The time that I started typing this was 7:06 AM in the Orlando area. I’m at Disney World with my family for a trip celebrating my twin nieces graduating from high school and a make up celebration for my son who graduated last year right around the time that the lock down began. Today is our first park day and we’re going to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, so of course that means a visit to Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge. Of course that means trying to get a boarding group (virtual queue spot) for Rise of the Resistance (RoR). Of course that means a certain level of anxiety in hoping that we can get a boarding group in the 2 seconds that it takes for all of said boarding group slots to be snatched up. And in case you didn’t know, I’m not exaggerating. The boarding groups get completely filled in 2 seconds.

I was up and getting ready for the day before 7 AM and walking around our room at Old Key West looking for a spot where my cell phone service was the strongest. As I’ve discussed in the past, Disney WiFi is not the best so I knew from experience and hearing from others that trying to get a boarding group for RoR using the WiFi isn’t a great idea. I actually spent some time last night walking around every part of this 2 bedroom villa looking for where my cell service was the strongest in preparation for this morning.

I’ve been fortunate enough to get a boarding group the other 2 times that I’ve tried but with the spotty service this trip, I was not feeling confident that I would be 3 times lucky. Luck is actually what it comes down to. There’s no magic formula or trick to scoring a boarding group. It’s just luck of the draw and who connects the fastest.

I went for the same strategy that I used in January and March, which is just to be ready right before 7:00 and refreshing the virtual queue page in the app until the Join button appears. Then I just rapidly tap Join, Continue, and whatever else it says in the app without much regard to what the screen says. This morning when I did this, I was tapping away so fast that around the third tap, the app suddenly redirected to a map that seemed to show my location in the resort.

I have never seen this screen in my previous boarding group attempts so I knew I’d tapped something that I wasn’t trying to tap. I did a quiet, agonizing scream (cuz I was the only one awake and I didn’t want to wake anyone up) as I tried to go back to the boarding group screen even though I knew by now it had been at least 5 entire seconds and there was going to be no chance that I could get a group now. To make matters worse, the app closed completely. I was still scrambling to get back to the virtual queue page even though I already knew it was way too late.

Once I got back into the app, I checked the virtual queues page to find that I somehow DID manage to get a boarding group! I went through another gambit of emotions and right in that moment I was like, “This is too stressful! I can’t believe I just got so much anxiety in this moment to try to get on a theme park ride.” Don’t get my wrong, I’m super happy that I got us one since 6 out of 7 of us have never been on the ride, but it sucks that it’s so stressful.

I gotta get ready to go to the park, so…. Have a great day! °O°