Last night was the first Disney After Hours event of the year at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the first time that the After Hours event has been held at Studios since Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened to the public. The biggest question that we had going into the night was: how long is the line for Rise of the Resistance during Disney After Hours? For those of you who follow us on social media, you already know the answer, but we wanted to take a look at the posted wait times and share our experience from last night’s event. We’ll also have a more thorough recap of the event in an event review soon.

Rise of the Resistance Wait Times During Disney After Hours

With wait times for Rise of the Resistance soaring over 300 minutes in recent days, we were very interested to see how popular the ride would be during Disney After Hours. During the extremely limited Extended Evening Hours event at Disney’s Hollywood Studios back in December, Rise of the Resistance averaged a 25-minute wait. To put that into perspective, Rise of the Resistance averaged a 2-hour wait during the month of December, according to data from thrill-data.com. While the 25-minute wait during Extended Evening Hours was good, we were cautiously optimistic that the wait time would be even lower during the paid Disney After Hours event. Here’s a look at posted wait times during the first Disney After Hours event at Hollywood Studios last night.

During Disney After Hours, Rise of the Resistance averaged just a 10-minute wait. For most of the evening, Rise of the Resistance had a shockingly low wait time of just 5 minutes.

Advice and Experience

Before we wrap up this article, we wanted to share some advice and our first-hand experience riding Rise of the Resistance during Disney After Hours. First, keep in mind that Disney After Hours is a limited-time event. While the event runtime of 3 hours is significant, so is the amount of time that it takes to experience Rise of the Resistance. There is no way to skip pre-show elements or to instantly re-ride like you might be able to do at other attractions by simply staying on the ride vehicle. Everyone must exit the ride vehicle and go through all of the pre-show experiences, regardless of the length of the line.

In our three rides last night, the full experience took 28 minutes, 24 minutes, and 22 minutes, respectively. That means that we spent 74 minutes riding Rise of the Resistance three times – more than 1/3rd of the event. Now, if riding Rise of the Resistance over and over again is your top priority, have at it! You will very likely have little to no wait and it’s a fun experience. That said, if you’re looking to get a few more rides out of the night beyond Rise of the Resistance, make sure you realize just how much time the full experience takes. Note that we didn’t wait in line for any of the three times we rode, but the variation in time was due to at least one technical difficulty in the interrogation cell and some can be chalked up to the amount of time we spent taking photos. If you do nothing else but ride Rise of the Resistance during Disney After Hours, you can probably expect to ride 6-8 times. At an average cost of $20 to $22 per Individual Lightning Lane during daily operation, you can probably get pretty close to making back your money on the Disney After Hours ticket. Grab a free soda or Mickey Ice Cream Bar to tip the scales in your favor.

If you’re going to only want to ride Rise of the Resistance once during the event, the data says you should do so in the second half of the night. There will still be some leftover day guests in line to kick off the event, but once they clear through, the wait times should drop to 5-10 minutes. So, what does a 5-minute wait look like on Rise of the Resistance? Here’s what we experienced!

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!