Short report out from our trip earlier this week (2/23 - 2/25). Thanks to all on this thread for making it a success! Here is what worked every single day:
1 - Line up approx 45 minutes before park opening. Line grows exponentially every minute beyond that. This got us in the park 15-20 minutes prior to opening each day at the main gates.
2 - Have many phones. We used 5 iPhones of varying models, from a 6s up to 11. All phones were logged into the same DL account.
3 - Get an atomic clock, and practice at home to sync it to DL servers. I found DL servers went live ~1 second before my clock hit Opening Time.
4 - Load the app on all phones *many* times that morning to clear out junk. Pop ups, iTunes store rating surveys, offers for the Play App, etc. all need to be cleared. Load, click on "Find out More", check Boarding Status, close the app, clear from memory, and repeat. Did about 4-5 times per phone each AM (found new popups almost every day). Also, ensure all phones have the correct tickets linked while doing this and that everyone in your group actually entered the park. A great way to test this is with MaxPass - if you can get one for the group you are good! We had variable group members each morning so this was important.
If you can't delete non-park goers from the prior day group, DL tech support is great and can solve it in about 5 minutes with a phone call.
5 - Turn off Wi-Fi on all phones and close the app (remove from memory) about 5 minutes before Opening. Make sure no other apps are in memory.
6 - Use 1 phone for your atomic clock, and for that one open the DL app about 5 minutes ahead and get the 'Check Status' page open. This lets you swap from the clock to an active button quickly.
7 - For the other phones, we loaded the app 20 - 10
seconds before Opening Time, depending on phone speed. The 11 loads in about 5 seconds.
8 - Do *NOT* click 'Find out More' until your team is ready
9 - Starting at Opening Time -2 seconds, we clicked 'Find out More' sequentially on each phone with a ~1s delay between clicks. This let us get a 4 second spread across 4 phones. The 5th phone with the clock swaps apps to the DL app (already open) once the 1st phone begins and starts to pull-down refresh until the button turns red.
10 - We found many of us got the desired Red Button, but my daughter (iPhone 11) got the actual pass 2 out of 3 days.
Doing this, we improved each day and got BG 42, 23, and 7 respectively.
Of note, we found Rope Drop preceded Opening Time each day by about 2 minutes. We did the above while walking, but you may want to sit down and focus the first time. I also recommend that if you want to do Smuggler's Run, this is the time. Even being near the back of the Rope Drop mob, we'd get to SR and find ~20 minute queues. Given that it's not FP enabled yet, this is the best you are probably going to see all day. And if you get BG 7, you're in the right spot to ride RotR right after SR!
YMMV, but good luck!!
CMs said they hope to get everyone in by 8am!?
