If there’s one thing that you know you’re going to be doing at Walt Disney World it’s stand in lines. Whether it's for attractions, transportation, or for food, lines are everywhere. Lines for the most popular attractions at Disney World can regularly last a couple hours or more, but over the weekend something went absolutely haywire at Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios when the attraction briefly posted a 420 minute wait time.
If you’re keeping score, the 420 minute wait posted to Twitter is seven hours, which is an absolutely insane number that we don’t normally see even on day one of brand new rides (even when standby lines were available on day one). While Rise of the Resistance usually has the longest wait time at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it’s not usually this long, and there have even been times when Rise's line was incredibly short
I need an @ScottGustin investigative exposé on how there could possibly be a SEVEN. HOUR. WAIT. for Rise of the Resistance at #DisneyWorld 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/OJutBIrtCXOctober 14, 2022
There clearly was something going wrong, as shortly after this incredible wait time was posted, Rise of the Resistance went down entirely. It seems likely that at least part of the reason that the wait time got so high was that Rise was only running at a fraction of capacity. There are four bays worth of ride vehicles and the ride can still run if some of them are down, though obviously it will slow down the ride.
The other issue, however, is the Individual Lightning Lane. Lots of guests are spending about $20 per ticket, and following recent Disney World and Disneyland price increases, even more, to skip the line entirely. But when the Lightning Lane line gets too long, as it would if the attraction is running at partial capacity, more Lightning Lane riders get let into the ride as a percentage of the total, this slows down the standby queue even more.
Add to this the fact that Rise has seen brief shutdowns on a regular basis since opening, and you have a recipe for a long wait.
Whatever the reasons, and regardless of how accurate the wait time may or may not have been, seeing this wait time is worthy of note if only for the reason that we rarely see wait times even approaching that. Wait times on the signs at each attraction usually max out at 300 minutes, even if the actual wait time is longer. But even when we’ve verified Disney World wait times, above 300 minutes, they’ve never approached seven full hours.
This seems to have been a case of everything that possibly could have gone wrong with an attraction going wrong all at once. Even for what may be the most popular ride in all of Walt Disney World, I’m not sure anybody is going to want to wait that long for it. There are other things one could do with seven hours at Disney World that are a lot more fun.
