Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is an attraction at both Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Due to the popularity of the attraction, the typical queue and line is different from other attractions in Disneyland. Hollywood Studios has recently gone to a standby queue for the ride. In this post we’ll cover the best way to be able to ride Rise of the Resistance, including strategy and different tips. There are no spoilers in this post for the actual ride.

Update in November 2021: Rise of the Resistance has moved to a standby line at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The move is permanent in Disney World and guests can purchase a Lightning Lane for the attraction to skip some of the line. Over at Disneyland, the resort still reserves the right to implement the virtual queue at any time and you can see that in the app. That said, since they moved to a standby line at the busiest time of the year it doesn’t seem all that likely the old system will be brought back anytime soon.

In order to accommodate guests without having a seemingly endless standby line, Rise of the Resistance operates with a virtual queue. The virtual queue allows guests to go about their regular park day until they are called back to then wait a moderate amount of time (15-30 minutes) in the actual queue before riding the attraction. Essentially, guests are waiting in line virtually for Rise of the Resistance while waiting in a physical line at other attractions.

Getting a spot in that virtual queue is fairly simple. Every morning the queue opens at 7 AM and if you have park tickets and reservations for that day, then you just follow the prompts in the Disneyland app to join the queue. All you have to do is push the ‘Join Boarding Group’ button inside of the Rise of the Resistance portion of the app. You will need to have your group’s tickets linked to the Disneyland App in order to get a spot in the virtual queue together.

In case you didn’t get in the virtual queue in the morning, there is another opening for guests to try again at noon. You are able to do this from California Adventure if you have a park hopper ticket but you will need to have entered the park by that time.

There are certainly tricks to all of this, and we’ll get into them shortly, but that is the gist of what happens. Be in the app a few minutes before the 7 AM or noon openings, have all of your group’s tickets linked within the app and as soon as the clock turns from :59 to :00 get in the Rise of the Resistance portion and join a boarding group.

Now that we’re through the basics of how the queue system works, I’m going to get into some of the strategy and popular questions that come with the virtual queue. If I leave off any questions you might have, please let us know in the comments below.

Linking Your Tickets

A key step in entering the virtual queue and joining a boarding group is having all of your group’s tickets linked together. If you’re in a group that bought their tickets all together then you shouldn’t have much problem being linked inside the app. But if you’re meeting up with others then the app will likely not have everything in one place. It’s an easy fix though. Go into the Disneyland App and hit the the horizontal bars on the bottom right corner. That should get you to this screen:

You might not have Rex at the top of yours and I’m guessing you won’t have my name, but coincidences do happen. From there, hit the Tickets and Passes button that I circled above. After that, you’ll come to this screen.

Enjoy my scribbles? On that page, you’ll hit the plus button that I circled in the top right. The app will ask what you want to do after hitting that button and you just click on link tickets. Then you can just scan your entire group’s tickets and all be connected. It’s a fairly simple process. Have everyone with a phone scan everyone’s tickets. We’ll get into why a little bit later.

Entering the Virtual Queue

After all of the tickets are linked, you’re ready for your big moment. Be on the app a few minutes ahead of when you can officially join just in case something goes awry. I typically set an alarm for 6:57, after linking all of my tickets the night before. Make sure you’re familiar with the app ahead of time. Then, when the clock hits 7:00 (or noon) you push Join Boarding Group.

The app will then ask who you want in your party. Confirm those you want in there and then quickly finish up. Once in a while the Join Boarding Group button will not flash right at the turn of the hour. This is essentially an app malfunction and you should quickly go in and out of the page until it does turn on. I hope that doesn’t happen though and it shouldn’t if you come into the main page right at the turn of the hour, not before. Once done with all of this (it should take maybe 10-20 seconds) you’ll be given your boarding group.

Honestly, I wish there was more advice to give. All there is to it is to have very fast thumbs and be prepared. Rewarding people for pushing buttons quickly instead of how early they showed up to the park is questionable (and not a topic that we’ll cover in this post) but that’s where we’re currently at. Conceivably someone could stroll into the park 5 minutes before opening and get a better boarding group than someone who’d been waiting for 5 hours. All that matters is that little app and how fast you are inside of it.

Should only one person in my group try to get into the virtual queue?

Absolutely not. Again, have everyone link everyone’s tickets to their accounts. Then when the clock strikes opening time everyone who has a phone should be trying to get your group in. The app will take whoever is the fastest out of your group. Essentially, this just gives you more chances to get into a boarding group instead of relying on one person with one (sometimes faulty) app.

I got a boarding group. What now?

Go have fun! Once you’ve secured your spot in the virtual queue then there is nothing left to do in terms of Rise of the Resistance except ride it. Guests can go anywhere and they will call you back when it’s your boarding group’s time to go on the attraction. Once your boarding group is called, there will typically be an hour window in which you can return. If you secure a boarding group before 30 then we suggest getting to Disneyland not too long after opening. If it’s later than that then you have plenty of time for more sleeping or grabbing some breakfast elsewhere. Turn on the app notifications, you’ll get a text when your boarding group is called, and you’re all set.

How many boarding groups are called daily?

This really just depends on the day. Typically there are at least 100 called a day but, as with any new ride, things come up and there will be some unexpected (as I’m telling you to expect it) downtime. If you secure a group before 100 then you should be safe to ride Rise of the Resistance sometime that day. If not, then it becomes more of a toss up. If you’re over 100, don’t fret as I’ve seen them get through nearly 200 groups in a day. There isn’t anything you can do to speed up the process, just hope that the attraction has a good day.

I guess the one bright side is that the attraction is the only part of Galaxy’s Edge, or the whole park, that utilizes the virtual queue. Even if you don’t secure a spot in a boarding group then you can go into the land and enjoy everything else the park has to offer.

Other Tips

We’ll run through a few other quick notes! Extra Magic Hours (or whatever they’re called at Disneyland) do not apply to the Rise of the Resistance virtual queue.

If you have the choice, try to do Rise of the Resistance on a weekday regardless of if you’re at Disneyland. Weekends are simply more crowded and it’s much easier Monday-Friday.

There is absolutely no standby line for the attraction. The virtual queue is the only way to get onto the ride and there is no chance that you can just walk up and board the attraction. There is no benefit to getting there super early for this unless you’re rope dropping other attractions. As I said, it’s all up to your (hopefully) fast thumbs!

Do you have any other questions about the Rise of the Resistance virtual queue system? Let us know in the comments below! Planning a trip to a Disney Resort? Check out our planning guides to help you along the way. If you enjoy what you are reading here on Wandering in Disney please share this post with your friends, as well as like our social media pages. You can also subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!