Why a Rise of the Resistance Lightning Lane Is Useless in Disney World Right Now

Sometimes Lightning Lanes come in handy during your Disney World day, especially if you’re getting the chance to bypass an hour-long wait and breeze through the wait to get on your favorite ride.

However, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use Lightning Lane all the time, and I ESPECIALLY don’t use Lightning Lane Single Pass often. The only attraction in Disney’s Hollywood Studios that needs a Lightning Lane Single Pass reservation is Rise of the Resistance, and on a recent trip, I found out that right now, there are some situations where it’s totally useless.

Currently, Rise of the Resistance can be ridden by getting in the regular standby line, grabbing a Lightning Lane Single Pass reservation to skip the line, or you can use the (newer) Single Rider line that’s in use most of the time.

Personally, I usually use the single rider line since I’m by myself, or with friends and we all don’t mind skipping the pre-show or getting split up, but on a trip earlier this year, I was helping Quincy with her attempt to ride every single ride in Disney World in one day, and while she had purchased a Lightning Lane Single Pass for the ride earlier, she asked me if I could check the single rider line for her.

Single Rider Line at Rise of the Resistance

See, when you’re racing against time, there’s a big difference between these two experiences — the Lightning Lane Single Pass line will still take you through both pre-shows before the ride begins, but the single rider line often has you skip both (or, at least one). Quincy sent me ahead to see how long the single rider line was taking, and needless to say, we were both surprised!

I kept careful track of time and wrote down for her exactly how long it took me to skip both pre-shows, how many people were ahead of me in line, when I got sorted, etc., and all that information made it clear that forgoing her Lightning Lane Single Rider reservation WAS a good idea, for the sake of time.

The pre-shows EASILY add on 5-10 minutes to your experience, which is incredible when you want the whole story, but when you’ve ridden it more times than you can count (like Quincy has) and you’re attempting to complete a wild challenge, you want to save as much time as you can. So if you’re attempting a similar challenge, or just don’t have much interest in seeing the pre-shows and really just want to ride the attraction with the most minimal wait, it’s likely that the single rider line is a better bet than a Lightning Lane.

HOWEVER, this completely changes if you want to ride with your group! In that case, DO NOT use the single rider line, because 9/10 times you’ll be separated. That goes for all single rider lines in Disney World, so if you’re with a group who doesn’t want to split, single rider lines will never be the way to go.