On December 5th 2019, Disney’s Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida opened the most technologically advanced ride Walt Disney Imagineering has ever sought to create, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Combining different ride systems and implementing special effects never before seen in a theme park attraction, Rise of the Resistance looks to easily be the most immersive attraction in theme park history. This ride has been hyped up ever since Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge was announced in 2017 and did not disappoint! 

I will not go in-depth about the ride experience, but this attraction is esse

ntially an 18-minute cinematic experience that takes you into the world of Star Wars. The moment you step in the queue line, you are immediately immersed in the story of being a member of the Resistance fighting against the First Order.  

On opening day, people arrived as early as 3 AM to be among the first to experience the new attraction, only to find out that Disney initiated a boarding group system to control the amount of people in the line, as they anticipated a lot of downtime. The park opened around 6:15 AM to all guests, and people started to get in their boarding groups. After the first boarding groups were called, the ride went down for about an hour. The ride than reset and ran smoothly for the rest of the day. 

Reviews for the ride have been overwhelmingly positive, with many people calling the attraction experience Disney’s best. People have praised the super advanced technology, long experience, and very fluent animatronics to add another immersive element to the story. 

If you are reading this and visiting Hollywood Studios anytime soon and want to ride Rise of the Resistance, be warned that the ride is still only accepting boarding groups. The park has been opening around 6:30 despite the actual opening time, and boarding groups have been filling within 1-2 hours of actual opening, so be at the park very early if you are planning to ride Rise of the Resistance!