Disappointing Trip

[DLgal]

I think they are well aware of what's going on. I've seen frustrated youtubers and bloggers post that about the parks and then they'll get a free stay at a Disney hotel after which they take down their negative video/post about Disney. I can't say with certainty that Disney uses hotel stays and VIP access to bribe influencers out of expressing their honest opinions but I strongly suspect that's what's happening.

From how Disney does their press releases, it seems like the one metric that they care about right now is the average per guest spending. So as long as the people in the park are spending more and more, they're meeting their goal. If for some reason, the executives truly can't identify that there is a problem with guest satisfaction, then I don't see how they could have the competence to actually fix anything.

Nothing is a problem at Disney until it starts costing them money.

 

[Bossy22]

I honestly can not believe the park is so slammed. After our summer trip I can't believe more people are not taking a break from DL. I'm wondering how long it will take to catch up to DL and the park will turn into a ghost park until they fix things!

 

[tx_rach]

We went on a Friday and Saturday in September. Friday morning was much more tolerable crowd wise. But I want to share a tip on how one could hopefully use Genie+ to their advantage and get on a lot of rides even when busy. We got in a lot of rides with MEPs on Genie+. My recommendation, if you can get MEPs during the day, is to use them on rides that don’t have Lightning Lanes. For example, the CM working Pirates told us just to keep the MEP for another ride and let us in anyway! Then, on Saturday evening, I think we had 2 MEPs that we ended up using on at least 4 non lightning lane rides. Most were in Fantasyland. The CMs just didn’t want to take the time to scan the MEPs and were very nice about it letting us keep them for other rides. So we got to keep using them over and over until we ran out of time and had to stop to go see World of Color. Of course, this does not happen to us every trip. But Genie+ has been very valuable to us for non lightning lane rides if we can score MEPs. It doesn’t happen every trip but it is my main goal with using the system. Just wanted to share. It’s not how the system is designed to be used but it can be a nice “hack” especially on busy days. This has never worked for us at WDW but with frequent broken rides at Disneyland, it works well.

I wish we were that lucky! The cast member that took our for Pirates was totally rude and looked inconvenienced he had to deal with it. Then he rudely scanned them.

 

[Mseplover]

Please delete

 

[irlandaise]

Our trip in April left me feeling like this. We checked all the boxes and did everything we wanted to do, and yet the magic was not there. I didn't feel like a guest. I felt like a customer. And that's not why I go to Disney.

Ironband, this is an excellent summary of the comments I've seen in this and other threads. Some friends and I (2 in Northern California, 1 in Southern California) are thinking of going back to the DLR next spring, but I'm hesitant to do so unless I see more encouraging news about the overall experience. (The SoCal person is a former AP holder who hasn't been back even once since DL reopened.)

 

[Malcon10t]

Well, I guess it's all relative. We were there in the beginning and end of the month (not in the middle thanks to Covid). I didnt find it crowded July 2 and 3 or July 31-Aug 2. It was pleasant for us. And far less crowded than it's been the last week. I did hear about some heavier crowd days in mid July, so I suppose I missed that.

I think ever since the reopening, it's been much more difficult to "get everything done" in just a couple days. It used to be easier but G+ has screwed that up.

We were there Memorial Day weekend, middle of July, end of July/early Aug, and Labor day. We didn't find it crowded on those either.

I think OBB days are worse than your typical day in December but non-OBB days will be better than Christmas and New Years week with the caveat that I haven't done Christmas week in the parks for many years.

I'm most curious about New Years Day because there's actually something unique that would be worth getting a ticket to see for blocked out keyholders. My more recent experience with July 4th is that days like that make the fireworks areas super crowded at night but wait times for rides may be lower than on adjacent days.

We do it every year. It is quite busy between Christmas and NY. And it is day tickets (in the past, fewer than 10% were AP holders.). New Years day always starts fairly slow. Once the Rose Bowl Parade is over it gets busier as many flow back to DLR. This year will be different as the Rose Bowl isn;t played on Sundays, so it will be the 2nd, meaning NY day may be busier.

 

[DCLMP]

We were there last year Dec 13-17. It was not crowded at all. Keep in mind this was when Omicron was starting to surge, masks were still required, and not all the normal Christmas stuff was back. I don't know if you can look at last year and gage what December will look like this year. I have a feeling December will be crowded too. This is the first normal holiday season since 2019...hard to believe.