We’re friends, right? And that means we want you to know everything there is to know before you ride TRON Lightcycle / Run.
TRON Lightcycle / Run opens soon!
We’ve been on the ride a time or two, and know the ins and outs pretty well by now. There are currently only two ways to ride TRON, and we’ve got a pretty important update when it comes to the Virtual Queue!
As a brief refresher, a virtual queue is a tool available through the My Disney Experience app that allows guests to reserve a space in line for the most popular park attractions ahead of time from their phones. If you’re able to secure a spot in the virtual queue, you will be assigned a boarding group, and then you’ll use that individual boarding pass to enter the line when it’s time to ride.
TRON Lightcycle / Run
Right now, TRON is only accessible by securing a Virtual Queue Boarding Group or purchasing an Individual Lightning Lane. Essentially, if you secure a boarding group, you’ll be assigned a return window to come back and ride the attraction. Multiple rides use the VQ system in Disney World, and in our experience, we’ve been able to be late to our return window and still allowed on the ride. We’ve experienced this a few times at another new ride, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
TRON Lightcycle / Run by night.
With us so far? We wanted to know if this was the case for TRON, so we decided to experiment. We secured a spot in the virtual queue at the 7AM drop and waited — to miss it.
©Disney
Our return time window expired at 10:35AM, so we waited well beyond that just to be sure. Disney typically allows a 15-minute grace period for things like restaurant and Genie+ reservations, and we decided to wait until after 11AM before attempting to check in.
©Disney
While we were heading to the ride, we overheard a Cast Member advising another guest that the rest of their party would need to be back within their window in order to ride, which made us nervous. But, we soldiered on and marched through the queue — only to find that we were able to scan into the ride perfectly fine.
This was just our experience, and there is no guarantee that you’ll be allowed on the ride if you’re late for your boarding window.
TRON queue
After we got off TRON, we asked a Cast Member directly who told us that the strict return times are continuing through the soft opening because they are trying to avoid having people secure a boarding group and waiting until it’s dark out to ride. The Cast Member didn’t indicate whether or not this would continue to be the case after TRON is officially open or not, but it’s definitely something to be aware of.
We had another experience, too. We managed to get a boarding group that was called before noon, but we didn’t go back to the ride until almost 7PM (and it had reopened earlier than that). We were turned away. We asked a Cast Member again if this would change when the ride officially opens and were told it would not and that the rules could be even stricter so people can’t use it as an excuse to wait until night to ride the attraction (because it is so different at night).
TRON Lightcycle / Run opens soon!
Another Cast Member informed us that they might allow people to board TRON even if their return window had expired if they had a really good reason for being late or weren’t super late (as in, several hours late), but this will depend on the Cast Members at the ride and how busy the ride is that day. So you definitely won’t want to count on being able to board if you’re late!
Just before TRON officially opened on April 4th, Disney added some new language to the section about the virtual queue for the ride. The updated language now says, “Late arrivals may not be accommodated.” Previously, this sentence was not included in that section. So it seems like Disney is planning on being more strict with virtual queue returns at TRON than they have been for other rides!
©Disney
If you’re trying to get a virtual queue spot for TRON, make sure you don’t have any reservations or other events that could potentially conflict with a ride — or be prepared to cancel those reservations. Try to be on time if you want to be sure you can ride!
We’ll be keeping an eye on TRON before and after it officially opens, and you can check out our posts on it below:
- 5 Tips for Scoring a TRON Virtual Queue Spot
- Complete Guide to the TRON Virtual Queue
- First Look at the New Snack Stand in Magic Kingdom
Stay tuned to DFB for the latest Disney news and more!
Check Out Our Full Review of TRON Right Here
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I encountered this unfortunately and the extremely rude attractions manager over the ride, my return time was called 3 hours early and I couldn’t make it on time because of other Disney reservations, i returned way before dark and still got a very rude and sarcastic response about capacity and needing to keep track of my time and basically at the end of the conversation was told I need to be at that attraction or nearby from 9am-8pm, the way they were treating people at the attraction when the return times were so messed up all day long is not the Disney way and nothing I have ever experience in WDW ever in my life, they need to make changes ASAP I stood in an customer relations line where almost every other guest was there about Tron too. My boarding group was estimated at 12 noon and it was called at 9am right at park open, got there at 12:25pm in line and denied at touch point