See What’s Been Cut from Disneyland’s Rise of the Resistance To Meet State Reopening Requirements
If you’ve been following along with MickeyBlog you’ll know that last month we reported that Disneyland was forced to cut part of Rise of the Resistance in order to meet state social distancing mandates.
Exactly what has changed about the attraction is the subject of an article in today’s OC Register. This includes the above mentioned shorter ride times, safety measures, a virtual queuing system and more.
As the Register points out, California’s health and safety guidelines require that the theme parks restrict indoor rides and attractions to no longer than 15 minutes. With Rise of the Resistance’s original 18 minute run time, Disney needed to shave off a few minutes in order to reopen.
In addition, state guidelines also require that theme parks eliminate indoor queues. Guests can only line up outside.
Rise of the Resistance is one of Disney’s most ambitious attractions and was only open at Disneyland for two months before the coronavirus forced the parks to close. What makes the ride so spectacular is that it employs 4 different ride systems, state of the art special effects and out-of-this-world visual effects!
This attraction is easily the most popular ride currently at Disneyland and Walt Disney World which has resulted in staggeringly long lines and the need to implement a virtual queuing system.
Under the new system, Disneyland distributes virtual boarding passes for Rise of the Resistance at 7 am and noon daily.
The 7am queue is limited only to those that have a valid ticket and park pass reservation for Disneyland that day. However, guests don’t have to be physically at the park. You simply access the queue from the Disneyland app wherever you are.
For those park hopping, the queue will open up again at 12pm. Guests must have a valid hopper ticket and can then book your spot for later in the afternoon when you switch parks.
Once your boarding group is called, you show up at the attraction to join the queue.
Since reopening, Disneyland has had to modify the queuing system for Rise of the Resistance. Instead of the indoor portion of the queue, guests must wait in a socially distanced line which can stretch a long distance through the park. We heard reports of it winding all the way to Critter Country.
There’s also much more of an effort to rush guests through areas like the Rey hologram and the BB-8 animatronic so that guests are able quickly line up at socially distanced spots right before entering the attraction.
In addition, safety dividers have been put into place to separate parties on the Intersystem Transport Ship which is a portion of the attraction roughly three minutes in length.
As the OC Register tells us, after this portion of the ride guests are dropped off at the hangar bay where they are met by First Order soldiers. Guests are then separated by plexiglass as they head down a hallway. Instead of lining up in the hallway guests are quickly ushered into the detention cells to shorten the total ride times.
There are socially distanced markers at the detention cells as guests once again split up into groups. This is where the interaction with Kylo Ren happens.
As soon as you exit the jail guests are ushered straight on to the First Order dark ride cars. There is a limit of one party per row and two parties per vehicle. Again, Plexiglass dividers have been put into place between the rows of seats.
As the OC Register tells us, single riders must be given their own row due to the social distancing requirements. This can mean that the number of people riding the transport vehicles are much more spaced out then usual.
So what has changed about the ride? As you can see from the walkthrough above, there is a lot more of moving rapidly between pre-shows and ride vehicles. By shaving down time in these holding areas Disney is able to reduce the ride time without drastically cutting down on the attraction itself.
Readers are encouraged to keep following along with us here at MickeyBlog for more news and updates.
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Source: OC Register