How to Ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Without the Wait

The most anticipated Disney attraction of the decade opened nearly a year ago. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance debuted at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios on December 5, 2019 and in Disneyland on January 17, 2020. Headliner ride openings at Disney parks mean long lines, some times for years to follow. What we didn’t anticipate a year ago was massive worldwide upheaval that would close theme parks and drastically reduce theme park capacity when they reopened again. Of course, this necessitates new ride strategies, especially for Rise of the Resistance. And we are certainly always up for a new challenge!

There are many tricks that guests can use to dodge lines for popular Disney attractions. But basically none of them have ever worked on Rise of the Resistance at either Walt Disney World or Disneyland. This attraction queue has been operated like no other Disney has ever offered.

Disney continues to tweak the processes that guests use to get onto the ride. Disney made another change effective November 3, 2020 that Walt Disney World visitors need to know about. It even modified this process even further on December 20, 2020.

Of course, at the moment this post update is being updated, Disneyland is closed and its version of Rise of the Resistance along with it. When the parks in California do reopen, we anticipate they will follow an identical or probably very similar procedures. (Keep coming back for updates though!)

So, here are all the details you need to know to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance on either Disney coast.

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This post was last updated on December 27, 2020.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – Ride Basics (No Spoilers)

Before we dive into the details about how you can best ride Rise of the Resistance, let’s talk ride basics. Don’t worry… there are no spoilers here! Although if you want those, scroll to the end of this post for all the details.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is the headline attraction in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. It’s the second and final of two attractions in the land, joining the already-open Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. The ride opened at Walt Disney World on December 5, 2019 in Galaxy’s Edge within Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It opened January 17, 2020 in California in Disneyland park in the mostly identical Galaxy’s Edge located there.

The attraction has a 40 inch minimum to ride. This is a height that average kids will probably hit somewhere between their 4th and 5th birthdays. The ride physically is no more intense than a combination of Alien Swirling Saucers and Star Tours.

Parents should consider carefully, however, whether younger kids can handle the emotional intensity of a ride that prominently features the Dark Side. The thrill of the attraction won’t scare most kids away. The intensity of being caught in the middle of a conflict between the Resistance and the First Order potentially could.

Depending on who you talk to, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance might just go down in history as the best of Disney Imagineering. The attraction is more than just a thrill ride. It takes guests through multiple scenes all with very difference experiences. Many guests proclaim it to be even better than Disney’s previous best, Avatar Flight of Passage. That’s high praise.

Photo Credit: Matt Stroshane, Disney

Tips for Riding Rise of the Resistance at Disney World

Disney World’s Rise of the Resistance Virtual Queue: Everything You Need To Know

Since opening and for the indefinite future, the ONLY way to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Hollywood Studios in Orlando is by securing a place in a virtual queue. This is not a virtual queue to enter Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge like Disney advertised for the land’s opening earlier in 2019. This virtual queue is different, as it only operates for Rise of the Resistance. Unlike the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge virtual queue, it has always run out — and run out pretty fast (more on that later). 

Until November 3, 2020, guests had to physically enter Hollywood Studios by scanning a Disney MagicBand or park ticket before they could snag a spot in the virtual queue. For a long time, spots in the queue were offered only first thing in the morning, making for some early rise times for vacationers. 

Not long after Walt Disney World reopened at partial capacity in 2020, this process changed again. Virtual queue spots were offered several times a day, giving guests another shot at getting into the virtual queue even if they didn’t arrive in the parks first thing in the morning or weren’t successful at that time. 

New Rise of the Resistance Virtual Queue Changes After November 3, 2020

In the last few months of 2020, things changed even more! There are now two times a day that Disney guests can get into the virtual queue: 7:00am or 1:00pm (note that the second distribution used to be at 2:00pm, but Disney moved that up by an hour starting on December 20, 2020).

Those two distribution times now operate differently. As if this wasn’t already confusing enough to the average inexperienced Disney traveler… but we will walk you through this so you aren’t confused and don’t mess this up.

Regardless of what time you plan to try to get into the virtual queue, everyone must do the following first: 

• Obtain Park Pass reservations for Hollywood Studios: In 2020 (and through at least September 2021), Disney World requires reservations to enter any given park on any given day. Make sure everyone in your party has a theme park ticket as well as a Park Pass reservation for Hollywood Studios on the day you plan to go. Be aware that Hollywood Studios has more limited capacity than the other three parks and is usually the hardest reservation to get!
• Set Up My Disney Experience: Before you head to the parks on your vacation, link everyone’s tickets in your traveling party to your My Disney Experience (MDE) app. Turn on push notifications on your phone for the app. Make sure you update to the most recent version of the app too. (Trips with Tykes Tip: Remember to purchase your park tickets in advance from our trusted ticket partner Get Away Today, which will get you the very same tickets that Disney sells but at a discount.)

Once you’ve done the above, if you want to join the virtual queue at the 7:00 am drop time, follow these additional steps:

• Open your My Disney Experience App. Scroll down and look for the image that says “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – Request Access with Virtual Queue”. Unlike in previous months, you do not need to be in Hollywood Studios for this to work at 7:00am. It will work from anywhere
• Click “Join” button as soon as you see it become available. You may need to refresh the MDE app if it doesn’t respond right at 7:00:01 am.
• Assuming you are successful and obtain a boarding group, arrive to Hollywood Studios for the day. Earlier boarding groups should plan to be there by about park opening time (usually 10:00am right now). 
• Wait for a push notification on your phone to tell you that you are eligible to return to the attraction and ride. You can also check the status of boarding group progress in the app or on signs posted around Hollywood Studios at any time.
• Return to Rise of the Resistance within the return time window given.

If you want to join the virtual queue at the 1:00 pm drop time, all of the same steps apply except one very important difference you must do first. What is that? Unlike at 7:00am where you can still be in your PJs in your Disney hotel room, you must enter Hollywood Studios first for the virtual queue process to be available to you in the app. Everyone in your party must scan into the park as well. You cannot send a single runner to get boarding groups for everyone.

On January 1, 2021, Disney World will bring back park hopping. But under the new rules, park hopping is not permitted until 2:00pm. That means you cannot hop to Hollywood Studios in time to make this second boarding pass distribution.

Note also that if you don’t have a smartphone or My Disney Experience or it isn’t working for you, there is the alternative to see a member of guest relations to get your boarding group (but really, you need a smartphone and app for the best chances).

Why Guests Can’t Count on Being Able to Ride Rise of the Resistance in 2020

Here’s the catch though. Boarding groups for the Rise of the Resistance virtual queue run out very fast – often in a matter of seconds. Even with the current reduced park capacity in 2020, everyone who wants to ride Rise of the Resistance can’t. Park hours are much shorter than they used to be, the ride still has breakdowns, and not all ride vehicles can be filled close to capacity. All of these things limit the availability of this attraction.

Just in advance of this new boarding group system, Disney completed the process of installing plexiglass in the 8 person ride vehicles between rows. This adds a fair amount of capacity to the attraction. Previously, only 1 group could ride per vehicle but this will make 2 groups possible. Of course, with rows that seat 4, vehicles still won’t always be filled to capacity.

Photo Credit: Matt Stroshane, Disney

Once you actually get a boarding group and are called to ride, how long will you wait in the real queue for Rise of the Resistance? The answer is that is depends – a lot. Some early morning groups may find the ride close to a walk on if they go as soon as their group is called. Some groups may wait quite a bit longer, especially if the ride breaks down at all and backs up the queue. 

Watch this space for even more updates as both crowd habits and Disney policies continue to evolve. 

Insider Tips for Hacking the Disney World Virtual Queue

Even though there are no guarantees, there are still quite a few tricks and hacks guests can use to improve your chances of getting a boarding group, cut down on the waits, and streamline your vacation logistics. Those include the following: 

Monitor when boarding groups are running out. With the attraction’s continued huge demand and the craziness that is everything 2020, everything is changing rapidly at Disney World. What worked last week may not work next.

If you want to find out how fast boarding passes are disappearing, this thread on DisBoards (up to over 800 pages!) has been tracking it all since the beginning. Guests write in with their real time reports. Check it close to your trip to find out what is happening on the ground at the moment.

Aim for an Early Boarding Group. We highly recommend making an effort to get a morning boarding group, even it means you have to wake up early and go back to bed for an hour or two. Trying at 7:00am gives you another chance to try again in the afternoon if you don’t luck out. Maximize your odds.

Also, later boarding groups are sometimes at risk of not being able to ride if the attraction goes down for an extended period on a given day.

Try on More Than One Phone: This is kind of a controversial tip because Disney is now actively discouraging it. But now that the playing field is leveled with everyone not needing to enter the parks first thing in the morning, guests with the fastest finger and a lot of luck are the ones rewarded with boarding passes. Tech issues with the MDE app abound and Disney WiFi is iffy, so guests have been trying on two or more smartphones in a travel group for many months to improve their odds. For the most part, this has improved guest success of actually snagging a boarding group. So color us suspicious that Disney’s advice is sound. We will update this post if we begin to see evidence of any problems with this approach.

Reserve Park Passes at Hollywood Studios for More Than 1 Day: This strategy is on a bit higher level of vacation hacking, so approach cautiously if you are a newbie. But if you are going for a longer trip (especially NOT during a busy weekend or holiday period when all Park Passes will book up), consider making Park Pass reservations for Hollywood Studios for two days or more.

If you snag a boarding group that first reservation day at 7am, great. Go to Hollywood Studios that first day and change your second day Hollywood Studios reservation to another park (the other parks usually have more availability). If you strike out that first morning before parks open and can change your Park Pass reservation to another park for that first day, then you have another full day to try again at Hollywood Studios at both 7am and 1pm. Of course, there is always the possibility the other parks run out of Park Pass availability during busier times, so use this strategy with an awareness of the risk and a close watch on crowd levels.

Have a transportation plan. Disney’s new boarding pass system starting November 3 should drastically improve the transportation backlog that has been happening leading up to park opening times. Even assuming it does, however, you still don’t want to cut things too close and miss your return window if you obtain a morning boarding group for Rise of the Resistance. With additional distancing required on Disney buses and the Skyliner, you still need to allow extra transportation time. If you have your own car, that is not a bad idea or consider using Uber and Lyft if that works for you (see my guide to Uber Car Seat in Orlando if you have young kids). 

Note also that Hollywood Studios is regularly opening its gates 30-45 minutes before official park opening time. If you want to “rope drop” other popular attractions like Slinky Dog Dash or Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, you still need pretty robust transportation strategy to get to the front of those lines.

Go left! There is a place in the inner queue (it will make sense when you’re in the attraction) of Rise of the Resistance where guests have a choice of going left or right. Most guests head right, so go left. It could potentially shave 5-10 minutes off of your wait on the actual attraction when backed up. (Note: with current distancing in place, this likely won’t matter as much at the moment but keep an eye on it.)

Photo Credit: Matt Stroshane, Disney

Line Skipping Methods that Will NOT Work for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Walt Disney World

If you are a master of line dodging and skipping at Walt Disney World, you may be curious if methods that work for other rides will work for Rise of the Resistance. Let me put those thoughts to rest – they won’t. The only way to ride Rise of the Resistance is in the virtual queue. The following methods simply are not available: 

• Fastpass+: Rise of the Resistance does have a Fastpass+ queue and Fastpass+ isn’t currently operating anywhere at Walt Disney World in 2020. At some point, Fastpass+ will return to the parks and it’s possible it might become available for this attraction as well. Stay tuned.
• Extra Magic Hours: In normal times, Disney’s Hollywood Studios offered Extra Magic Hours – extra time for on-property hotel guests to access the park. But EMH is currently not operating. And Rise of the Resistance has never been scheduled to be open during EMH anyway!
• Single Rider Lines: When Rise of the Resistance first opened, we speculated that it could eventually have a single rider queue like the other ride in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. It probably goes without saying that single rider lines, which look to fill every available seat on an attraction, won’t be at thing for a couple of years to come – maybe never again.
• Standby Lines: Even if you are prepared to show up and wait in line for 5 hours for Rise of the Resistance, you can’t. There is no standby line running for the attraction while the virtual queue is operational. This is far from ideal for anyone who can’t get to the parks super-early and who would be willing to wait awhile to be able to arrive at a time of their choosing, but that’s how it works for now.
• VIP Tours: Hiring a pricey VIP tour guide (a.k.a. “plaid”) is an amazing way to cut the lines at Disney parks for most attractions. But even paying the big bucks won’t get you special access to Rise of the Resistance. The ride is not included on a VIP tour.

Disney’s Disability Access Pass (DAS) is available for Rise of the Resistance but only to guests that get a boarding pass in the virtual queue. (Note that in order to ride the attraction, guests must be able to transfer.)

Disney has offered Rider Switch for this attraction but also only for guests who have a boarding pass for the virtual queue. For all intents and purposes, it isn’t really needed unless the attraction breaks down for an extended period or guests return very late in their return window to the ride. The 2 hour return window is more than enough time for two different groups of riders to go through the queue.

How to Ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland

Editor’s Note: Disneyland is currently closed. The information below reflects how Rise of the Resistance operated in the park as of March 2020 and before. I promise to update when the parks re-open. In the meantime, just scroll to the next section of this article if you want to get to the detailed ride spoilers and photos!

Disneyland’s Rise of the Resistance Virtual Queue: Everything You Need To Know

Unlike at Disney World, Disneyland announced in advance of the ride’s opening day that it would be using a virtual queue as well so guests were prepared for opening day. The virtual queue functions essentially identically to the one at Walt Disney World. The only difference is how fast the boarding groups run out (more on that below). 

Here’s what you need to do to join and use the virtual queue at Disneyland:

• On your park day (long before park opening): Link everyone’s tickets in your party in the Disneyland app. To do this, click on the three horizontal lines in the bottom right corner, select “Tickets and Passes” and then click on the + sign in the top left corner to add tickets one by one. The app can scan the barcode of each ticket. Also be sure to turn on push notifications on your phone for the app. (Trips with Tykes Tip: Remember to purchase your park tickets in advance from our trusted ticket partner Get Away Today, which will get you the very same tickets that Disney sells but at a discount.)
• Enter Disneyland park by scanning your park ticket. Everyone in your party must enter. You cannot send a single runner to get boarding groups for everyone. Entering Disney California Adventure does not work either.
• Open the Disneyland App at the very second of official park opening. The main home screen prominently features “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – Access by Boarding Group”. Click on the “Find Out More” box.
• Click “Join Boarding Group” as soon as you see it become available. If your app does not refresh at park opening time, clicking on My Status button instead may force it to refresh. 
• If you don’t have a smartphone, go to one of the distribution centers at the Fastpass kiosks by Buzz Lightyear or Splash Mountain. 
• Wait for a push notification on your phone to tell you that you are eligible to return to the attraction and ride (you can also check the status of boarding group progress in the app or on signs posted around Disneyland at any time).
• Return to Rise of the Resistance within the return time window given.

(Note that you do not have to have Maxpass to join the virtual queue at Disneyland.)

Line Skipping Methods that Will NOT Work for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland

Just like at Walt Disney World, all the usual line-skipping Disney tricks and hacks you might be used to using will not for Rise of the Resistance. The virtual queue is the ONLY option to ride the attraction. There is:

• no Fastpass or Maxpass
• no Single Rider
• no access during Extra Magic Hour or Magic Morning (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays in Disneyland park)
• no regular standby line
• and no special VIP guide access.

Guests who want to use Disney’s Disability Access Pass (DAS) or Rider Switch can still do so but must first get a boarding group in the virtual queue in the app like all other guests.

Insider Tips for Hacking the Disneyland Virtual Queue

Many of the same tips and hacks for Rise of the Resistance for Disney World work at Disneyland too. The big difference, however, is when the virtual queue is filling up.

While at Disney World, guests have had at least 15 minutes before all spots are gone (and often more like 1 hour), Disneyland’s queue is filling in a matter of seconds. On opening day, all spots were gone by 8:03 am on an 8:00 am park opening day. On the second day, all spots were gone by 8:01 am. Backup boarding groups were fully distributed minutes after that.

For now at least, getting a boarding group is a matter of speed and some luck. Here are the tips that can speed you up and improve that luck:

Use Multiple Phones: Guests with the fastest finger (not the ones who enter the park first) are the ones who get the boarding groups. Unfortunately, the Disneyland app isn’t always reliable and can fail to refresh or even crash. We therefore recommend anyone with two or more smartphones in their travel group make an effort to try on both phones. Link all your tickets in both phones so the fastest phone will get through first and prevail.

Disconnect from Disneyland WiFi: Disneyland WiFi is spotty and pretty slow. If you have reliable cell data service in Disneyland park, we recommend disconnecting from the WiFi to speed things up.

Refresh, Refresh, Refresh: You have to wait until the “Join Boarding Group” button turns red on your app to click it and join a boarding group. If your app does not refresh to show this within a couple of seconds after park opening, clicking on My Status button next to it instead may force everything to refresh. You can also pull down on the My Status screen to refresh again.

Keep monitoring when boarding groups are running out. While the first few days have seen massive demand, we do expect this will eventually slow down and become more reasonable in the weeks that follow. We will be updating this post with more data, so keep checking back.

Make time for security, lines, and parking or transportation. Because getting a spot in the virtual queue does not depend on how early you get into the park, there’s no need to arrive super-early to Disneyland. But you do need to arrive early enough to get your car parked (or catch whatever transportation you may be taking if you aren’t walking), get through security, and get through the line and scanned into Disneyland park. I always recommend being in line in the esplanade at least 30 minutes to 1 hour in advance of park opening anyway, so that means parking up to 1.5 hours in advance of park opening.

Photo credit: Joe Cheung

All the Spoilers for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance

*****Spoilers Start Here! Proceed at Your Own Risk! *****

If you just can’t wait to hear all the details about Rise of the Resistance, you don’t have to. Here’s a complete spoiler filled play-by-play from the attraction. We’ve broken the attraction up into sections, starting with the queue.

Photo Credit: Matt Stroshane, Disney

The Queue

You enter the “hidden” rebel base via an entrance marked by a large turret, which seems quite conspicuous. The queue winds around outside a bit until you enter a series of caves that feel carved out in a rush. As you wind your way through the caves you pass by familiar looking navigational maps, lockers containing Resistance jumpsuits, and assorted weapons caches (presumably there in case of a sudden First Order attack). The queue is understated in a good way. It feels like you’re entered a lived in but hastily constructed Resistance base.

We should note that when the queue stalls out for any extended period of time (due to the ride’s operational issues), Resistance cast members have been coming through the queue with water and carrot sticks. Occasionally, a Resistance hero like Vi Moradi or even Chewbacca might come through – have your MagicBands ready because when we were there they were accompanied by Resistance Photopass photographers!

The queue ends with a cast member asking you how many in your party. You are then invited to enter the next phase of the attraction, the briefing room.

The Briefing Room

The next room you enter is the briefing room. While it’s technically a pre-show room, it feels much more immersive than that, although describing it doesn’t quite capture the feeling. Again, the room is a cut out cave. A hologram of Rey that looks straight out of the movies briefs you that you need to make a quick escape from Batuu and warns you not to give up the location of the secret Resistance base. But it won’t be easy!

During the briefing you receive some extra intel from Finn, Poe Dameron (who will be escorting your transport), and Lieutenant Bek, a Mon Calamari Resistance fighter who will be with you on your transport. After the briefing is over, you’re rushed outside – and you actually go outside! We felt a huge sense of urgency as we were rushed outside, across a small clearing, and into a fully realized Resistance transport waiting for us.

And just for kicks, Poe’s X-wing is hanging out in the clearing, ready to escort your transport. With good cast members, you really feel a sense of urgency to get into that transport, which really starts ramping up the narrative tension of the attraction.

The Transport

When you enter the transport, the first thing you’ll notice are two life-size audio animatronics at the front of the transport – the aforementioned Lieutenant Bek and Nien Nunb who you might recognize as having flown the Millennium Falcon with Lando Calrissian in Return of the Jedi.

You quickly take off from Batuu but are attacked by TIE fighters and eventually surrounded and trapped by Star Destroyers. As you are pulled in by a tractor beam, Lieutenant Bek reminds you not to give up the location of the secret Resistance base.

Some people will experience the transport portion of the ride and mistake it for the actual ride. You definitely feel the transport moving and shaking, though obviously it’s nothing too drastic since you don’t need to get strapped in or anything. One tip: if there isn’t room at the front, there is a porthole out the back with a view out the transport window that is as good as the forward view.

After the tractor beam pulls you into the Star Destroyer, your transport is boarded by First Order officers who bark at you to get out and prepare for interrogation!

The Hangar

If you weren’t wowed by the Rey hologram or the Bek animatronic, you’ll be finally wowed when you step into the hangar of a Star Destroyer. Pictures don’t do this room justice – the sheer scale of the hangar bay is mind boggling. You see ships flying outside the hangar and a full platoon of stormtroopers that you’re not quite sure aren’t real. Be sure to take pictures of the TIE fighter and the stormtroopers if the First Order officers don’t bark at you for taking “useless scans.”

This is a good place to note the quality of the First Order officers we experienced when we rode this attraction. They strike the perfect balance of making you feel nervous and doing their actual jobs (moving you along and keeping you safe). They allowed enough time for pictures but still kept the sense of urgency in the attraction alive.

Eventually you are shuttled into a queue to “await processing” and after a few minutes you are lined up to be shot….I mean shuttled into an interrogation room. Again, the quality of the cast members makes it feel like you’re really in trouble – adding to the magic and immersion of the attraction.

The Interrogation

When you enter the interrogation room, you’re given a real sense that you’re in trouble. There are stormtroopers looking down on you as if you’re in a cage and eventually General Hux and Kylo Ren himself come and begin demanding the location of the secret Resistance base.

Kylo Ren even begins using the force on you before thankfully he’s called to the bridge. Once he leaves – someone carves a hole in the wall and breaks into your cell – it’s the Resistance! You’re quickly ushered into escape transports that the Resistance has commandeered as Finn himself tells you the escape plan.

It’s all pretty exciting and, again, the sense of urgency to the whole affair is something that has to be experienced. Don’t forget to “supervise your children” as Lieutenant Bek says (how did the kids get caught up in this mess!?). 

The escape vehicles are trackless vehicles similar to Mystic Manor in Hong Kong Disneyland or Ratatouille at Disneyland Paris (and soon, Epcot). As stated above, the actual movement of the vehicles isn’t super intense, but as you might imagine, the escape gets pretty intense. So let’s get to that escape!

The Escape

So to make your escape you board a trackless vehicle that can hold up to eight people. Ostensibly, your escape should be simple: you make your way down a turbo lift to some escape pods and you’re home free. But that’d be a pretty boring escape!

So instead of a simple straightforward escape, you run up against everything that could go wrong: stormtroopers, probe droids, even Kylo Ren himself. The pace is frantic and things get pretty intense, but luckily stormtroopers continue to have the worst aim in history. What’s amazing about the ride is how immersive it is – you feel like you’re being chased.

Laser blasts create damage in the walls around you, you dodge and weave everyone who’s chasing you, and you even move vertically to avoid your captors. The effects combined with audio animatronics make you feel like you’re in the middle of a Star Wars battle.

And make no mistake, you are in the middle of a battle. Halfway through the ride you see the Resistance fleet jump out of hyperspace and engage the Star Destroyers and from that point on the ride’s intensity ramps up to a whole new level. Instead of seeing damage from mere blaster fire you now see and feel the damage of this epic space battle going on around you.

Ultimately, you make your way to the escape pods and quickly drop your way back down to Batuu, a combination of Tower of Terror and Star Tours type action that somehow feels both less scary motion wise but more intense thrill wise than either of those individual attractions. Don’t worry, the drop really isn’t in the same ballpark as Tower of Terror, it’s just the easiest way to describe it.

By the time you exit your escape pod on Batuu, you will have experienced one of the most epic attractions ever created. Again, Rise of the Resistance is something that must be experienced firsthand – it’s a culmination of so much of the amazing storytelling that Disney has done throughout its theme parks for decades.

Trust us when we say this – use our tips to get yourself onto this ride. You won’t regret it!

Photo credit: Joe Cheung

Editor’s Note: This article was co-authored by Joe Cheung and Leslie Harvey. Joe visited Walt Disney World both during the first week of Rise of the Resistance’s opening and again in January 2020. Leslie attended the media preview of Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland in January 2020 and has also obtained a boarding group at Disneyland as a regular guest after it opened to the public. Whenever possible, Trips With Tykes endeavors to bring you first-hand travel accounts and not articles written from press releases, research alone, or exclusively from media event access. 

About the co-author: Contributing writer Joe Cheung loves traveling with his wife and three children. He has been writing about using miles and points to reduce the cost of family travel on his blog asthejoeflies since his wife was pregnant with their first child. He loves traveling all around the world with a special place in his heart for travel to Asia and all things Disney. When he’s not writing, you can find Joe chatting about Disney World on the Disney planning podcast Disney Deciphered that he and Leslie co-host or chatting about miles and points on his other podcast the Saverocity Observation Deck.