Earlier this year, we asked and answered a question many guests were wondering: When will my Rise of the Resistance boarding group be called? We’re asking the question again, this time with fresh data for the “new normal”.

While we had hoped that Disney would return from their unprecedented closure with an eye on the future and begin to offer standby for Rise of the Resistance, we were instead greeted by an old friend when the parks reopened – boarding groups. Disney tried to rebrand the boarding group process a little bit by calling it a virtual queue, but in practice it functioned the same as before the closures. For a breakdown of our experience with the virtual queue, check out our earlier post. All that considered, there were some changes made to the app and process since the parks reopened.

The first change is that there are now multiple distribution times that you can try to get a Rise of the Resistance boarding group – 10am and 2pm. Disney said that spreading out the distribution times would allow guests to leisurely stroll into Disney’s Hollywood Studios without the overwhelming pressure of being inside the park before 10am, but we’ve found that not to be the case if you really want to get on Rise of the Resistance.

The second change is helpful for all guests, but really pertains to larger groups. When loading up your friends and family list to select who you would like to secure a boarding group for, the app auto-selects those guests who are in the park already. This shaves precious seconds off of the process and many times meant the difference between success and failure.

The third change actually makes this post way less helpful than when we wrote it back in January. Disney has wisely added an “Estimated Return” section in the app that gives you a best guess on when your boarding group will be called. You can see it right under the group number in the screenshot below.

Even with that functionality, we still want to answer the question we asked at the beginning of the post. Thanks to data from Thrill-Data.com, we can see what the average boarding group number called is for each operating hour of the day:

• 11 AM: Group 14
• 12 PM: Group 20
• 1 PM: Group 27
• 2 PM: Group 37
• 3 PM: Group 43
• 4 PM: Group 51
• 5 PM: Group 59
• 6 PM: Group 68
• 7 PM: Group 78
• 8 PM: Group 73

Of course, this data comes with a huge caveat – downtime. Rise of the Resistance has seemingly become less reliable than it was before the Disney World theme parks closed for COVID-19. The attraction experiences multiple periods of downtime per day and the final encounter with Kylo Ren has been in “B-Mode” for us on more rides than not since mid-July.

So, while the estimated time to return feature is wonderful when the attraction is operating smoothly, you’ll want to check back more than once throughout your day to see if there has been an update due to downtime.

Another caveat to the data is the fact that Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be shortening its hours in a week, so that will translate to less boarding groups called per day.

If you’d like to experience the full Rise of the Resistance attraction, you can watch our video from opening day below!

As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!