10/15/18: A Cursed Day?

DizFan13

DIS Veteran
Joined
Dec 31, 2008
Yesterday was by far our most bizarre Disney experience to date. We've made dozens of trips to DLR over the years; I wouldn't even be able to guess how many days. We know that rides go down at times, and know how and expect to be flexible every now and again. But prior to yesterday, that applied to the trip overall, not one day.

Yesterday, Monday 10/15, we had MPs arranged for five different rides and ended up with multiple experience passes because the rides kept going down. On top of that, we crossed the park to ride JC as the app listed a twenty-five minute wait time and it closed as we got there. Each ride we went to in order to use our multiple experience passes had issues, except for HM, thankfully. For instance, we queued for Star Tours with passes, walked straight into the first room, and just came to a dead stop. We waited for thirty-five minutes before getting to the line up area. A CM told us they were down to two functional bays.

What a day! We felt like we spent the whole day running in circles trying to find something open to ride. I'm curious if anyone else had the same type of day. It's one for the record books for us. Also, there seemed to be no street entertainment in DL, and we only saw the Trolly car show in DCA.
 
I have actually had a couple visits like that before. One was so bad that we didn't visit again for almost 2 years afterward. We set our goals very low whenever we go now. We usually only go for a partial day and we normally only go in planning on doing one or 2 specific things. If what we were planning doesn't work out, we manage to find one or more things that we haven't done in a long time or have never done.

In our case, we live less than a 2 hour drive away, so a really bad day isn't too upsetting as we figure we can try again another time. If we had to pay for flights and expensive hotels, I can think of plenty of visits that would have been our last visit.
 
I think the wacky weather didn’t help things. Don’t know how much Anaheim got, but the Santa Ana winds hit us pretty bad-power outage almost all day. There could have been fallout from that at Disney!
 
I think the wacky weather didn’t help things. Don’t know how much Anaheim got, but the Santa Ana winds hit us pretty bad-power outage almost all day. There could have been fallout from that at Disney!
Oh, yes, the wind was crazy. We wondered if that had an impact. In particular, we assumed the wind was the reason GRR was closed, but not sure why it would have impacted Space Mountain over and over; we counted four temporary closures of SM, two of which happened during our FP return times. :upsidedow
 


Days like that stink. We had one of those days last year at the beginning of March. Everything kept shutting down all morning at DL, so we went over to DCA where RSR and Screamin' went down and then the Frozen show got canceled. Went back to DL where Big Thunder was down (as is a daily custom), grabbed dinner and stood around waiting for Fireworks....which were canceled 3 minutes into the show. Talk about frustration! I can feel your pain.

All that said, DL seems to have a problem with rides going down a lot. With the finest engineers in the world, I'm surprised this has not been fixed over the last few decades.
 
We’ve had a whole trip like that before! Power outages combined with Santa Ana winds caused multiple ride closures and that combined with an incredibly bad stay at GCH caused my husband to stay away for a few years. Thankfully, that was a few years ago, and we haven’t had a bad experience since then.
 
It was the wind.

The rides like JC have lots of foliage that can fall over onto the boats, so they close it down in high winds. Other outdoor rides that may topple in a strong gust will also close in high winds, like the Casey Jr. Circus Train.

Some rides may close in high winds because there are possible hazards in the outdoor queue area. This may have been the reason for the Space Mountain closures. The outside queue there is in an area which frequently becomes a wind tunnel on a normal breezy day, so on a day like yesterday, it could become dangerous if anything were to come loose and topple over.

Combining the wind related closures with just regular attraction downtimes was why you had such a bad day yesterday.

In the future, know that these Santa Ana wind events usually arrive Mid October like clockwork, every year. So, plan accordingly.
 


I've had days that felt like that too, although the last one had a slightly interesting twist. We were riding Haunted Mansion Holiday and it did go down for a little bit (~20 minutes) while we were still in the queue (would be part of the next group in), so we waited. The ride came back up, we got into the elevator and everything progressed normally (a few short stops during the ride, about the normal amount of time when someone needs a bit more time loading/unloading). Then we were stopped in the graveyard scene (I was facing the singing busts). That one went on for a bit and I didn't really think much of it until I looked down the track and saw some guy walking along the doom buggies! He had the light on his phone on and was looking at the track. I don't think he was the cause of the stoppage, but I think he took advantage of the stoppage to get out and look for something he'd dropped. He didn't get to my doom buggy before turning around, but then a voice came over the PA and told him to remain where he was and CMs were on their way. He kept going back towards the exit and I didn't see what happened, but I'm guessing his day at Disneyland was over!
 
I'm sorry you had a bad day at DLR.

Those pesky winds are surely annoying.

figment's story reminded me of the first time DH and I were going to see the Hatbox Ghost. I told him, "be sure to look out for him, he's new!". You know what happened? The ride stopped us RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM for about 40 performances of his head appearing down in the hatbox, haha. We definitely didn't miss him!
 
I'm sorry you had a bad day at DLR.

Those pesky winds are surely annoying.

figment's story reminded me of the first time DH and I were going to see the Hatbox Ghost. I told him, "be sure to look out for him, he's new!". You know what happened? The ride stopped us RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM for about 40 performances of his head appearing down in the hatbox, haha. We definitely didn't miss him!
I would say it was a frustrating/bewildering day, but I'm in the camp that believes there's no such thing as a truly bad day at a Disney park. We still had plenty of fun, even though our ride count was astonishingly low.
 
Sorry that happened. But still, a bad day at Disney is still a better than a normal day in the real world. :) I've had a few meh days at Disneyland. I think if you've gone enough you're going to run into them. The last time we went my son got really sick, so that ruined most of our trip. In addition to that they had a wow convention and dapper days. More than a few rides were backed up for hours and some stopped dead because they had hats stuck in the rides lol (that is what many of the DLR vets assumed was happening anyway, because of past Dapper Day hat debacles lol)
 
Yep. We are here too. I was shocked on Saturday when it rained, nearly all of the outdoor rides in California adventure closed down. I thought they stayed open. Then yesterday with the crazy winds, we were back and fourth. Today unfortunately my son has been vomiting since 5am so we will Miss a full Disney Day plus the Halloween Party tonight AND it’s his birthday.
 
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I’m sorry to hear it! I understand when a ride goes down here and there, but it’s been really widespread and too frequent IMO for what they charge!

We had a day like that at DCA. It was right before Guardians opened to everyone, so that whole section of the park was closed. RSR was closed, goofy sky school, screamin and TSMM were all down! We waited in a rather long line at guest services to let them know how disappointed we were and they upgraded us to hoppers to go to rest of the day and gave us passes to come back (using them in s few weeks).
 
Yep. We are here too. I was shocked on Saturday when it rained, nearly all of the outdoor rides in California adventure closed down. I thought they stayed open. Then yesterday with the crazy winds, we were back and fourth. Today unfortunately my son has been vomoaince 5am sonwe will Miss a full Disney Day plus the Halloween Party tonight AND it’s his birthday.
What a rough start! Hope it gets better and it’s a magical birthday!
 
I’m sorry to hear it! I understand when a ride goes down here and there, but it’s been really widespread and too frequent IMO for what they charge!

We had a day like that at DCA. It was right before Guardians opened to everyone, so that whole section of the park was closed. RSR was closed, goofy sky school, screamin and TSMM were all down! We waited in a rather long line at guest services to let them know how disappointed we were and they upgraded us to hoppers to go to rest of the day and gave us passes to come back (using them in s few weeks).
I have known a surprising number of people who have gotten free passes to come on another day after respectfully complaining about unusually bad conditions at Disney. I wouldn't have realized it's an option, but I'm glad they're willing to try to make it right when days are THAT off.
 
It was the wind.

The rides like JC have lots of foliage that can fall over onto the boats, so they close it down in high winds. Other outdoor rides that may topple in a strong gust will also close in high winds, like the Casey Jr. Circus Train.

Some rides may close in high winds because there are possible hazards in the outdoor queue area. This may have been the reason for the Space Mountain closures. The outside queue there is in an area which frequently becomes a wind tunnel on a normal breezy day, so on a day like yesterday, it could become dangerous if anything were to come loose and topple over.

Combining the wind related closures with just regular attraction downtimes was why you had such a bad day yesterday.

In the future, know that these Santa Ana wind events usually arrive Mid October like clockwork, every year. So, plan accordingly.

Yes, welcome to Santa Ana wind season in Southern California! It's a little bit late this year, but arrived with a vengeance. This recent event was a doozy. So it's no wonder DLR was in a state. If you took a peek at the NWS page over the weekend, there were red flag warnings all over the place. Combined with the rain storms, we had a pretty unusual weather event for SoCal. So this was definitely NOT business as usual for DLR.
But as other posters have said, even a weird day at DLR is better than a weird day somewhere else!
 
Yes, welcome to Santa Ana wind season in Southern California! It's a little bit late this year, but arrived with a vengeance. This recent event was a doozy. So it's no wonder DLR was in a state. If you took a peek at the NWS page over the weekend, there were red flag warnings all over the place. Combined with the rain storms, we had a pretty unusual weather event for SoCal. So this was definitely NOT business as usual for DLR.
But as other posters have said, even a weird day at DLR is better than a weird day somewhere else!

It wasn't really late. I recall several years with these wind events in late October that lead to wildfires that were quite memorable. 2003 and 2008 are the two that I remember vividly because the fires were very close to us.

This event knocked down about 25 trees in the little section of my neighborhood made up of two streets. A 34 year old woman in Tustin was killed when a huge eucalyptus tree fell on her car in her driveway. She lived on a street that I drive on every week. We live off a main street lined with those trees and I was white knuckling it all the way to the supermarket yesterday because I was terrified one would come down (two came down, eventually, yesterday, although neither struck any cars, luckily). A portion of the roof of the neighborhood elementary school blew off. It was a large section of gutter. This school was built only 4 years ago. The kids were kept inside all day due to blowing debris.

That epic 3 hour violent thunderstorm on Friday night was the longest lasting storm I've ever experienced in 25 years of living in CA. Definitely a crazy weather weekend. I felt badly for everyone who came to Disneyland last weekend. What unfortunate timing.
 
It wasn't really late...

It was relatively "late" in the context that we usually get at least one Santa Ana event by September, and this was the first event of this season. (I got this information from a local weather office.) So, while it certainly would have been nice for the folks visiting DLR for this event to have been even later -- I'm sure the OP wouldn't have minded at all! -- it wasn't totally unexpected, just rather unwelcome (like the rain at MHP on Friday).
 
The winds Sunday night and all day Monday were unbelievable! We headed to Steakhouse from the Grand for breakfast and it looked like a tornado had hit the DLH with all the downed foliage. Palm trees were bending at a 45 edgree angle. Most rides in DCA tht were outside couldn't run due to the winds. Power kept going out. I overheard many families today who were at Disneyland because schools were closed due to the power outages.
 
I have known a surprising number of people who have gotten free passes to come on another day after respectfully complaining about unusually bad conditions at Disney. I wouldn't have realized it's an option, but I'm glad they're willing to try to make it right when days are THAT off.
It happened to my friend last year. I was totally shocked but looks like it does happen on occasion!
 

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