tinkerhon
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 1, 2012
Here now. I posted a quick mini review about our first few days here many pages ago. But here is an updated review.
We’ve been here since July 20th, staying at BCV.
We’ve visited all 4 parks and Disney Springs.
It’s hot and crowded, but that’s easy to figure out whether you are here or not. Getting a chair at SAB has been relatively easy at all hours of the day.
Lines for rides are generally long throughout all ours of the day at all parks. We have NOT been rope dropping but have been entering the parks right when they open and have had a decent experience trying to get on rides in the morning. If the park opens at 9, the lines stay manageable for the most part until about 10-11am, then they are straight unbearable for the rest of the day, with a few exceptions here and there based on weather, ride downtime and people’s general touring plans. If anyone is looking to pack in the rides with short waits, rope drop is absolutely the way to go. But once again, this is probably obvious to most people whether they are here or not already.
Here are a few general comments I have though thus far regarding things that are out of the ordinary for Disney in general…..
Ride breakdowns are a thing, and they last pretty long. Ride breakdowns happen, we expect them. But they have a FAR bigger impact on the park due to there not being any shows or other people eaters being open at the moment. For instance, RNRC was down most of yesterday at Hollywood Studios. This made ride lines such as ToT almost 3 hours at certain points. I’ve been coming here for 30+ years at least 1x annually and have never seen ToT lines this long before, except for when it opened. For me, it never even topped 70-80 minutes during some of the busiest times, including Easter. So you can imagine just how long the lines are for everything else in HS. I’m not sure if this is a general staffing issue, reliability problems, fractured supply chain for parts, whatever it is, this needs to be addressed quicker then anything IMO. Maybe as quick as they need shows to return and more food options to open up.
The parks are essentially BUTCHERED with these very long snaking lines all over the place. They are EVERYWHERE. There was a time where only new headliners like FoP would have lines snaking through the parks. Not anymore. Almost EVERY ride has lines snaking through the park. Magic Kingdom and HS are the worst with this, most especially HS though. Because of this and because of the lack of people eaters, the parks FEEL insanely crowded despite whatever the true numbers are. This is by far my biggest complaint right now. It really ruins the beauty of these parks and turns them into a more well oiled Universal. This is not OK by me and does not meet the high Disney standard for park experience that Disney has had since I’ve been coming here as a kid. I hope this problem goes away eventually with more stuff opening.
Staffing is a very real issue. At first, I didn’t think it was. But I was wrong. You really notice it at the restaurants. There are hardly any, if any, busboys or runners. This leaves a lot of dirty tables and consequently longer waits to be seated even with ADRs, because tables are unclean and not ready in proper time. Servers are responsible for cleaning these tables as far as I can see, and they are also understaffed in that regard too. There are hardly any low wage workers but there are def a lot of servers still in training which should help in the near future once they are passed through. The Be Our Guest server we had said they usually have 50 people working in the kitchen to serve 2000+ people. Now, they only have 12. These particular issues are probably why certain things like Hurricane Hannah’s grill is still closed and why getting a drink at the pool is not easy (the line for a drink is definitely long and the pool servers are very overworked). I have been tipping close to 30% at every restaurant I eat at, whether the CM is nice or not. I truly feel bad for the situation Disney has put them in with overdoing the capacity when they couldn’t handle. Disney screwed us, and them by doing that.
I know there were reports of garbage overflowing in the parks and hallways of hotels. This is just not true. I have not seen this at all and have been here for almost a week. Maybe this is an issue that I missed and once was a problem prior to my trip. Who knows.
CM interactions have been mostly very positive. There are a few exceptions but I just brush it off.
That’s all I have for now. I will post back once the trip is complete and I will post a full in depth review. Keep in mind, I have been vocally very critical of Disney and their decision making in the last few months while they rush back to normal. I still hold the opinion that capacity should NEVER have been increased to this point and it should have never outpaced their ability to bring back staff and other attractions. This is unacceptable by Disney standard and definitely has a negative impact on the overall guest experience here. But in general, we are getting on rides we want. We are waiting, but lines tend to move quick so they never feel that long. We overall are having a great trip and will walk away with a generally positive experience, despite the criticisms and negatives I pointed out above. But these things should be considered for anyone with an impending trip. They do have a noticeable impact.
Here now, and you have hit the nail on the head !!! The snaking park lines are both physically and mentally draining, and it just makes you want to leave the park (well, at least in our case it does) - and there is a severe lack of staff !!!
(On a side note--- we are at the ASM, and I knew coming in about the cutdown in housekeeping services--- but, our room has been visited twice in 10 days !!! We just had to go to guest services to get toilet paper !!!)