neilintoronto
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2014
I grew up going to WDW with my family every other year (or so) in the 80s and I've travelled to WDW with my own family (DW 40, DS 10 and DD 7) five times over the last 7 years. This year we thought we would try something new and travel to the place the "magic" started - Disneyland.
My experience over our 5 days in DL and DCA was okay, but definitely not up to the quality I expected from Disney.
I will try to explain my reasons with a few anecdotes that I found inexcusable for my "Disney" standards - which are admittedly extremely high because it's DISNEY!
1) Cast Member Indifference
On our first day in the park I was a bit surprised at the entrance to the queue at Haunted Mansion when 3 cast members were huddled together discussing a conversation they had with their supervisor about their schedules. They had literally formed a little circle and were completely ignoring the guests. Although this moment sticks out to me because it was the first, it became very routine for me to see cast members chatting with one another and ignoring customers.
After the first day, we figured out where the fastpass distribution locations were for most rides, and which line lead to which ride -- but DL lines can be confusing and although there was usually a cast member (very rarely more than one) at the entrance to a ride - NEVER at the end of the queue - those cast members were almost always just standing silently, observing the crowd. If asked, they would point people in the correct direction, but they weren't being very proactive.
I will admit that my next anecdote is very "picky". But we are taking about Disney here, not the travelling carnival that sets up in the mall parking lot for the weekend. My family was waiting in the single rider line for Splash Mountain (as this cuts your wait time from 75 minutes to 15 minutes). The (lone) cast member was doing his double-duty of handling the single rider line and managing the disabled-access returns. The call came in from the loading zone to let another group single riders through. As he counts off the numbers, my family goes through but I happen to be #11 or #21 or whatever - I'm the cutoff point. If you've ever done the single rider line at Splash Mountain, you know that this first line is just to keep the single rider line from interfering with people exiting the boats. Sending up one more single rider (or 5) isn't going to impact the ride in any way. But the biggest issue wasn't that this cast member had no clue (or care) that the 4 of us were together, it was that when we sort of stopped for a second and told him that we were a group of four together, he had already turned his back to us and pretty much growled "you're all SINGLE RIDERS!" I looked at my wife and we shrugged and up she went with the kids, as I stayed behind. Now, if this was my "home park" (WDW) I would have ripped this cast member up one side and down the other. For a couple of reasons:
1) The single rider line at Splash Mountain is 98% chaos. Anyone who gets off the ride can simply turn left instead of right and join the line.
2) it's a single "rider" line, not a wait-by-yourself line.
After a 7-8 minute wait, the call came from the top of the mountain to let more single riders through, again without making eye contact the cast member waved through some more people. And I arrived at the top of the mountain to rejoin my family. After the two people who had jumped the line by joining the single rider line instead of exiting the ride kindly let me pass them.
Had the cast member done anything really wrong? No. He was just doing as he was told. They said let 10 people through, so he did. But he definitely couldn't care less about our experience. I found the overall indifference
to the customer experience to be present in several aspects of DL, not just the cast members.
2) Park Design Indifference
I understand all Disney parks are insanely crowded. But I felt that DL could easily do more to alleviate the issue. Whoever is in charge of overseeing the flow of traffic in Adventureland (outside Indiana Jones) should be forced to walk that route for several hours a day - just to feel the totality of their failure. Again, it's not just that there is construction and a bottleneck, it's that there wasn't a single thing DL was doing to manage the issue. There wasn't a single cast member helping with crowd control, there was no signage saying "stay right" or "go right". There was no change to the queue of jungle cruise or Indiana jones to accommodate. I'm not pretending that I have an answer to the congestion issue in that corner of the park, but I can imagine that Walt Disney wouldn't accept it and neither should those in charge of the park today!
World of Color. Would anyone deny that families are the reason Disney parks exist? And one of the main characteristics of families are children. And a main characteristic of children is that they are smaller than adults? So, why does DCA have a show which is designed in a way that completely excludes children from enjoying it? I'm about 6 feet tall and because I refused to wrestle my way past 3-4 other people, or show up over an hour before the show, I couldn't see anything either. No one was being overly rude or disrespectful, it's just like no one at DCA has ever cared that kids can't see the show.
3) Ride Closings - planned and unplanned.
I understand that fantasyland has to be closed during fireworks. Can't have people in the line of fire, or moving around in lines with limited lighting. But, when fireworks are cancelled due to high winds (as they were for one night of our visit) why does the majority of Fantasyland remain roped off? For over an hour? Perhaps there is a reason and a cast member can explain it to me? But, it seems that if the fireworks aren't on then there is no reason to shut down fantasyland.
I can also understand that there are fewer young kids in the parks at night and therefore Toontown will be less popular at 9 pm than at 11 am. But, there are still a LOT of kids in DL at 9pm that want to play in Toontown and there are even a lot of older "kids" (like me) that would love to simply walk around and maybe ride Roger Rabbit or even pull some door handles after 8:30 pm. So why close Toontown every day 3 hours before the rest of the park? It also just looks super-cheap to have a sandwich board sign in the middle of the street "Toontown Closes at 8:30 pm".
Another night, I was checking the DL iOS app and I saw that Buzz Lightyear had neither a wait time posted or the "temporarily closed" label. So we went to check it out. Maybe it had just reopened?
We saw the empty queue and a cast member in buzz light year uniform. "What's going on?" we asked.
"Closed for the night," he responded.
"Not temporarily broken?"
"Nope. Closed for the night."
We just sort of stood in stunned silence as the crowds swept by. On a night when every ride had at least a 20-30 minute line, one of the highest capacity rides in the park simply(?) closes 3 hours early? Just strange.
As for the "unplanned" ride closings, I had read about these on the Disboards but discounted them on visitors "looking for things to complain about". But, it's real! And a complete joke! At anytime in our 5 days at the park 2 or 3 rides were closed for some unexplained reason. Cast members were unable to offer any insights into the nature of the closing or how long the ride would be closed for. It was very strange to us. Rides go down at WDW as well, but maybe one ride a day - for an hour? How does story book canal boats go "down" for 4 hours? Or Snow White? Surely, there must be a cast member on the boards that can explain why DL rides are so fickle while WDW rides are so much less so?
We are not "high maintenance" people. I mean, we are Canadian! Our founding principles are "Peace, Order and Good Government" which is a bit more humble than the American, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". One reason we love travelling to America is that the customer service levels in the States are so astronomically better than in Canada. In most Canadian restaurants and stores the customer is often made to feel that they are a nuisance instead of the reason the business exists. And the reason we love Disney so much is that the service levels at Disney are so beyond anywhere else in America. I have promoted WDW to my friends and co-workers with story after story of how Disney has gone above and beyond our service expectations over and over again. And I expected the same level of service at Disneyland. But I was sad to experience service levels that pretty much matched (or were actually a little below) our experience at our local amusement park.
My experience over our 5 days in DL and DCA was okay, but definitely not up to the quality I expected from Disney.
I will try to explain my reasons with a few anecdotes that I found inexcusable for my "Disney" standards - which are admittedly extremely high because it's DISNEY!
1) Cast Member Indifference
On our first day in the park I was a bit surprised at the entrance to the queue at Haunted Mansion when 3 cast members were huddled together discussing a conversation they had with their supervisor about their schedules. They had literally formed a little circle and were completely ignoring the guests. Although this moment sticks out to me because it was the first, it became very routine for me to see cast members chatting with one another and ignoring customers.
After the first day, we figured out where the fastpass distribution locations were for most rides, and which line lead to which ride -- but DL lines can be confusing and although there was usually a cast member (very rarely more than one) at the entrance to a ride - NEVER at the end of the queue - those cast members were almost always just standing silently, observing the crowd. If asked, they would point people in the correct direction, but they weren't being very proactive.
I will admit that my next anecdote is very "picky". But we are taking about Disney here, not the travelling carnival that sets up in the mall parking lot for the weekend. My family was waiting in the single rider line for Splash Mountain (as this cuts your wait time from 75 minutes to 15 minutes). The (lone) cast member was doing his double-duty of handling the single rider line and managing the disabled-access returns. The call came in from the loading zone to let another group single riders through. As he counts off the numbers, my family goes through but I happen to be #11 or #21 or whatever - I'm the cutoff point. If you've ever done the single rider line at Splash Mountain, you know that this first line is just to keep the single rider line from interfering with people exiting the boats. Sending up one more single rider (or 5) isn't going to impact the ride in any way. But the biggest issue wasn't that this cast member had no clue (or care) that the 4 of us were together, it was that when we sort of stopped for a second and told him that we were a group of four together, he had already turned his back to us and pretty much growled "you're all SINGLE RIDERS!" I looked at my wife and we shrugged and up she went with the kids, as I stayed behind. Now, if this was my "home park" (WDW) I would have ripped this cast member up one side and down the other. For a couple of reasons:
1) The single rider line at Splash Mountain is 98% chaos. Anyone who gets off the ride can simply turn left instead of right and join the line.
2) it's a single "rider" line, not a wait-by-yourself line.
After a 7-8 minute wait, the call came from the top of the mountain to let more single riders through, again without making eye contact the cast member waved through some more people. And I arrived at the top of the mountain to rejoin my family. After the two people who had jumped the line by joining the single rider line instead of exiting the ride kindly let me pass them.
Had the cast member done anything really wrong? No. He was just doing as he was told. They said let 10 people through, so he did. But he definitely couldn't care less about our experience. I found the overall indifference
to the customer experience to be present in several aspects of DL, not just the cast members.
2) Park Design Indifference
I understand all Disney parks are insanely crowded. But I felt that DL could easily do more to alleviate the issue. Whoever is in charge of overseeing the flow of traffic in Adventureland (outside Indiana Jones) should be forced to walk that route for several hours a day - just to feel the totality of their failure. Again, it's not just that there is construction and a bottleneck, it's that there wasn't a single thing DL was doing to manage the issue. There wasn't a single cast member helping with crowd control, there was no signage saying "stay right" or "go right". There was no change to the queue of jungle cruise or Indiana jones to accommodate. I'm not pretending that I have an answer to the congestion issue in that corner of the park, but I can imagine that Walt Disney wouldn't accept it and neither should those in charge of the park today!
World of Color. Would anyone deny that families are the reason Disney parks exist? And one of the main characteristics of families are children. And a main characteristic of children is that they are smaller than adults? So, why does DCA have a show which is designed in a way that completely excludes children from enjoying it? I'm about 6 feet tall and because I refused to wrestle my way past 3-4 other people, or show up over an hour before the show, I couldn't see anything either. No one was being overly rude or disrespectful, it's just like no one at DCA has ever cared that kids can't see the show.
3) Ride Closings - planned and unplanned.
I understand that fantasyland has to be closed during fireworks. Can't have people in the line of fire, or moving around in lines with limited lighting. But, when fireworks are cancelled due to high winds (as they were for one night of our visit) why does the majority of Fantasyland remain roped off? For over an hour? Perhaps there is a reason and a cast member can explain it to me? But, it seems that if the fireworks aren't on then there is no reason to shut down fantasyland.
I can also understand that there are fewer young kids in the parks at night and therefore Toontown will be less popular at 9 pm than at 11 am. But, there are still a LOT of kids in DL at 9pm that want to play in Toontown and there are even a lot of older "kids" (like me) that would love to simply walk around and maybe ride Roger Rabbit or even pull some door handles after 8:30 pm. So why close Toontown every day 3 hours before the rest of the park? It also just looks super-cheap to have a sandwich board sign in the middle of the street "Toontown Closes at 8:30 pm".
Another night, I was checking the DL iOS app and I saw that Buzz Lightyear had neither a wait time posted or the "temporarily closed" label. So we went to check it out. Maybe it had just reopened?
We saw the empty queue and a cast member in buzz light year uniform. "What's going on?" we asked.
"Closed for the night," he responded.
"Not temporarily broken?"
"Nope. Closed for the night."
We just sort of stood in stunned silence as the crowds swept by. On a night when every ride had at least a 20-30 minute line, one of the highest capacity rides in the park simply(?) closes 3 hours early? Just strange.
As for the "unplanned" ride closings, I had read about these on the Disboards but discounted them on visitors "looking for things to complain about". But, it's real! And a complete joke! At anytime in our 5 days at the park 2 or 3 rides were closed for some unexplained reason. Cast members were unable to offer any insights into the nature of the closing or how long the ride would be closed for. It was very strange to us. Rides go down at WDW as well, but maybe one ride a day - for an hour? How does story book canal boats go "down" for 4 hours? Or Snow White? Surely, there must be a cast member on the boards that can explain why DL rides are so fickle while WDW rides are so much less so?
We are not "high maintenance" people. I mean, we are Canadian! Our founding principles are "Peace, Order and Good Government" which is a bit more humble than the American, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". One reason we love travelling to America is that the customer service levels in the States are so astronomically better than in Canada. In most Canadian restaurants and stores the customer is often made to feel that they are a nuisance instead of the reason the business exists. And the reason we love Disney so much is that the service levels at Disney are so beyond anywhere else in America. I have promoted WDW to my friends and co-workers with story after story of how Disney has gone above and beyond our service expectations over and over again. And I expected the same level of service at Disneyland. But I was sad to experience service levels that pretty much matched (or were actually a little below) our experience at our local amusement park.
