With todays change in procedure for securing a Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group, we made our way out to Disney’s Hollywood Studios this morning to check out the latest changes to the attraction procedure. Here’s a rundown of what you can expect as Disney officially increases capacity for the attraction.

The queue up until the first pre-show room with Rey remains the same as always. Plexiglass dividers haven’t been added since opening day, but the queue will occasionally extend into a backstage overflow on some days. That wasn’t the case this morning, but isn’t unheard of as Disney attempts to increase capacity at the attraction.

As seen in an earlier update, guests will be given a color dot to stand on throughout four staging areas, two of which are pre-shows.

Ok, so onto the new procedures now in place to implement the capacity increase for the attraction. Gone are the colored stripes for guests to stand on, replaced by physically distanced dots.

Inside the interrogation room, guests are required to find a dot and stand on it. Previously, only two groups would be in a room at a time. Now, Disney has doubled that capacity to four parties.

On the ride itself, Disney is filling both rows thanks to the aid of a plexiglass divider on the ride vehicle.

We were seated in the front row, but have previously experienced the attraction from behind the plexiglass divider and found that it wasn’t a great visual hinderance.

Finally, a question that we’ve been interested in answering: is it helping?

In theory, yes. In practice, Rise of the Resistance isn’t pushing through more boarding groups than it was in October before the increase in ride capacity.

Since October 1st, Rise of the Resistance has averaged about 101 groups per day. We’ve created a heatmap of sorts to show when Rise of the Resistance hits higher boarding group numbers (red) versus lower boarding group numbers (green). As you can see, the attraction was doing well in the first half of October before hitting a rough patch that it has only recently climbed out of (perhaps due to an increased ride capacity).

Either way, the data isn’t terribly compelling yet in terms of the plexiglass making much of a difference when it comes to boarding groups processed per day. That is, assuming that Disney hasn’t changed the size of the boarding groups, which we have no reason to believe they have. The lack of tangible progress as it relates to a positive effect from plexiglass to a continually frustrating Boarding Group procedure could make for a long winter for the attraction that isn’t even a year old.

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!