WDW Disney's Hollywood Studios Discussion Thread

[Hilltopper39]

12 hours ago, KBrylczyk said:

You know, I watched that special a couple days ago.  I can't think of a single song of hers that would be appropriate for a fast rollercoaster.  95% of that concert is slow, mumbly, and very bass-heavy and the other 5% is slightly uptempo but still subdued.  I think she's a pretty cool person overall but her music isn't my style, so I may be wrong as I've not bothered to listen to her albums, but she wouldn't fit the bill IMO.

Oh yea, I'm mostly joking about a Billie Eillish retheme just because of the timing of that special and the rumor. I'm a fan of hers and she is massively popular, but still not sure that translates to a Disney ride makeover. There is some stuff on her first album (I like that album A LOT more than the second one that was featured in the Disney+ special) that might work for a ride, much more up beat a "club" vibe, but even then it's probably a stretch.

[oriolat]

I wish they themed/dedicated the ride to Daft Punk. It could go with a more futuristic theme and even a change of name.

[KBrylczyk]

^ Tron has that covered.

[Garet]

Quote

HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS —

Deputies say a man accused of trespassing was giving a tour at Disney's Hollywood Studios with a stolen company iPad.

Authorities were called to Hollywood Studios in June for a trespasser, later identified as Rennan Carletto, according to officials.

Deputies say an investigation manager with Tickets and Resort Fraud for Disney discovered unauthorized overrides on reservations in a Walt Disney World application that was for employee use only.

The app can give someone access to the front of lines without having to wait and is only installed on Walt Disney World devices.

The investigator told deputies he believed someone had a company device without permission to make the overrides.

The investigator said he saw Carletto giving an unauthorized tour within the park and leading the group into a line of one of the rides.

According to an incident report, Carletto bypassed the line after presenting tickets.

The investigator with Disney told the staff to cancel the reservations for Carletto and his guest before they got onto the ride and followed him out into the parking lot to see if the man would attempt to make more reservations.

The report continues that the investigator and an off-deputy working at the park approached Carletto and asked to speak to him.

Carletto told the men that he worked with A Class and did have a Disney device with him to make reservations, the report says.

Authorities say Carletto gave the iPad to the Disney investigator, adding that he had been given the device by his boss 'Tony,' saying that he did not know it had been stolen.

Officials say the investigator has dealt with 'Tony' in the past for the same issues but could not provide further information on the man.

It is unclear how the iPad was obtained outside Disney property.

Carletto was issued a trespassing warning by Disney for all its properties.

Source

[KBrylczyk]

[SharkTums]

So apparently Rise of the Resistance is going to a normal queue next week and pausing the whole crazy virtual queue. This is most likely in preparation for Lightning Lane and due to less crowds right now. 

[coasterbill]

This seems kind of-reasonable. I kind-of expected worse when you throw in the day-one hype and flood of bloggers.

[Hilltopper39]

Yeah I'll take that, be interesting to see what it looks like on a weekend closer to the holidays. I like knowing that I can now go to the park now and just get in line for the ride whenever I want to instead of having to show up early and play the reservation lottery game.

[Garet]

On 9/17/2021 at 6:32 AM, SharkTums said:

So apparently Rise of the Resistance is going to a normal queue next week and pausing the whole crazy virtual queue. This is most likely in preparation for Lightning Lane and due to less crowds right now. 

Good. I don't want to write virtual lines off completely, but corona seems to have proved that parks haven't cracked the code yet. So far it seems you either have to try extremely early and any delay makes you miss out e.g. Resistance or reservations result in rides being sold out way before park closure e.g. when Cedar Point handed out tickets or Fallon.

 

Due to corona, Everland has installed a tiered virtual queue system. The safari rides are virtual only until 2pm but it means on weekends, so you got to be there before opening, since they'll go as fast as Resistance boarding groups. Since the rides already sold out, that only leaves T Express, which is only a virtual line all day, so of course everyone signs up regardless of if they'll ride.

Come 2pm, the safari rides open the standby lines but with T Express still the only virtual line, you have so many people signed up that the ride is declared sold out at 2pm, and you're going to have to wait until closing to ride it. I've never seen waits that high before on standby.

 

[Taylor Finn]

I think it's ridiculous to suspend the Virtual Queue. I think Disney would do well to have the most popular ride at each park on Virtual Queue. It's not that hard to adjust your day based on a single Boarding Pass (would get confusing for multiple). I recognize that some folks didn't get a boarding pass, but isn't it a significantly better guest experience to NOT have to wait two hours to ride? I understand that part of the motivation to remove it is so they can make extra $$ selling people Lightning Lane single use passes. But the optics are really sour for me.

[coasterbill]

Personally, no, I don't want to have to set my alarm for like 6:55 AM on vacation even if I do just get to go right back to bed, no I don't want to only have the option to ride one time and no, I don't want to pay like $130 for a day ticket where I may not get to ride the best ride in the park.

I think all of that sucks.

Here are the wait times for the last seven days, but people have been reporting that the ACTUAL wait times are always about 1/2 of what they say they are. This is not worth all of those headaches in my mind. They're insane at rope-drop but otherwise very reasonable.

Quite a few times since it's opened, there have been longer posted waits for rides like Slinky Dog Dash, Flight of Passage and Jungle Cruise.

That old system sucked nuts and I'm glad it's gone and hope it stays gone forever. I get why some early-birds would like it but I am not one of them.

[Canobie Coaster]

I think the most encouraging this is the uptime and the fact Disney is posted wait times now makes it easier to monitor from sites like Queue-Times.

[FeelTheFORCE]

Pretty amazing week this past week.  We had 2 days at HS, and got 6 total rides on Rise of the Resistance.  After the initial rush, the standby line really dies down and the actual waits were typically much less than posted.  If there's no one in the outside portion of the queue, it was safe to say that the wait was never more than 25 min.  I think 2 or 3 of those times we even waited 15 min.  

[Hilltopper39]

We went to Hollywood Studios this past Saturday and used Genie+/ Lightning Lane for the first time and gotta be honest I don't have a lot of good things to say about it as our experience was pretty disappointing. First off we purchased the Genie Plus option in advance, then when the park opened at 9 am there were already no Individual Lightning Lane reservations available for Rise of The Resistance for the whole day, all gone before the park even opened to resort guests only I'm guessing. That was pretty frustrating, the main reason we opted to use Genie+ was to be able to pay for a reservation for Rise only to find that they were more or less completely unavailable to non-resort guests, yeah thanks.

 

We booked a lightning lane for for Rock N Roller Coaster for like 9:30 then hit Runaway Railway at rope drop and waited about 30 minutes for. My first ride on that thing, what a great attraction, super cute and just really fun. We redeemed the RnR lightning lane around 9:45, and immediately booked another lighting lane. At this point, around 10am an hour after the park opened, the return times for anything good was already into the 4pm-7pm range. Slinky Dog wasn't even available and Smugglers Run was around 7pm. We booked Toy Story Mania around 12, then after Mania at noon got a reservation for Tower around 6:30.  After the 6:30 return time everything was obviously gone but I'm guessing most all options other than the Muppets and a few shows we completely unavailable by around 1 or 2pm or so.

 

The park was pretty crowded, like very crowded, we ended up getting on Rise of the Resistance by waiting in a 2.5 hour standby line. I normally would never wait that long for anything but at that point in the day everything else in the park was posted around 80-100 minutes or something and Rise was posted at like 130 so I figured we can either wait 100 minutes for Slinky Dog or 2 hours for Rise. We also got on Smugglers Run but again with a 90 minute standby line (only posted at like 65). Additionally the standby lines for everything were so slow, like painfully slow, the merge cast member at Smugglers Run must have been going on a 90-10 ratio for lightning lane to standby. We all got spoiled during the pandemic and the days of the nice steadily moving lines are gone.

 

I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining since we did end up having a pretty decent day, there was just with a lot of waiting. I think we ended up getting on like 8 attractions (which included Muppets and Beauty and the Beast with no wait) in like 10 hours, and that was with 3 lightning lanes. Maybe I should be thankful that we were able to get 3 LL reservations and my expectations were just too high but I came in thinking we would be able to get like 4-6 LLs with a lot of flexibility for when and what we were able to use but that just wasn't the case. We could have reserved Slinky Dog or Smugglers Run early in the day but with the return times that were available that would have been the only attractions we could have booked for the whole day. Seems like a lot of people were pretty frustrated as I overheard a lot of conversations in line and between guests and cast members voicing frustrations with the systems. Maybe it was just very crowded, I think there was early entry which maybe contributed to resort guests getting all the reservations before the park as even open, maybe Studios is just a bad park for the system, or maybe I'm an idiot and didn't use the system correctly. I'm not sure but first my first impression of the new system wasn't great. 

 

[coasterbill]

26 minutes ago, Hilltopper39 said:

We went to Hollywood Studios this past Saturday and used Genie+/ Lightning Lane for the first time and gotta be honest I don't have a lot of good things to say about it as our experience was pretty disappointing. First off we purchased the Genie Plus option in advance, then when the park opened at 9 am there were already no Individual Lightning Lane reservations available for Rise of The Resistance for the whole day, all gone before the park even opened to resort guests only I'm guessing. That was pretty frustrating, the main reason we opted to use Genie+ was to be able to pay for a reservation for Rise only to find that they were more or less completely unavailable to non-resort guests, yeah thanks.

 

We booked a lightning lane for for Rock N Roller Coaster for like 9:30 then hit Runaway Railway at rope drop and waited about 30 minutes for. My first ride on that thing, what a great attraction, super cute and just really fun. We redeemed the RnR lightning lane around 9:45, and immediately booked another lighting lane. At this point, around 10am an hour after the park opened, the return times for anything good was already into the 4pm-7pm range. Slinky Dog wasn't even available and Smugglers Run was around 7pm. We booked Toy Story Mania around 12, then after Mania at noon got a reservation for Tower around 6:30.  After the 6:30 return time everything was obviously gone but I'm guessing most all options other than the Muppets and a few shows we completely unavailable by around 1 or 2pm or so.

 

The park was pretty crowded, like very crowded, we ended up getting on Rise of the Resistance by waiting in a 2.5 hour standby line. I normally would never wait that long for anything but at that point in the day everything else in the park was posted around 80-100 minutes or something and Rise was posted at like 130 so I figured we can either wait 100 minutes for Slinky Dog or 2 hours for Rise. We also got on Smugglers Run but again with a 90 minute standby line (only posted at like 65). Additionally the standby lines for everything were so slow, like painfully slow, the merge cast member at Smugglers Run must have been going on a 90-10 ratio for lightning lane to standby. We all got spoiled during the pandemic and the days of the nice steadily moving lines are gone.

 

I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining since we did end up having a pretty decent day, there was just with a lot of waiting. I think we ended up getting on like 8 attractions (which included Muppets and Beauty and the Beast with no wait) in like 10 hours, and that was with 3 lightning lanes. Maybe I should be thankful that we were able to get 3 LL reservations and my expectations were just too high but I came in thinking we would be able to get like 4-6 LLs with a lot of flexibility for when and what we were able to use but that just wasn't the case. We could have reserved Slinky Dog or Smugglers Run early in the day but with the return times that were available that would have been the only attractions we could have booked for the whole day. Seems like a lot of people were pretty frustrated as I overheard a lot of conversations in line and between guests and cast members voicing frustrations with the systems. Maybe it was just very crowded, I think there was early entry which maybe contributed to resort guests getting all the reservations before the park as even open, maybe Studios is just a bad park for the system, or maybe I'm an idiot and didn't use the system correctly. I'm not sure but first my first impression of the new system wasn't great. 

 

You don't have to actually buy Lightning Lane to access the single use passes I don't think. I think optimal strategy is to scoop up Slinky or Falcon at 7 and then the other at 9 sharp.

[Hilltopper39]

8 minutes ago, coasterbill said:

You don't have to actually buy Lightning Lane to access the single use passes I don't think. I think optimal strategy is to scoop up Slinky or Falcon at 9 and then the other at 11 sharp.

We tried to book Rise earlier in the morning but I don't think it let us until the park opened at 9am, and by then they were all gone.

Even at 9am Slinky and Falcon were already at a return of like 6 or 7 pm so if we booked those then they would have been the only reservations we had for the day.

There may have been some user error on my part but I was constantly in the app trying to book a new LL but it would only let me make a new reservation after the existing ones we had were redeemed.

[coasterbill]

Just now, Hilltopper39 said:

Even at 9am Slinky and Falcon were already at a return of like 6 or 7 pm so if we booked those then they would have been the only reservations we had for the day.

That's not true but they also don't communicate that very well. I also wrote the wrong times on my last post but edited it.

Book slinky at 7, book Falcon at 9. You can make another reservation either 2 hours after you make your reservation, or once you use your Lightning Lane reservation, whichever is first. There is no way to get Rise most days unless you're staying on property. There's nothing you could have done there because you can't buy the single skips until 9am if you're not a resort guest but you can reserve the first normal LL ride at 7.

[Garet]

21 minutes ago, Hilltopper39 said:

Even at 9am Slinky and Falcon were already at a return of like 6 or 7 pm so if we booked those then they would have been the only reservations we had for the day.

I'm not sure this is true, the Facebook stories are gone and I would need to search for Robb's posts but they made it clear in their tips that you can reserve again after a cooldown period not when you've used the pass.

Edit: Bill beat me to it.

2nd edit: Found the photos from Facebook so reposting here since I don't think they are on the TPR forums, hope the mods don't mind, they were a bit scrambled so hopefully they're in the right order.

[Hilltopper39]

Okay that makes sense, book one at 9am then you can book a second after 2 hours regardless if your first one has been used or not. If we would have done that we could have gotten Slinky Dog sometime around 5-7 then whatever was available at 11 am, which would have probably been everything but Slinky and Falcon just with a return time again in the 5-7pm or later range.

 

I guess we did okay getting 3 LLs for the day, and like I said maybe my expectations were just too high. There were individual LLs available for Runway Railway available most of the day but we got on it early with a short wait and didn't need it, but they were available. 

[Garet]

23 minutes ago, coasterbill said:

There is no way to get Rise most days unless you're staying on property. There's nothing you could have done there because you can't buy the single skips until 9am if you're not a resort guest but you can reserve the first normal LL ride at 7.

This is my wife and I's biggest worry when we plan our once in a lifetime trip. We just really don't plan on staying on-site to try and squeeze that saved money, by going cheap accommodation the rest of the 2-3 weeks, into trying nicer restaurants than we normally would in Disney Springs/City Walk and the main goal of a cruise on the end of the trip since most of them here in Asia are aimed at catering to the Chinese and their wallets, which means changing parts of the ships into more casinos and cuisine aimed at keeping them happy so we want to try one while on this trip but the worry is that even budgeting for all the fast passes of multiple parks and Genie+ etc that we will have 0 chance due to not being resort guests which was a complaint we heard a lot from others under the previous fastpass+. 

[Hilltopper39]

Yeah they have those Genie+ tips saved on their Instagram stories and I read through them before we went, but the park was so crowded the day we went that using it like that would have been impossible. At 9 am were were boking for return times around noon, and at noon for return times after 6pm. On a slower day it sounds like the system is great, but with crowds 2-3 LLs is probably all you're gong to be able to get at that park.

[coasterbill]

15 minutes ago, Hilltopper39 said:

Okay that makes sense, book one at 9am then you can book a second after 2 hours regardless if your first one has been used or not.

No, book Slinky at 7am, not 9. That's where you went wrong. lol

[Hilltopper39]

3 minutes ago, coasterbill said:

No, book Slinky at 7am, not 9. That's where you went wrong. lol

Noted for next time, if we'd of done that we might have been able to squeezed in one more LL on a crowded day. The Alien Swirling Saucers ride had a 45-60 minute standby most of the day, it was that kind of crowd levels. 

[Haymaker]

Think of it this way... you got 3 LL rides. With FP+ you could only book 3 anyway. Yeah, you could get more after using those 3 but on a busy day like youre describing, it probably wouldnt have happened anyway.

[Hilltopper39]

4 minutes ago, Haymaker said:

Think of it this way... you got 3 LL rides. With FP+ you could only book 3 anyway. Yeah, you could get more after using those 3 but on a busy day like youre describing, it probably wouldnt have happened anyway.

That is true, but you didn't have to pay extra for FP+.