READ POST 1 & 2 FIRST-Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group Planning and Information-*No Spoilers*

[Judique]

I beefed it. Got group 68. Cross your fingers for me.

Congrats!

Please let us know when you get called if you can! My family has BG86 this morning and are very excited to ride.

 

[M SH]

You mean clicking the "Continue" button doesn't work?

no it works. my point is that if you do this the first time, you are likely adding a couple of seconds for the popup to show and clicking continue, etc.
again, every second counts

 

[Revilo]

I read on Twitter that BGs opened (minutes? seconds?) before 8a this morning. Is that true?

No, I ve tried it since 3 minutes before and no red button.

 

[jbish]

i checked at 7:59:30 and Join BG was not red for me so I don’t think it was open that early.

So I was going to ask you, since you could not see any more boarding groups past 8:00:30 if maybe your timing was off. But I guess not, if you happened to have checked 30 seconds before 8:00:00. This is a mystery.

I believe this was true.
One of our live streamers was there this morning, on Sunset and they made the final announcement and shortly after, before 8am I saw a family jumping up and down
BTW my colleague did not get a bg because he forgot to deselect his wife who was not in the park and then he was stuck in the refresh mode (rookie mistake )

And I was going to ask about this, too. In the video @blobberhead posted yesterday, you can hear the announcement over the PA. (I don't recall exactly what is being said in the announcement.) I wonder if that would be a signal as to when the BGs actually open, regardless of what official time source you use. Has anyone tested this live in the parks?

Edit to include link to the video and to tag blobberhead

 

[yulilin3]

So I was going to ask you, since you could not see any more boarding groups past 8:00:30 if maybe your timing was off. But I guess not, if you happened to have checked 30 seconds before 8:00:00. This is a mystery.


And I was going to ask about this, too. In the video posted yesterday, you can hear the announcement over the PA. (I don't recall exactly what is being said in the announcement.) I wonder if that would be a signal as to when the BGs actually open, regardless of what official time source you use. Has anyone tested this live in the parks?

there have been reports of people joining after that last announcement and people not being able to join for lack of the red button after the announcement

 

[jbish]

there have been reports of people joining after that last announcement and people not being able to join for lack of the red button after the announcement

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd want to test that live, but figured someone must have tried.

 

[Miffy]

no it works. my point is that if you do this the first time, you are likely adding a couple of seconds for the popup to show and clicking continue, etc.
again, every second counts

Ah. I see. I've gotten a different overlay screen when I've practiced at home. If it happens again I'll make sure to take a screenshot.

 

[MIChessGuy]

I have a suggestion for riders coming from another country who may not have a data connection and so must use Wi-Fi. There is a recent article at the touringplans.com blog (not sure if I violate rules here by giving a full link, so I won't) covering Wi-Fi vs data at various locations in DHS. If you will be using Wi-Fi, you might want to try the locations they reference as working well with that type of connection.

 

[kpd6901]

I have a suggestion for riders coming from another country who may not have a data connection and so must use Wi-Fi. There is a recent article at the touringplans.com blog (not sure if I violate rules here by giving a full link, so I won't) covering Wi-Fi vs data at various locations in DHS. If you will be using Wi-Fi, you might want to try the locations they reference as working well with that type of connection.

It's already linked in this thread several pages back.

 

[kpd6901]

This is crazy! We were there the Friday of MLK weekend. Park opened at 7:00 am. We got BG 26, but there were still back-ups available at 7:15. I can't imagine a Wednesday in the middle of Feb is busier than Friday of a long weekend, that had a cheer competition!

First, there is a lot more than just being "busier". There may be exactly the same number of people or less at WDW now than MLK weekend. But an 8 am opening means that a lot more people, including locals may be more amenable to getting to the park in the morning with an extra hour of sleep/prep. The 7am opening turned a fair amount of people away. So, even if there are fewer people at WDW, there may be more people there at the BG distribution time now than during MLK weekend.

Secondly, a lot of school districts across the country have longer breaks in Feb. Some are just the weekend plus an extra day or two, others a full week. So, it's not really a given that MLK weekend was any busier, if at all.

 

[MIChessGuy]

Sorry about that. I am not able to view the forum all that often and tend to fall behind.

 

[Ikaikalani]

I find it pretty worrisome that even the backup groups are now gone within a minute.... When I was here a few weeks ago and was worried that the regular BGs were gone within a minute, I was told not to worry, there are always backup groups to get. Now the backup groups seem to be gone within a minute as well - am I allowed to worry now?

Seriously, this is just madness! If you are there for a day only and do not have a fast phone, connection, whatever and luck out, what do you do then? I have to rely on wifi as my data plan is from out of country and does not cover the US Genuinly worried really as I do not know how I would explain to my Star Wars crazy son we cannot ride if we don't get a boarding pass because mommy's fingers weren't fast enough

I would explain the situation to your son and let him know ya got a 50/50 shot at RotR. But, then I'd upplay Smugglers Run; Star Tours; Green milk, etc. in hopes he's more excited about those than RotR.

 

[elmoandzoey]

We’re choosing to go in with managed expectations as so much is out of our control. My 10yo knows we will do our best to get a BG but it may or may not happen. We’re not going to let one ride determine how we enjoy our trip.

Oh, I told him that we may not get to ride it and that there is lots of other stuff to do that is Star Wars and characters to meet. It's still sad though since we get to go like once every 10 years and having the click of a button being the factor of whether you get to ride a ride or not is just a bit disheartening. I can understand the need of controlled access to the attraction - I don't even want to imagine what it would look like without the boarding groups! I guess there is no perfect solution that would please everyone so we'll go with whatever will happen. Either my fingers are fast enough or not

We paid $8 to add one day of data (Canada - Freedom Mobile) - so not much. Maybe check and see if you can get a one day deal? However, it was my son who got the BG, using Wifi on an older phone, so for us, data didn't matter. I would suggest that you bring a device for everyone in your party - tablet, old phone, whatever, and have everyone try by logging into the same account. That's what worked for us. or maybe it was just luck.

We're flying in from Germany which by far has the most expensive mobile plans all over Europe. I'd be happy if there was anything like $8 roaming data for a day. German companies charge data roaming outside of Europe by the MB (yes, by the megabyte). I think 10 MB cost like $5 with my (low cost) provider which you can prepay for. In order to control costs, they immediately shut off data once you hit the 10 MB and you have to manually reactive through their app. With my luck, I'd probably run out of 10 MB while trying to get a boarding pass There are no day or month passes for data outside of Europe unless you want to shelf out a ridiculous amount of money.

 

[Revilo]

We're flying in from Germany which by far has the most expensive mobile plans all over Europe. I'd be happy if there was anything like $8 roaming data for a day. German companies charge data roaming outside of Europe by the MB (yes, by the megabyte). I think 10 MB cost like $5 with my (low cost) provider which you can prepay for. In order to control costs, they immediately shut off data once you hit the 10 MB and you have to manually reactive through their app. With my luck, I'd probably run out of 10 MB while trying to get a boarding pass There are no day or month passes for data outside of Europe unless you want to shelf out a ridiculous amount of money.

I am flying in from Germany as well and we are buying a US Sim at Amazon including 4GB included.

 

[Revan46]

The MDE app currently showing boarding 6-31. And if correct says backups are after 47? Seems like they’re not doing too badly, fingers crossed for everyone.

 

[GBRforWDW]

“Practiced” for my first time today. Already did it for real in January but I had trouble and we ended up getting it on wives phone. Same issues today. Logged in at 7:59. Button didn’t turn red and clicking my status didn’t do it either. Went back to home screen and clicked through again and backed out and repeated and still nothing. Hard close of app and was fine when logged in. Not sure why some phones seem not to activate the buttons (iphone 11 for both me and wife) without a fresh app launch. Not going again until summer so not concerned now but definitely will need to make sure to test a few times to figure out best way for my phone. Curious if phones usually act the same from day to day or if these different behaviors are somewhat random based on connections.

You say you logged in at 7:59. Does that mean you clicked the Join Boarding Group button at 7:59 as well too? If so, you must wait until after 8:00 to click the Join button.

If you waited until 8am to click the Join button, next time, wait for 8am, then count to 3 before clicking the button to give the app some time to recognize groups are available.

If Join button is still not Red, click My Status button and see if the Join button is Dark Blue and clickable, if not, pull down to refresh once.

If still not active after refresh, click back and check the Join button to see if red now?

If not, force close app, restart it and join should be active. Force close means to stop the app from running in the background entirely. Each phone is different so you may need to Google How to force close apps on 'device' where device is your phone model. On newer iphones, you swipe up and hold so you can scroll through open apps, then swipe up again on the MDE app to fully close the app.

Do this all quickly so if you do have to restart the app, it will be back up by 25 seconds after 8 at the latest so you still have time to join a group.

 

[caliope]

FWIW, here’s a description of our experience yesterday (2/18/20): Our group of 3 left Yacht Club at 7:10, walking. Arrived at the park by 7:35 (we are leisurely walkers) and through gates by 7:42am. We decided to hang around Crossroads as our signal was strong there and we had no interest in rope dropping any rides. Husband was on iPhone 11 with data and I had iPhone 8 with WiFi. Opened app at 7:59:55 (roughly, lol), tapped picture, tapped My Status, and joined group. I got 29. Originally we’d planned to leave the park almost right away, because we had a cabana reservation at YC and FP+ for later, but with the relatively low boarding group and watching a pretty rapid progression of groups, we decided to stick around. Went to Darth Vader meet. Our boarding group was called at 8:58am. We were done and headed out of the park at 9:45 for our day at the pool. We returned at 6:00pm for our FP and to do Smugglers Run standby at the end of the night. All in all, our plan worked about as well as I could’ve hoped. It is stressful though. We had contingencies in case it didn’t (this wasn’t make or break for us) and kept my son’s expectations low.

 

[scrappinginontario]

Congrats!

Please let us know when you get called if you can! My family has BG86 this morning and are very excited to ride.

You can monitor the boarding groups on your MDE app by clicking the image of the AT-AT on the front screen. You can see from that how often new groups are being added without people updating here.

 

[GBRforWDW]

FWIW, here’s a description of our experience yesterday (2/18/20): Our group of 3 left Yacht Club at 7:10, walking. Arrived at the park by 7:35 (we are leisurely walkers) and through gates by 7:42am. We decided to hang around Crossroads as our signal was strong there and we had no interest in rope dropping any rides. Husband was on iPhone 11 with data and I had iPhone 8 with WiFi. Opened app at 7:59:55 (roughly, lol), tapped picture, tapped My Status, and joined group. I got 29. Originally we’d planned to leave the park almost right away, because we had a cabana reservation at YC and FP+ for later, but with the relatively low boarding group and watching a pretty rapid progression of groups, we decided to stick around. Went to Darth Vader meet. Our boarding group was called at 8:58am. We were done and headed out of the park at 9:45 for our day at the pool. We returned at 6:00pm for our FP and to do Smugglers Run standby at the end of the night. All in all, our plan worked about as well as I could’ve hoped. It is stressful though. We had contingencies in case it didn’t (this wasn’t make or break for us) and kept my son’s expectations low.

Congrats on being able to experience the ride! It was nice the attraction was working so well yesterday. I'm sure it would have been easy to get back to HS, but at least you didn't have to do it in the middle of lounging at the pool!

 

[blobberhead]

So I was going to ask you, since you could not see any more boarding groups past 8:00:30 if maybe your timing was off. But I guess not, if you happened to have checked 30 seconds before 8:00:00. This is a mystery.


And I was going to ask about this, too. In the video @blobberhead posted yesterday, you can hear the announcement over the PA. (I don't recall exactly what is being said in the announcement.) I wonder if that would be a signal as to when the BGs actually open, regardless of what official time source you use. Has anyone tested this live in the parks?

Edit to include link to the video and to tag blobberhead

Yeah I thought it was strange that they had the announcement start about 10 seconds before 8AM and finish a few seconds after 8AM. You would think they they would play it at 7:59AM so people who were clueless could hear the whole message and then have time to open the app right