The Disney parks can be extremely busy, so when the parks open a new ride, they take measures to reduce the actual time spent in the physical queue. Disney has introduced a Virtual Queue system to combat this and prevent guests from waiting multiple hours for one ride.
How To Join the Virtual Queue
There has been a lot of “guides” on how to “correctly” get a Virtual Queue. We have yet to find one that understands the system and has tested the system’s limits to prove what works. Our finding is it always drops the moment the times changes to 7am (or whichever time slot you’re trying to receive one at) off of the world clock. We’ve seen people say it drops a second early, but this is not true if you’re specifically watching a clock synced with the world clock. In fact, clicking early can break the button’s functionality. The site runs at an average of 7 frames per second and clicking one frame too early locked us out once.
At the end of the day, this system is as basic as Disney tells you there is. If you just want a group, just tap refresh and tap “Join Boarding Group” the moment it pops up. It’s really that simple. We have never seen all groups filled in under 3 seconds. If you can tap “Join Boarding Group” within 3 seconds of the time change, you will get a group. All things considered; 3 seconds is a lot of time to double tap a screen.
Advanced Knowledge
To just get a group is simple, but if you want to choose what group you get (yes, it’s possible with some limitations), then you’ll want to stick around.
For the WDW parks, Guardians gives out 100 groups at 7am and Tiana’s gives out 70 at 7am on 9am openings. As of right now, the WDW system only allows for one active boarding group at one time, with Disney Springs, ESPN, and Passholder Preview Virtual Queues being an exception.
Guardians and Tiana’s currently allow for late entries. Once the boarding group is called, you will be told you need to arrive within one hour. This is not actually true. The system has given all groups an extra hour to scan in. Any time after two hours, a cast member has to override your late arrival. As of now, we have never had an issue with this at either ride. We’ve arrived as late as 10 hours after the group expired with no trouble. Cast members will usually not question it and override it before you can even tell them why you’re late. Now with that said, in the terms and service, the cast members do not have to allow you in late. If entry is denied, you will just have to take the loss on that Virtual Queue.
Reservation Canceling
For 7am times, you need to have a park reservation for that day, excluding good to go passholder days. What if you wanted to start at Hollwood Studios and make your way over to Epcot to ride Guardians later? You can, and it’s easy to do. Assume you want to ride Guardians, start your reservation at Epcot. At 7am, grab your group then change your reservation to whatever park you want to start at.
If the park you want is booked out, just keep refreshing the page. We have never waited more than 10 minutes for a reservation to open even when they’ve been booked out for days. During Tiana’s previews, Magic Kingdom was booked out for every day. We got a 7am boarding group every day without prior reservations. People would drop reservations every couple of minutes, and we would pick them up. Since the preview was only for passholders, not all the groups would fill. One of those days, we got a Guardians group, then switched over to a Magic Kingdom reservation and got a Tiana’s preview group. Like we’ve mentioned before, getting both at the same time is only possible if one of them in a preview state.
A post shared by Travel, Theme Parks & Entertainment (@amarriedadventure)
Leave a Reply