Disney World is changing things up on us AGAIN — but don’t worry because we’re bringing you all the news and tips you need to know before your next trip!

Now that park pass reservations have gone away for most guests, there are new rules to follow when it comes to Virtual Queues. We’ve gone over the changes in a few different posts, but now we’re putting words into action. Come with us to test the NEW virtual queue rules in Disney World.

 

What is a Virtual Queue?

Virtual Queues are free reservations that allow you to join the standby line for attractions without having to purchase an individual lightning lane to ride. As of this writing, there are two rides with virtual queues at Disney World — TRON Lightcycle / Run and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.

There are certain times of day when the virtual queues open. At those times, you join the queue through the My Disney Experience app. And then, you wait — without getting in line! You can be doing other things around the parks while you wait in line virtually. Once your turn to join the actual line is “called” you’ll be notified in the My Disney Experience app with a time window for arrival.

Prior to the January 9th changes, those who were looking to ride either of these attractions needed to make a park pass reservation for the preferred attraction’s respective park for the morning and then attempt to secure a virtual queue to ride on the app starting at 7AM. If you had a park reservation for EPCOT, you could only try to get a virtual queue for Guardians of the Galaxy — you couldn’t try to get a virtual queue for TRON in Magic Kingdom, and vice versa.

This process allowed you to only have to vie against those who were signed up to visit the same park that morning. Additionally, you could make a second attempt in the park after you had scanned in to visit for the day at 1PM, but again, only if you had already scanned into the park.

What are the new rules?

Since park pass reservations have now gone away for day visitors and select ticket holders, you will be able to try for either ride’s virtual queue! So, if you’re planning to go to Magic Kingdom be on your phone, ready to snag that TRON virtual queue reservation right when they open up at 7AM. But if it’s sold out before you can grab one…

…you could jump over to Guardians of the Galaxy screen and try for a virtual queue for it instead — because you can just change your plan and go to EPCOT on that day if you get one. You don’t have to worry that you don’t have a park reservation for EPCOT anymore. Essentially, you’ll have two chances to score a morning virtual queue instead of one. However, you cannot hold two virtual queues at once. So if you get a TRON boarding group, you can not go get a Guardians of the Galaxy one, too.

Our experience

We decided to test this out, so we hopped into the Disney World app right at 7AM this morning! We checked both virtual queues to see if one or both would still be open seconds after the drop, and it turned out they were.

Both options were available for longer than we expected! We thought that since every Disney World guest would have access to selecting them (not just people going to those specific parks with reservations), that they would sell out way faster than they did. It wasn’t until 7:38AM that we noticed TRON had finally sold out.

However, at that same time, 7:38AM, Guardians of the Galaxy was still available!

Interestingly, in the afternoon we saw the exact opposite. We checked the virtual queues around 2:20PM and saw that TRON still hadn’t sold out after the 1PM drop.

But at that time Guardians of the Galaxy was all out.

While they lasted quite a while after the drops, our suggestion would be to not take chances if you really want to grab a virtual queue for one of these two rides. The earlier you’re on the app and ready to join the queue the better chances you have of actually getting one. The way they sell out could depend on the day and the crowds. We hope this helps you with this new process!

Stay tuned to DFB as we bring you more updates and changes from Disney World in 2024!

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What do you think of these changes? Tell us in the comments.