What Disney needs to do is increase their park hours. Magic Kingdom used to be open from 8am-1am during peak times. Since it's always crowded these days, going back to longer hours would help eliminate the crowding and give people more opportunities to get on the rides. I have also heard that Disney is not running all rides at top capacity. They need to hire the necessary amount of cast members to maximize ride loading and operating times. Finally, they need to increase the capacity on their existing rides by retrofitting larger cars and they need to stop building new low capacity rides. I had dinner with an Imagineer the night that RotR opened. I asked him about the rumored demand outpacing capacity. He said that the Imagineers loved that people had to stand in line so that they could enjoy all the details that they put into the themed queues. I was disgusted! They knew that RotR would be a high demand ride. Why didn't they build it in such a way to allow for larger cars or more of them? I know that they said that there were limitations with trackless rides. In that case, they should have built the ride with a track. Maybe it wouldn't break down as much then.
Also, I didn't see it mentioned here but it personally bothers me how much that Disney has done away with Walt's philosophy. I used to be a cast member and it was always a rule that you had to hide construction. Now, you can see construction work all over the place. Disney also used to be fastidious with keeping clean bathrooms. The last 5 or so times that we went, we encountered numerous dirty bathrooms with overflowing trash bins. You could smell the stench coming from the guy's bathroom in Hollywood Studios. It was absolutely disgusting. It wasn't a fluke either. We were passholders and encountered the problem multiple times. A lot of these times were pre-pandemic. Finally, a few of the times when I had to ask a cast member for directions or where to find a particular food item, the cast members didn't know the answers. Some of them didn't speak English at all. I support them hiring non-English speakers but they should at least teach them phrases such as "Where is the closest bathroom"? When I worked there, we were expected to know about the food served at restaurants and which stores sold which merchandise and the layout of the parks. The quality control is not there anymore.
Sadly, we didn't renew our passes even though we live less than an hour away. We got Universal passes instead. We spent a few days at Portofino Bay resort. The rooms were cleaned every day. The boats ran efficiently back and forth from the hotel to the parks. We got free express passes for staying there. It was terrific! There's only 1 restaurant that requires reservations there. You can go to the rides in any order. With the express pass, you just walk into the express line. It's simple and requires no pre-planning. I don't understand why Disney had to overcomplicate things. They could have easily done the same. Yes, the express pass costs more but if you add in the genie+ plus ILL passes, it's not that much more and it's so much more relaxing. Since it's a higher cost, less people have it which makes the regular lines move faster. It's really a shame that the magic is gone.
)... and travel is more expensive. Adjusting our perspective enables us to enjoy ourselves wherever we're blessed to be able to go.
