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NEW! Star Wars Ride – Rise of the Resistance Trackless Dark Ride

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Eighteen minutes, four ride systems, and one Star Destroyer hangar bay — Disney just built its most complex attraction ever.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World on December 5, 2019, and made its West Coast debut at Disneyland Park in California on January 17, 2020. Walt Disney Imagineering built the multi-part dark ride for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and it’s already being called the most technologically ambitious attraction the company has ever produced. The video above walks through the trackless ride vehicle sequence at the Florida location, showing exactly what riders encounter once they’re loaded onto a reprogrammed First Order transport.

• Rise of the Resistance blends four distinct ride systems — a motion simulator transport shuttle, walkthrough sets, autonomous trackless vehicles, and a rapid vertical drop — across 18 separate show areas.
• The attraction features 65 Audio-Animatronic figures and a hangar bay staffed by 50 full-scale stormtroopers alongside in-character First Order Cast Members.
• Because standby demand overwhelmed the parks, Disney runs the ride almost entirely through a virtual boarding group system booked via the official Disney app rather than a traditional standby line.

The Story Guests Step Into

The narrative drops riders into the role of new Resistance recruits fleeing the planet Batuu under the guidance of Rey (Daisy Ridley), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and BB-8. Mid-flight, a First Order Star Destroyer commanded by General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) captures the transport, and guests are unloaded into a hangar bay lined with stormtroopers standing at attention. From there, riders are marched through detention cells before the escape sequence kicks in — reprogrammed First Order fleet transports piloted by an R5 astromech droid become the getaway vehicles.

Inside the Trackless Vehicle Sequence

The dynamic trackless vehicle is what separates this attraction from anything Disney has built before. Instead of following a fixed rail, the vehicle navigates the ship’s corridors independently, dodging turbolaser fire and rolling past two full-sized AT-AT walkers before Kylo Ren himself appears for a Force-powered confrontation. The sequence ends with a launch into an escape pod that simulates a high-speed drop through space back down to the planet’s surface — a moment that plays like a physical thrill ride bolted onto a walkthrough story experience.

Four ride systems, 18 show areas, 65 Audio-Animatronics, and 50 full-scale stormtroopers standing guard in a single hangar bay.

The Purpose of Boarding Groups

Rise of the Resistance requires a 40-inch height minimum, and unlike most Disney attractions, it doesn’t run a conventional standby line. The ride’s complexity — four ride systems working in sequence, trackless vehicles that have to navigate around each other in real time, and elaborate show effects that require downtime to reset — means Disney caps how many guests can move through per hour. That’s forced both Hollywood Studios and Disneyland to lean on the app-based virtual boarding group system just to manage the crowds that show up before park opening hoping to snag a spot.

Anyone plotting a trip to Galaxy’s Edge should treat the boarding group hunt the same way seasoned park-goers treat rope-drop strategy elsewhere in Walt Disney World — arrive early, have the app open, and expect groups to disappear within minutes. For a broader read on how crowded the land has gotten since opening and what else has changed around Smugglers Run, it’s worth checking out this look at whether Star Wars Land is still crowded. Guests weighing a first Disney World trip around this attraction might also want to read through what to know before heading to Disney World before locking in park days.

With Disneyland’s version now open just eleven days after this video was filmed at Hollywood Studios, both coasts are running the same 18-show-area experience — meaning the boarding group scramble that’s been playing out in Florida since December is about to become just as much a fixture of a Anaheim park day.