The Complete Guide to Single Rider Lines at Walt Disney World

This guide discusses how single-rider lines work at Walt Disney World. While there are no guarantees on how long you’ll wait, we have found that Disney’s single-rider service is a wonderful way to skip a long wait and often utilize it in our touring plans. Below, we’ll review the rides and rules of using this service.

We’ll also add a few tips on how you can best incorporate this strategy into your plans. Then, we’ve included a brief overview of what to expect per individual single rider attraction. If you want to learn more about a specific ride, we’ve linked to our “How Long Did We Wait?” series. Each article in the series details our ride experience with tracked wait times during moderate crowd times.

What is Disney’s Single Rider Service?

Before we get into the details, let’s first tackle what the single rider line is and is not. First, you do not have to be a solo traveler to utilize this service. Disney defines the service on their website as:

Single Rider is an option that allows groups to split up and embark on select attractions individually. Attraction signage or a Cast Member can direct you to the designated line, where your party will be separated to fill remaining seats in a ride vehicle that aren’t occupied by Guests utilizing standby lines or Lightning Lane entrances.

Walt Disney World

If you opt to ride in the standby line or purchase a Lightning Lane to ride an attraction, Disney is not going to split you up. However, say you ride an attraction with a ride vehicle that seats two guests, and you’re a party of three. Two people in your party can ride together, and the other person will have an empty seat next to them. Disney will place a single rider in that seat to fill it, keeping the ride operating at capacity.

Now, if all three of you had opted to join the single rider line, you would have all been split up to fill empty seats with other standby and Lightning Lane passengers. The trade-off? In most cases, you would experience a significantly shorter wait. Again, a shorter wait is ideal, but it might not be the case 100% of the time. So it’s important to go into a single rider line hopeful, but not necessarily with expectations of a short wait time.

Now that you have a general idea of what the single rider line is and how it works, let’s take a look at eligible attractions and a few need-to-know rules.

Single Rider Line Options and Rules

The following attractions have dedicated single rider lines at Walt Disney World.

Epcot

• Test Track
• Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

• Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
• Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

Disney’s Animal Kingdom

• Expedition Everest

From time to time, we’ve seen testing for a single rider option at Space Mountain. However, at this time, there is not a dedicated single rider line for the attraction. Additionally, the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets may have a single rider line when it opens next month. We’ll update this guide when we know more.

Disney notes the following rules on their website for anyone who wishes to take advantage of the single rider line at an eligible attraction.

• Immediate boarding or choice of seat is not guaranteed.
• Single Riders must meet all boarding requirements.
• Special seating requests may not be accommodated.
• Participating attractions and wait times may vary.
• This service is subject to availability.

As far as boarding requirements, you’ll need to consider any height requirements or other terms posted outside the ride. Where applicable, rides will have a list of safe and healthy concerns posted near the entrance. Disney also has a general rule that applies to all attractions: Children under the age of 7 must be accompanied by a person who is aged 14 years or older.

At this point, you should have a good idea of how single-rider lines work, clarity on the rules, and where you can plan to utilize the service. So now we’ll look at a brief overview of each ride.

Test Track

The single rider line at Test Track often works very well for us. You’ll find the single rider entrance on the far left side of the attraction, near the Lightning Lane entrance. We have used the single rider line here during regular park hours and early entry to get ahead of the crowd. The only time we’ve ever had any hangup is when the ride goes down, which can happen. In that event, you’re going to be stuck waiting, no matter which line you joined. From our experience, the single rider line moves steadily with some pauses. For more on this attraction, see our single rider guide to Test Track. It discusses how long we waited and more about what to expect.

Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure

Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure is one of the newer attractions to offer a single rider queue. While we enjoy the ride, it’s an attraction that often has long standby waits, so before the single rider line opened, we were prone to skipping it. But these days, we tend to give it a little more priority. To date, we’ve ridden about five times via the single rider line and have had incredibly short waits each time. We even enjoyed a complete walk-on with no wait during spring break. For more experiences, see our guide to the single rider line at Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance has quickly become one of our favorite single-rider attractions at Disney World. As you may know, standby waits here can be lengthy, and unfortunately, this ride experiences a decent amount of downtime. So we highly recommend taking advantage of the single rider line with one huge caveat.

If you have never ridden this attraction before, please do the entire walk-through via standby or purchase a Lightning Lane Single Pass to ride it for the first time. The single rider line skips part of the immersive experience leading up to boarding the ride. If you don’t have those key details, you’ll have no idea what’s going on when you join the single rider line. So make sure you consider this if you or someone who’s with you is riding it for the first time. Oh, and one other important thing. The single rider line for this attraction is near the ride’s exit. You’ll typically find a cast member holding up a sign for it, but in the event of inclement weather, it could be closed. See our guide to the single rider line for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance for the full rundown.

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

Millennium Falcon: Smuggler Run is another attraction that offers a single rider queue. Since it opened, we’ve probably done the single rider line about 15-20 times. The majority of those times, the wait has been less than five minutes. However, this ride will have a new scene featuring The Mandalorian starting in late May 2026 that could impact wait times. We’ll give the new ride experience a little time to debut and normalize before we complete an updated walk-through of the experience.

In the meantime, I wouldn’t hesitate to check out the single rider line if it interests you. This ride tends to be more popular with children and teens because it’s similar to a video game. The main downfall of the single rider line here is that you’ll probably get an engineer card when you’re assigned a role. Those waiting in standby or via the Lightning Lane can request to be the pilot or gunner, which are the most popular options.

Expedition Everest

The single rider line at Expedition Everest is a tried and true classic. You’ll find the entrance in a separate area to the far right of the main entrance. We’ve been doing the single rider line here for well over a decade and have always had good luck with it. The only real downfall is that you can’t request the front or back row. That said, you won’t always need to use the single rider entrance for a shorter wait here. Often, if you’re visiting earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon, you can do just as well with standby. We discuss this with examples in our single rider guide to Expedition Everest.

Final Thoughts on Single Ride Attractions

Overall, I cannot say enough good things about the single rider service at Disney World. We have done all of the options listed above with mostly minimal waits. The only option that we’ve ever avoided was the single rider line for the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. For whatever reason, we’ve never had a short wait with it. We’ll have more on that if it’s an option in the future. For more on touring the parks, our Disney Parks Guide is a good place to start.

In the Comments

What do you think of single rider lines at Disney World? Have you had good experiences? Let us know your thoughts or any questions below in the comments or on our social media. We’d be happy to answer based on our experience.

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