May the Fourth should have been a huge day for Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Galaxy’s Edge. Unfortunately, it was not. Read one family’s experience as they attempted to celebrate the day to no avail.
The following story is submitted by a reader whose identity is known to That Park Place but whom we are keeping anonymous at request.
On a whim, I checked reservation availability for APs yesterday and found them available, so booked it.
Normally we go with our autistic son and use DAS. But with Florida testing today, we took him to school then headed to DHS, getting there at 9:30. Our first impression when we saw then parking lines was how short they were. Then the parking lot was not overcrowded.
We parked on row 310, relatively close. We checked the Genie+ app and saw three rides down (this is at 9:30 am on May 4th): Lightning McQueen Racing Academy, Tower of Terror AND… Rise of the Resistance!!!!
Are you kidding me?
DHS opened at 8:30 am and ROR is down less than an hour later. This reminded me of being on Haunted Mansion on Halloween and it broke down 5 times during our ride! Aerosmith is also down for refurb, so NOTHING was open on Sunset Blvd.
So…we figured Star Wars Land is GONNA BE PACKED! It’s May the Fourth and Sunset Blvd is basically totally down. But when we got to Galaxy’s Edge, it wasn’t crowded. It felt like any other day at Star Ward Land. We saw Kylo Ren and easily got a photo. There was a very big crowd at the stage for Stormtroopers (we’ve never seen so many people there), but you could navigate the crowd to the front easily. There was no line for blue milk or coke bombs. We saw stores were using virtual queues. We wandered through Ronto Roasters easily and saw Rise of the Resistance was back online with wait on app of 60 mins, so we headed over there.
The line was forming quickly. When we got in line, Genie said 80 mins, but the posted time on the ride was 125 min. We had never waited in the Standby queue as we usually take our son and use DAS. We got in line at 10:28AM and got on ride at 11:23AM (55 mins). But guess what?
Rise of the Resistance was in B-Mode.
On May 4th ROR is down and in B-MODE?!?! After ROR, we waited in line at Toy Story Mania (posted 75 mins) and noticed no one getting in line behind us. We saw many people leaving the queue, but we did not know why. After 15 mins, they announced that TSM was down. Thanks! We then left with plans to go back tonight and see if it’s at capacity at night… in parking lot, we saw someone with huge product box. He said it was limited edition light saber he bought for $446 out the door. He said LE 7500. So, even the LE merch could not sell out DHS.
So that was it.
Not sold out.
Not crowded
Genie+ was $22
Several rides down
ROR down and in B-Mode
Inflated wait times (ADA violation)
And this is on May the Fourth.
How far has Star Wars fallen?
Today was a great barometer.
If Darth Vader was in Galaxies Edge, there’s no way we could have gotten anywhere near him for a photo. But Kylo Ren, no problem.
And what happened to Disney Maintenance? No Star Wars ride should be down today at all.
Sigh.
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