experience. It's unlikely those who have never been on the ride will feel like anything is missing, it probably won't take away anything from the experience as a whole, but it will be something less than the full experience.
