Stuffs from Orlando

[marni1971]

Just a few quick notes before the jet lag finally wins the day....

I'll try to start at the beginning and move in some sort of order.

WDW signage- the first impression of the purple way fairing signs on World Drive was barely readable it was so faded. Was fixed.

Why can't you cross the tram lane at the TTC at night at the top of the ramp, but they let you try and cross both lanes on the parking lot side of the ramp until you realise the far side is chained off and you're trapped in the path of an oncoming villains tram?

3 ferries were a god send. And much needed. Until the Saturday morning when all 3 plus the monorails were down at opening. Extra busses from anywhere were hastily laid on.

Main St popcorn lighting looked fantastic. The GF not so much. Still.

The hub... Nuff said. Shame they can't hide it all from view but that'd block the fireworks extra payees view wouldn't it.

Main St bypass. Not even half ready.

Festival of Fantasy - excellent. Audio needs some work though. The new system is a strange step backwards in mix and zoning.

JC and Tiki looked great. Tiki is down for animation tweaks. Yay!

I hate strollers. They've taken over the park. Stroll around the usual bottlenecks at opening and everywhere is nice and empty and uncluttered until the kiddy brigade arrive.

Pirates - oh. Hit n miss mermaids still. Wobbly projection still. Audio dead spots still. And up ramp belt problems are a daily 101 now.

Splash looked amazing. I noticed two minor effects not working.

Mansion ride and HoP great as usual. Mansion queue still an accident waiting to happen and half the interactivity is broke.

Nfl... I guess it's done. Mermaid is a walk on, area looks nice.

Mine train is a D. Just when you expect the big part its over. Interactive queue failing already.

Philhar looks and sounds great after refurb.

Tland needs help soon. Area theming is run down. Lights don't work. Dirty buildings. But Space....

Space Mountain is a wreck. Show quality is a disaster. Queue effects broken. Load hall ceiling projections either too bright so you see the box (space station) or not working (laser stars). Lift hill has so many lights out I don't know where to start. Star field projectors broken or stuck. Music is louder on the Peoplemover. And the trim brakes before the big drop take away the one single fun part the ride had left. If the new RCS keeps E stopping due to the sudden speed increase then sort out the software. It worked fine for nearly 40 years.


Epcot. Dear oh dear.

Entrance fountain not working. Half the lights broke.

SSE did look good (until the descent) and new exterior lightning now its clean is coming along.

Energy.... Kill it now. Please. Grainy, wobbly out of sync projections. Broken effects. Two travelling theatres out of use. The already mentioned missing Ellen and the elleoramous snake thingy that pulled a yeti and no one noticed. The pavilion as it stands is an embarrassment. Gut the story and the movies. Fix the effects. And make proper use of the building. And the final insult, the show door into the diorama is indeed broken. People sat in the back rows hear the next show loading and starting whilst in the diorama, and during the finale you can hear the diorama in full swing.

The fountain has so many broken jets now that whole sections of show have nothing happening. Nothing. At least they got half the breezeway PA working now. The east side is still dead. As is more Innoventions neon edging.

Impressions de France looks and sounds amazing still. Ironically it is now the parks oldest unchanged attraction.

RoE has issues that are being addressed and is being plussed as I've mentioned elsewhere.

Maelstrom, entertainment.... don't go there. Just don't.

And finally, Food n Drunk. How to prop up the park without actually fixing it. It is a zoo. We had first timers with us who sampled Showcase before and during the festival. They will never go back if F&W is happening.

I'll babble on about elsewhere when I'm more with it. But I will leave this entry with a comment about MyMagic myexperience. When the wifi did work and when the app didn't freeze or crash. On my iPhone, not Michelle's which despite being the same handset as the last visit and which worked then with no problem could not connect to the wifi in the MK or Epcot. But worked fine at DHS, DAK and the resorts. A problem that is known but one they don't have an answer for. Fantastic.

I've saved the best for last. About when all my fast passes that I felt compelled to book suddenly went from a group of six to a single member of the party, seemingly chosen at random for each attraction.

On complaining I was told they couldn't fix it right then since the whole system had crashed again. When it came back up hours later my app still said one person, but the service centre had the original six people for all passes. And so I was given sheets of A4 printouts for each pass to show the greeter should there be any issues. Printed on paper. Just how it used to be. Wonderful.

Did I mention they need another 500 million for IT issues?

Until next time....

 

[Tom]

Looking forward to your DHS review..... I predict something similar to Epcot's review.

Thanks for the great report, as always.

 

[WondersOfLife]

Energy.... Kill it now. Please. Grainy, wobbly out of sync projections. Broken effects. Two travelling theatres out of use. The already mentioned missing Ellen and the elleoramous snake thingy that pulled a yeti and no one noticed. The pavilion as it stands is an embarrassment. Gut the story and the movies. Fix the effects. And make proper use of the building. And the final insult, the show door into the diorama is indeed broken. People sat in the back rows hear the next show loading and starting whilst in the diorama, and during the finale you can hear the diorama in full swing.

This is sad and true. I love this attraction to death but even in the beginning of August it was in sorry shape. Even worse now.

On top of that, even with the films being outdated, it could still look 100 times better than it does now! It could actually be an amazing attraction, even with the current film. The problem is Disney just pushed it into a corner as a "people grabber" until it's so bad it needs to be removed. When really, they could just upgrade the film projectors to digital HD and it would look amazing. Upgrade the audio as well. Freakin fix the diorama scene effects! Like good god, how hard is that to do??

I rode this ride when the snake-dino was in "disco yeti" mode. Honestly, the stable AA dino looked like the rest of the entire dinosaur AAs barely moving and whatnot. Why in the world would they remove it? What's worse? Why take out the scene as a whole??? "Oh, this dino don't work.. Well, nobody ever talks about this ride anyways.. Let's just take the whole little scene out! Duhhrrrrrrrr.. o-o"

Even if they don't take the time to record a brand new film for the ride.. Good lord keep the current film upgraded. Fix the effects when they break. By GOOODDDD fix that freaking wall at the beginning of the diorama! I was on the 2nd to the last row and when the lights in the theatre behind me turned on it was so distracting.



Disney takes the time to upgrade the film for Philharmagic, Muppet Vision, Tough to be a Bug, and even heck.. Impressions de France! They keep the effects running on Splash Mountain. They upgrade the audio for Country Bears.. There's no reason AT ALL for them to not fix the problems in Energy! (Especially after TWENTY YEARS) It could still exist in its current form just fine, whether you'd think it's outdated or not. It would run fine and would still surprise the park guests just with the ride technology that's used.

On top of aaallll of that.. Everyone always assumes this ride is one of the least visited attractions in the entire park. The problem with that is... They're usually wrong. There's never a wait time for this ride. AT ALL. The reason? It takes in one thousand people per ride! When I rode it, it was nearly full except for two "boats!" Even if only ONE boat was full for the entire ride.. Do you know how many people it holds? One hundred. ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE. And it at least always has about either 2 or 3 boats filled! Thats between two hundred and three hundred people PER RIDE. WHAT. the HECK DISNEY?? 250 people ride this ride every 45 minutes and this is the best show quality you can give your park guests?! Good freakin lord!

It's not hard! Disney! Get your act together! Close the pavilion for one month. ONE MONTH that is all you would need JUST to refurbish the current version! Upgrade film, audio and diorama effects! Fix the blame ride! You guys haven't done anything but exterior work for the past 20 years on this thing!


...Hold up, I found something to do. So.. I'm done here. Bye.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Did I mention they need another 500 million for IT issues?

Until next time....

I need to sit down...

So where do they need more money?

 

[xstech25]

I'm really glad they haven't spent money on Universe of Energy recently because maybe it means they plan on getting rid of it soon - seeing it get a big rehab where everything is fixed and changed to digital would crush my dreams.

 

[ShoalFox]

We can only hope somebody in management is sane enough to suggest an Energy refurb...

 

[Tom]

I need to sit down...

So where do they need more money?

Ummm....

Server reliability, database integrity, web debugging, app debugging, wifi upgrades, kiosks, and so on.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

I just visited WDW myself a few days ago (for two days), though only went to Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Agreed with most of your comments. I'll add a few of my own if you don't mind, your thread is going to get more traffic and attention than if I made a new one. I didn't get to do as much as I wanted because I got a tad bit of food poisoning (not from WDW, something I ate prior) that slowed me down.

- Splash Mountain as you said looked great. Rode it twice, once each day. Not much to complain about. The first bluebird animatronic looked a little sluggish and one of the turtles in the Laughing Place wasn't bobbing up and down nor was his mouth moving. Those were the only major issues I noticed though. The second day the final Bluebird animatronic was stationary (though he worked the first day and I assume this probably isn't a constant issue and is often addressed quickly as i've seen the problem cropping up in various ride videos). All the other figures appeared to have their full range of motion (with none missing as had been the case for so many years), everything still looked clean and brightly painted from the previous cleanups, all the water effects in the Laughing Place were in full effect. It really felt close to the way it did when it was new in the early 90's, I had a big grin on my face throughout and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It's getting another refurb early next year so I hope there's a newfound desire to keep it in proper condition again. Seems like they've been attempting to do so thus far.

- Big Thunder had a few problems. Third lift scene still needs help as there's nothing going on there anymore, WDW1974 said Disneyland's enhancements should be coming in the not too distant future (can't come soon enough). The waterfall at the top of the first lift was not working, just mist was billowing out. The hanging possums at the town were nowhere to be found. Water was flowing through the town.

- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was a very fun little ride, best part of New Fantasyland IMHO. I rode in the back and it's actually a bit more thrilling than I expected (though the back rows are always the most exciting in coasters). But it needed at least 2 more slower paced dark ride scenes like your original pre-cut layouts showed. I only waited 5-10 minutes for it due to fastpass, I hate using them but there's no way a sub-3 minute ride is going to warrant me waiting any longer (let alone over an hour).

- Mermaid was as you said a walk on. Wasted a fastpass on it not realizing this, didn't need it at all. As many have said, lots of wasted potential here, but all the complaints dissecting what's wrong with it have been made. Hopefully DCA's continue to get enhancements and they also work them into WDW's. The ride itself seemed to be working as it should. Though I will mention a slightly unrelated/related complain- TURN UP THE AIR CONDITIONING!!! It was almost as hot inside as out, christ...

- Be Our Guest is very pretty, too bad there's no damn ride.

- Cleanliness related, but bathrooms at Magic Kingdom are dirtier and smellier than they used to be. Even back in 2010-2011 I used to see cast members patrolling and cleaning them religiously every time I went into one, but I didn't spot any of them doing cleaning work throughout my visit (and the state of the bathrooms seemed to reflect this). Even the brand new ones at FLE are looking and smelling nasty. But the ones next to City Hall were probably the worse, they were both dirty and smelled really bad (and the smell even carried outside to the surrounding areas). The ones I visited at Epcot weren't as bad.

- The entire MK hub is a construction zone, was sad to see it look like that but hopefully the final result looks nice. Needs trees (hopefully with some twinkling lights).

- I really like the Festival of Fantasy parade. It's too short, but what is there is actually really great. Floats are great, as are the costumes. Music is catchy too. The dragon was breathing fire as well (though it did stall for a couple of minutes).

- Main Street's building facades overall looked fantastic, still fresh and new looking from their recent refurbishments. I didn't stay until it was completely dark, but long enough for the popcorn lights to switch on. From what I can tell, the Crystal Palace vicinity is using new LED lighting, which look very well done (coloration seems correct). The rest of the buildings however are still using traditional incandescent lighting. While there WERE infinitely more functioning lights than there has been in years, there's still a lot of work to be done here. The sad thing is that even some of the LED lights were not working. Looks decent, and much better than it did my previous trip in 2010-2012, but still a lot of improvement needed and a far cry from the consistency maintained in the early 90's and prior.

- Grand Floridian needs serious lighting help as you said. While it was only just beginning to get dark when I left MK, the night popcorn lighting was already being turned on. Or so I would assume anyways, it was hard to tell for sure because so many lights appeared to be switched off on the GF. Narcoossee's appeared to be lit up already (and while not all lights were lit, at least a substantial amount were working, more than in 2012), but the rest of the hotel looked like the popcorn lighting was switched off entirely. I don't know whether it had simply not been turned on yet for the night or if that's just how the entire thing looks these days. I'm guessing the latter, since Main Street and Narcoossee's were already lit up for the night. Very poor show, somehow even worse than when I last visited in 2012 where at least SOME lights on the GF were working... I say splurge and give it an LED lighting package and then maintain it properly from there.

- I too noticed Epcot's entrance fountain was off. Sucks and looks ugly.

- Spaceship Earth looked great besides the still remaining flaws left over from the 2007 overhaul. The mammoth projection at the beginning could stand a replacement (bit dim and fuzzy), but everything else looked great. All animatronics looked like they were moving as they should. Even the boat was rocking back and forth. And the steam engine at the printing press was moving with actual steam billowing out. Burning smell was working strong. I suppose the track could use some work as it's bumpier than it used to be, but was happy to see it in good overall condition. Now just fix the descent and give it a respectable narration (and don't dare get rid of a classic).

- Living With The Land is a bit of a mess currently. There were some new things to see in the greenhouse segment at least. But prior to that, there were a lot of broken animatronics in the rainforest and prairie scenes. Practically all the bugs, alligators, birds and monkeys were stationary in the rainforest. And the buffalo were only moving slightly and sluggishly (lots of missing motion on them). The sliding doors to the greenhouse were not moving and were just kept open. This one needs a good refurb, or some solid third shift work at least. It's one of my favorites in the park since we lost Horizons/WoM/Imagination (and now Maelstrom).

- Got two last rides on Maelstrom, rest in peace as of today. Sad to say it was in kind of poor condition. The roof was apparently leaking a few years ago and there's a lot of water damage to the queue area. Rugs were spotted where I assume water had dropped on them, and the lovely mural had a TON of water spots where rain apparently had trickled down and left marks. Lift hill was making a ton of noise and was super bumpy near the top. The tree troll that sends you down the final drop wasn't moving as far as I could tell (perhaps an eye feebly shifted a bit but he didn't pop out of his crevice of anything). No mist effects or anything of the sort. It's in a pretty sad state, though now it won't be in any state anymore (lots of people going to miss it though I could tell, long line and lost of disappointment it was leaving throughout the crowd).

- I did not care for "Tron" Track. It's no better than the previous Test Track IMO, and infinitely worse than World of Motion.

- This was the first I ate any Food and Wine Festival dishes. I tried some from Scotland. Wasn't bad, but nothing special. And way overpriced (super expensive for absurdly tiny dishes, almost a good thing I had a sick stomach that killed my appetite). Ironically the best thing I had to eat on property was an eclair from Joffreys at the entrance to EPCOT. It was surprisingly tasty, didn't expect a kiosk like this to have something that good.

 

[copcarguyp71]

WIll be interested in the rest of the read Martin. I too was disappointed that the fountain at the entrance to EPCOT near SSE was not operating in Sept 2013, as if the removal of the prism sculpture was not insult enough. I still maintain this is some sort of bean counters folly as it seems many fountains (the ones that have not been turned into planters) are turned off and water pressure throughout the parks seemed to be way down when we last visited.

 

[alissafalco]

Thanks for the report Martin, I always enjoy reading things from your perspective.

 

[Victor Kelly]

Very interesting.

 

[draybook]

If only I could like Martin's post more than once. I might even set the Guinness record for most likes of an internet post if I had the ability.

 

[marni1971]

BTM.... Its a mixed blessing now.

Ran efficiently every time we rode. Quite smooth. But the show effects were mixed.

No A lift waterfall as mentioned. I counted just two splash pools actually animating. One begrudgingly.

Tumbleweed seemed all in order. Plenty of flowing water too for a change.

B lift had its machinery working at the base. But C lift is just crying out for something. The swarm of wasps projection is laughable now and even fuzzier than it used to be. The rods for the original falling rocks are still intact. If only.

At Splash I should mention I also noticed the final Bluebird AA was static on our last ride too. If it was fixed overnight that's okay. Sadly the queue projection was down for the whole trip, but given the only other ride fx I noticed MIA were two minor fountains in the LP, the attraction quality gets a solid pass in my book. Even the ride projections, hopping rabbit and jumping fountains consistently worked. Though the final lift did have a worrying leaky ceiling in one place again.

I did wonder if the Crystal Palace had gone LED. It looked good, albeit with a slightly different colour temperature to Caseys.

 

[misterID]

The mammoth projection in SSE is horrible, just horrible. You can barely make anything out sans the fuzzy out-front spear chucking caveman.

What's worse than the strollers? That horrible mess that is stroller parking. I don't think there are that many strollers in use in the park.

Food and Drunk -- great name and so right.

 

[Clamman73]

Yeah...not having waterfall on first lift on BTM was immediately anticlimactic. Pirates seemed to be down most of Wednesday and wasn't even ready at opening on Thursday. And they don't bother loading the back seat.
All during the week no SSE fountain was disappointing since I wanted to get a good pic of it.

 

[networkpro]

7D in my DWs my own opinion was very nicely done. Smoothest coaster in the park, very well themed queue, and well in keeping with the canon of Snow White (Grimm, Disney).

 

[The Magical Genie 123]

The mammoth projection in SSE is horrible, just horrible. You can barely make anything out sans the fuzzy out-front spear chucking caveman.

I noticed this as well during my trip a few weeks ago. That projection is just awful at the moment and I hope it gets fixed soon.

 

[JediMasterMatt]

I've saved the best for last. About when all my fast passes that I felt compelled to book suddenly went from a group of six to a single member of the party, seemingly chosen at random for each attraction.

On complaining I was told they couldn't fix it right then since the whole system had crashed again. When it came back up hours later my app still said one person, but the service centre had the original six people for all passes. And so I was given sheets of A4 printouts for each pass to show the greeter should there be any issues. Printed on paper. Just how it used to be. Wonderful.

Did I mention they need another 500 million for IT issues?

It's unfortunate to see that I haven't been the only one bitten by this particular issue of FP+ reservations being lost. Over the last year, I hate to admit that I've spent over 5 hours on the phone with technical support with issues with MM+/FP+/MyDisneyExperience. I'm a firm believer in you either try to help fix the problem or you don't have a right complaining, so that's why I've tried to get these issues resolved. What I've discovered is there is a fundamental flaw in MM+ that shouldn't be there - there is no defect handling.

I've currently got an email off to the management types about our experiences; but, in a nutshell - here's the Reader's Digest version:

- Last October, I tried to get our Premier Passports linked up to MyDisneyExperience prior to a trip and found out that the Premier Passes were in some sort of "nether" world that the programmers hadn't accounted for. This lead to two separate 2.5hr phone calls to get my wife and mine added so we could start making FP+ selections. Eventually, it took some manual data entry to get this particular bug resolved.

- Tried to purchase X-mas party tickets online and get the annual passholder discount only to find that even after the issue above was fixed and our Premier Passes were linked to MyDisneyExperience, they weren't connected to the discount system. Eventually, they had to manually process our tickets.

- After hitting the window to make FP+ selections, I log into MyDisneyExperience to start the process. The first part of the process is to select the members of your group, so I selected my wife and myself. I then proceeded to go from day-to-day for the entire trip and made the selections. A couple of days before departing, I wanted to make calendar appointments in my email for all the reservations only to find out on one day in the middle of our trip, my wife was dropped off. Even though I made all the selections at the same time, it didn't add her for one random day in the middle of all the other times. I called Disney and again go transferred over to technical support only to find out that there was NOTHING they could do to add my wife into the time slots I had already selected. They best they could do was cancel my FP+ times and offer us whatever was currently available. I explained that it wasn't an acceptable solution as exchanging a reservation for something like Soarin' for Imagination wasn't an acceptable remediation. Ultimately, the solution that tech support offered to me was to just show up at the attraction and explain the situation to Cast Member and they would let her ride.

- A week ago, I tried to make a dining reservation. Found a timeslot for one of our favorite restaurants after checking each day for over a month. We selected the time, logged into MyDisneyExperience and started the check out process. My wife noticed that the credit card on file was from last year, so she needed to update it. Tried to add it and got an error saying "there was a problem in updating the card." It said try again, which failed, or call WDW-DINE. We call and they try to help, by seeing if the time slot is open - which it isn't because we are in the process of trying to check out with it. The reservations people can't help since the time is still open and we are reluctant to close our browser or else we would lose the slot. They transfer us to tech support and over the next hour they try to explain that someone else has already taken our time. I assure them that my browser session is still open as it prompts me to click a button or else it will time out. I also explain that using a different PC, I can see where the card DID get added successfully and the issue seems to be that trying to make a reservation and changing in your card in the same transaction seem to be flawed. One of their managers explains that they don't have anyway to get "in progress" transactions and override them. Ultimately, they told us to close our browser and they would try to swoop in and grab the reservation. When it didn't pop back up immediately, they took our contact information and would try to contact the restaurant in question and try to get an override. About 4 minutes after we closed our browser window and about 1 minute after getting off the phone, I tried to pull up the availability for the restaurant and found our original time was available. Since our credit card did update (contrary to the error before) we were able to make the reservation this time.

I've tried to go to WDW twice since MM+ went online fully and as you can see, we've had to spend a lot of time trying to resolve issues. The one thing that jumps out at me (as an IT executive) is that a system as complex as MM+ is bound to have errors/defects. Therefore, the system needs to have defect handling built in and after my interactions with tech support - they don't have anyway to override the system to resolve errors. Everything in MM+, from a technological perspective has to go through the "front door". Have an issue with FP+ times, they best MM+ can do is cancel your appointments and offer you whatever is available. Have a tech problem with a dining reservation, the best that the MM+ system can do is see what is currently open.

My IT background really makes me wonder what sort of methodology Disney is following (if any) in their MM+ endeavors (ITIL, Six Sigma, etc.) because in each of my contacts with tech support, nobody was interested in the chance to capture data about the issue. Nobody asked questions about what web browser was being used, what operating system, etc. Disney was losing every chance at data collection for process improvement.

When you have a complex system, that will have defects, and that system has no methods of handling those defects, and then you compound those problems with the lack of effort to try to learn from those defects - you get exactly the mess that Disney is currently in when it comes to MM+.

As an IT professional this concerns me.

As a Disney Parks fan, this enrages me. MM+ is a heartless automaton that is taking away the greatest strength the Disney Parks empire was founded on - providing world class customer service. Cast Members are crippled in their ability to help guests when it comes to dealing with the technical shortfalls of MM+. This is the greatest harm all this technology is causing.

 

[draybook]

Lean Six Sigma!

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

I wonder if (given its problems and still growing costs) there's any hope at this point of firing at least SOME of the people at the top responsible for this Fastpass+ mess. Obviously Iger is apparently safe at this point given his extension, but there's also Rasulo, Macphee, Franlin and the other "brains" (haha, can't say that straight) apparently behind its creation and development. Last time I heard someone mention a pricetag, nextgen was around 2.5 billion. If it needs another 500 million then that should indeed bring it up around 3 billion before they're done. It almost makes one cry to know what real problems you could have fixed with that money, more than enough for correcting EPCOT's troubles i'd imagine (you could probably fix several parks).

At Splash I should mention I also noticed the final Bluebird AA was static on our last ride too. If it was fixed overnight that's okay. Sadly the queue projection was down for the whole trip, but given the only other ride fx I noticed MIA were two minor fountains in the LP, the attraction quality gets a solid pass in my book. Even the ride projections, hopping rabbit and jumping fountains consistently worked. Though the final lift did have a worrying leaky ceiling in one place again.

The final bluebird was working perfectly the first day I visited (October 1st) but stationary the next day. It seems like the maintenance workers at Splash are at least trying to fix most things as they crop up. Back when Splash went down for its big refurb in 2013, I noticed this same animatronic was also stationary in the first ridethrough videos that popped up on youtube. This was corrected some days afterwards. Seems like he's generally fixed pretty frequently whenever he shows up broken, so i'm not going to worry about it until he remains broken for a lengthy period. Splash is getting another refurb early next year again, so I really hope there's a newfound desire to keep this ride from deteriorating. They've actually surprised me so far with its upkeep.

The Laughing Place turtles were the only things really consistently not working throughout my visit. And it appears as if they've remained non-working for quite some time, i've checked a number of videos from several months back and I didn't find any showing the turtles moving. I also noticed the leaky ceiling, it's kind of off to the righthand side of the final lift roughly halfway up. Maybe it'll be addressed in the upcoming refurb.

I did wonder if the Crystal Palace had gone LED. It looked good, albeit with a slightly different colour temperature to Caseys.

I'm guessing the intended plan is to eventually convert the entire Main Street to LED (and I hope they eventually plan on giving the Grand Floridian some love as well). It's what articos said in another thread and makes sense, though it's a question of when. LED's have come down in price immensely over the last few years since they became more mainstream, they're looking better than ever and now capable of mostly matching incandescent brightness/temperature/color if designed properly. I say bring them on, the lights themselves actually look very good at this point and converting the entire area will fix any temperature balancing going on (Disney has shown themselves unwilling to replace broken lights in a timely manner anymore since abolishing the lightbulb changing policies followed prior to the mid 90's so i'm all for having longer lasting and more durable lighting to help compensate for their mistakes). My problem is that there are already a fair few of the new LED lights not working, which is really stupid considering these are apparently not even that old (someone posted about these just this year a few months back and I think they're fairly new).
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/led-lights.885761/

LED's are supposed to have an immensely longer lifespan than incandescent, even when kept on for long periods at a time. I do not believe they should be going out this early in their life. Unless there's just that many that were defective. I guess that's possible, but it seems unlikely as there was a substantial quantity not functioning, just as many as the regular incandescent ones still used on the rest of Main Street. Unless Disney has intentionally switched them off to "save money" as they've done with normal bulbs (which in this case would be stupid as the costs with LED's are negligible compared to classic bulbs and would probably not save much money), there must be something that went wrong with the design process of the bulbs. Either poorly designed heatsinks or capacitors seems to be the usual problems that cause LED's to fail prematurely. Properly designed LED's without defects can last well over over 10 years (when kept on for about 10 hours per day). And even when that lifespan is reached, many don't even "burn out" like incandescent bulbs, they begin to slowly lose their brightness over some amount of time.