Rides Breaking Down

[tup1830]

Yesterday 2/16, Test Track opened 2 hours after park opening (regular not the early) because of an expected technical difficulty.

Not a breakdown, but in small world, you can see wires hanging out of one of the animatronics and the skin separated showing the innards. Weird for sure.

I hope the idea of let it slide as long as people are still coming doesn't become the norm instead of the exception

 

[HashberryOTG]

I don't know if they're breaking down more, or if it's just our perception. I do wonder... if I don't drive my car for a while, or have a car I rarely drive, it tends to have issues. Even with fresh oil a car that has sat doesn't run as well as one that is being driven regularly. I wonder if rides are the same and they just need to get caught up from being closed?

Random thought that popped into my head, shrug.

 

[wfjny]

As others have mentioned, I think it is a combination of everything:

Because of Social Media, you are finding out about issues that are not actually impacting you. This board for example.

Because of the apps, the same thing. My son came to me one evening and said Space Mountain was down. I said that was too bad, but we are still 550 miles away.

Because of things not being open (meet and greets, restaurants, shows, etc.), you have more people with less things to do. As I have said before, when you are at HS, and Indiana Jones is not showing, those 2500 people will all be in line in front of you. Add in scheduled maintenance, even less things to do. That will magnify what people notice. If you went someplace that has 15 things to do, but now only 10 are available, when you lose one, you lost 10% of your capacity.

Due to employee shortages, budget cutbacks, and all those things, I do believe I have “personally seen” more rides down at various times. Perhaps some PM work is not being done. Perhaps it is the “less to do”, so more is noticed issue I just mentioned. If you are standing on line to see Mickey for 50 minutes, you would never know (or more importantly, care) that Splash Mountain was down for 45 minutes.

 

[Pens Fan]

I find it fascinating reading the accounts of breakdowns being so rare in the "good old days". I guess we were just unlucky but I'm pretty sure we've experienced downtime every trip for as along as I can remember and never really thought anything about it. They are mechanical rides. Sometimes they malfunction. There are bodily fluid incidents. Stuff happens. It used to be a running joke in our family that Splash Mountain broke down every single time we rode it. That happened for multiple trips in a row - even got to be evacuated once which was a fun memory. We seem to have broken our curse though, as it hasn't happened on our last few trips.

I just don't see the huge increase in breakdowns, but maybe that's just been our luck. I will admit that as rides get more technologically advanced, there probably are more things that can go wrong - aka Rise of the Resistance. But other than that I really don't see much difference.

 

[PatricioATX]

My family and I were at the parks during the second week of February and while riding the kilimanjaro safaris ride we suddenly stopped. We were right next to the lions and basically parked for about 45 minutes. At first we laughed considering the location and ability to see the lions for an extra amount of time, but after a while we were worried about the young children on our vehicle as it was a hot day and our driver was not able to tell us what was going on or how long we would be stalled for.

Finally after about 45 minutes we started moving and came up to a traffic jam of other vehicles. A bunch of Disney folks came out with ladders and we finished the ride on foot (short distance). At the end of the road we saw one of the large vehicles had what looked like a broken axle.

 

[kylenne]

Lion King Show...
this isn't a breakdown...so i'm confused as to why this happened.
The pre-show animal voices and teams was all cut out
Monkeys acrobats was cut out
Birds danced on the stage, but the yellow/blue bird didn't fly
Celebration at the end was skimpy on the celebration...no kids interacting

I'm sure some of this is staffing, some covid and some is just bizarre...maybe this is the new normal, not sure what to make of it all

None of what you just mentioned is new, the show has been this way since it reopened.

 

[dd316]

When we were there a couple weeks ago we noticed more rides breaking down than we've ever experienced before. Like, a LOT more.

 

[Cramden]

Just got back today. Ride closures were way worse than I remember.

Spaceship Earth stopped 4 times while we were on it. Took 35 minutes to finish one ride.

Journey into Imagination was down on both our Epcot days

Living with the Land was down on our last Epcot Day.

Grand Fiesta Tour was down on Wednesday

Winnie The Pooh was down two days in a row

We had a Genie Plus booked for Splash Mountain Tuesday. The LL line was 40 minutes long. The Cast Member working the line told us they had so many ride closures that day in MK many people were using their make up rides on Splash.

We'll do one more trip in the Fall but once our AP's expire we most likely won't be renewing. Too many little things that you don't expect at Disney kept popping up. Taken individually not a big deal but when added up they impacted what has become a quite pricey vacation.

 

[WAstateDVCDaddy]

The rides are getting more and more technically complex, and they’re definitely breaking down more often than the older rides. Anyone who’s been going to the parks since the introduction of Indiana Jones should remember how bad that ride seemed to be, and all of the complaints at that time.

 

[Skywalker3]

The worst we ever experienced/noticed was August, 2017. I remember getting evacuated off Splash Mtn, Space mtn issues, test track not opening for about 45 mins in the AM (although almost every time we've rope dropped TT, it's not been open, so we just factor that in now,) It stands out, because many rides seemed to be having issues, and we'd never been during that time before, so thought it might just be the summer crowds. I also remember our first ride on FoP, in June, 2017, it broke down, right at the end, and we got a FP. that was actually cool. .
have waited for long periods several times on the Safari, pre pandemic, although never evacuated off that one. have been stuck on Small world in the past, pre--pandemic, stuck almost every ride on Spaceship earth, often in HM, often on People Mover, and very often on Splash. Have actually been evacuated off that one twice, gone backstage, etc. and once at loading. The only big evac we've had since the pandemic was on Haunted Mansion. Lights came up and everything. that was actually cool to see it with lights on. Have had plenty trips w RnRC down the whole day or days, and ToT down or crazy waits, pre and post pandemic.
I don't think it's new

 

[MrBlueBird]

Sadly, we saw a lot of rides down last week. Frozen Ever After was down pretty much the whole day at EPCOT and my wife was shook haha.

 

[team bradfield]

seems like ARRC & TOT break down every time we go

 

[NotUrsula]

We go frequently, and the incidence of long-lasting ride closures is IMO, WAY up from before the start of the pandemic. I think lack of maintenance over the closure period is probably the main culprit; it's Florida, and the heat and atmospheric moisture mean that any moving part that does not regularly move tends to decay very quickly. I suspect that as a money-saving tactic they did NOT go through and fully service every single ride mechanism when the parks reopened; probably just did simple maintenance and test runs. So, a belt that otherwise might have lasted a year only ended up lasting 4 months or so because it developed tiny cracks; that kind of thing. Add to that the shortage of skilled maintenance CMs, and you've got a recipe for a maintenance waterfall effect; lack of maintenance causing one problem, that contributes to another problem, that causes yet another.

We were at the parks last August, I think it may have been on the 18th, and MK just collapsed in terms of breakdowns. DH & I went over to Epcot for the evening, but DD decided to stay at MK, as it was our last night. She ended up experiencing closures on every single ride she was on; she jokingly texted us to say that she was apparently becoming an MK jinx. Even Carousel of Progress stalled on her. She was evacuated from Pirates, BTMR, and SpaceMtn, all in one evening. It was ridiculous.

 

[lilstint]

It’s not that they’re breaking down more, it’s that social media/technology is used more and now it’s reported every time a ride goes down. Older rides will have issues, and with newer tech, the new rides tend to go down because of “show” issues a lot. It’s been about the same as it has for the last decade, granted there is maintenance that probably should be done that isn’t.

I respectfully disagree. As a DVC owner and yearly visitor since 1992 I can attest to the fact that rides are going down more. Much, MUCH more.

 

[ChanaC]

We went to all four parks for two days in December, and I think we had five attractions down or clearly in disarray.

First was Kilimanjaro Safari. We had a LL for it and were walking towards it when we got the notification that we now had an anytime LL. This was odd since the weather was fine, so that wasn’t the issue. I know the attraction gets backed up when an animal stops on the tracks, but it was down for about an hour so not sure what the issue was. Someone commented that a vehicle’s axle twisted a few weeks ago, so maybe it was something similar?

Then we went to Epcot and had a IA$ for Remy. Once again as we were walking over it went down, but luckily went back up like 15 minutes later. We got on and could tell park of the ride was off. We stopped a few times, the longest being a minute near the end where we could tell the vehicles in the room ahead of us were delayed. We could hear the scene being played out on the screen as we stared at a wall waiting to go in next. Not a huge issue, and it was only two months old at that point and with such an advanced ride I bet there are still bugs in the system.

The next day we had some biggish issues with Toy Story Mania. You know how sometimes if you vehicle is a little delayed they will give you a practice round? We got a practice round on nearly every screen. It’s like there was some huge delay that caused a chain reaction. Then we got to maybe the third or fourth screen and it was just orange. Literally just orange. The computer must have crashed. When we got off we let the CMs know, more just as a heads up to them, and they offered to let us go again. Sweet! So we went again and sure enough every screen had that practice round. While on the ride I commented that it was probably just a few minutes from being totally down. And sure enough I checked My Disney Experience and it was down for a bit that afternoon.

And if I remember correctly, I think while we were at Hollywood Studios we noticed on our app another big attraction (maybe Millenium Falcon?) went down briefly. I think I commented out loud how busy it felt, and sure enough it was because a major attraction was offline so a lot of people around the park were scrambling about what to do next.

Then in Magic Kingdom I guess we got cursed by the power of Zurg because we had another Toy Story ride issue! Buzz was operating, but barely. First, and most importantly, my brother’s laser (who I was riding with) just didn’t work. Like totally not operational. Then the sound in the whole ride was just really quiet. Like some of the speakers were out. Then we got to the tunnel screen part and it was totally out to. Just a gray tunnel of nothingness. We also mentioned it to the CM who asked again if we wanted to go again, but at that point we just didn’t feel like it. To be fair, all of this happened at maybe 8:45ish PM, after Enchantment, so clearly had been running all day. Maybe the CMs were just trying to squeeze as much as they could out of it before closing it for the night? Idk, it made the whole attraction feel cheap, like a half broken county fair ride.

Also when we were about to get on the Peoplemover we noticed that maybe every third car had a traffic cone in it, indicating to not seat people in it. The attraction was still moving, but clearly they couldn’t fill it to the highest capacity because of it.

But to counter some of this, I see some people commenting about being “stuck” on Spaceship Earth and Haunted Mansion, but from my understanding most of the time stopping on either doesn’t mean the attraction is broken. Since they are omnimovers in constant motion, it’s hard for people in wheelchairs or with mobility challenges to step on the attraction and get settled by the time they leave the loading platform, so most of the time those “stuck” moments is the CMs voluntarily stopping or slowing the ride so people can get on and off safely. And since everything is connected, once it’s stopped at the platform it’s stopped throughout the attraction. So while we went on both attractions and were stuck on them for a few moments, I’m assuming it was perfectly normal and there were no operational issues. In fact, I saw this happen myself when we got on Haunted Mansion - they had to stop just as we were about to step on to get someone ahead of us on, and right as we were about to get to the exit platform we stopped again so they could get off.

 

[KayMichigan]

And apparently Rise of the Resistance is down now, during the first excursion from the Galactic Starcruiser hotel.

Not sure how they handle things like that in relation to the hotel after people paid $4,000+ for the experience. If you can't ride Rise due to malfunctions, do you get a partial refund? It's not like you can come back later since the two-day stay is so tightly structured.

 

[TiggerBouncy]

I will say that when we were there a few weeks ago, there were definitely a number of rides down at HS - an unusual number. RotR was down for half the morning (we missed out ILL because of it). TSMM was down for about 20 minutes - we waited in the line. While it was down I was looking in DME and a few other rides were temporarily down as well.

But I do think a lot of that is the availability of applications and knowledge. For example, I noted that MMRR was also down. However in the past (prior to MDE), I would have been in another part of the park and would never have known about the 'temporarily' closure of MMRR. The only way I would have known is if someone nearby mentioned it to me (and the only way they would have known is if they had recently traveled from that part of the park).

I remember talking to a friend of mine who was a meteorologist years back. I asked him why the world had so many more natural disasters today than it did when I was a kid - expecting a long discussion about global warming and things He told me that it really doesn't. We have just gotten better at reporting them, he said. Back in the day, we had to take local pictures, and develop them in dark rooms and send them via low quality faxes and other transmissions around the globe, or actually paper mail them. They didn't make for good headlines and the information was old before we even got it. These days with the ability to take instant high quality images and have them spread around the globe in seconds, it's much easier to make stories out of these things.

Because Disney has put front and center an application that shows us in real time when a ride is down, we are more aware of rides being down.

 

[JVSJr]

DVC member since 2000. Reading this forum for years and years and years (although I very rarely post). 2 trips per year, every year (Florida resident).

With that being said, there has definitely been a noticeable increase in technical difficulties with many rides. Compound that with the closing of a handful for theme changes and the days in the park are just not that enjoyable anymore. It also seems very difficult to get dining reservations that flow with ride availability. That makes for a lot of walking back and forth across the parks.

The last 2 trips we did use the Genie + service and paid for a few LL, but my god, the cost is ridiculous. Our saving grace is the fact the we have the DVC rooms to offset much of the cost. Now that our kids are adults, they still enjoy going as the trips are family weekends, but they even comment on the change in magic.

I hope that this is still a residual effect from COVID. We will still be DVC members and enjoy the trips that we take, but something definitely needs to improve.

Hopefully that was not too much griping, but for me to actually post something on this topic should indicate that something is amiss at Disney.

 

[Skippyboo]

Went in beginning of Feb. Did early entry for MK, 7DMT broke just as people got in line for it. Was down for multiple hours that morning. Got evacuated off People Mover. Had multiple stops on during Spaceship Earth. Test Track was closing at like 630 pm when Epcot was open until 9 pm for a couple of days.

 

[tinkerhon]

Today, FEA was down as well as Gran Fiesta tour--- and btw are they ever going to fix the camera situation at SE? Or is our "Future" just a stick-figure now-- ?