Disneyland has announced that it will be following the same procedures as Walt Disney World Resort for admitting guests to the brand new Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride, which opens January 17 at Disneyland.
As at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida, Disneyland visitors will need to join a “boarding group” virtual queue in order to get on the new Star Wars ride. The virtual queue will open at the park’s published opening time in the morning and guests will need to be inside the park in order to request to join a boarding group.
The easiest way to make that request is to be logged in through the official Disneyland app and to click to join a boarding group through that. However, Disneyland will make locations available inside the park where guests without the app can use their park ticket to scan in and join a boarding group.
Right now the spots over at Disney world in the virtual queue are filling within an hour or so of the park’s opening. I would highly recommend getting to Disneyland EARLY enough to be inside the park at its opening time to join a boarding group IMMEDIATELY. We also recommend that you use the app to manage your boarding group status instead of one of the physical locations inside the park, where you might lose precious minutes waiting to scan your park ticket.
You are only allowed one boarding once per day per guest. They will not be allowing re-rides for now. The app will send you a notification when it is time for your boarding group to enter the Rise of the Resistance’s physical queue. If you don’t have the app or miss the notification on your phone, signs throughout the park will show which boarding groups have been called for the ride, too.
The Disneyland parking policy is to open the gate 90 minutes before the published opening time for the park. On the 17th when the ride opens at 7 am for its Extra Magic Hour so 90 minutes before that is 5:30 am, but for that day Disney says if you show up before 5:30 they will let people park.