Andy Castro added a MiceChat update blurb regarding last Friday's snafus to the end of his most recent Dateline Disneyland.
http://micechat.com/103083-disneyland-diamond-celebration-2/
Thursday by Midnight there were already 3,000 people camping out in the shuttle loading area, where previous 24 Hour events only had a few hundred overnight campers.
Friday by 5:00am there were over 10,000 people waiting to be let in, where previous events only had a couple thousand waiting by park opening. Parking was seeing heavy arrivals before 6:00am. The plan was to pull in the expected few thousand waiting and give them free ear hats for the sunrise publicity shot at park opening. The opening ceremony went off without a hitch, but there were thousands more than expected and they filled in a very full Town Square and spilled out into the Esplanade. That was the first clue that this event was going to be much more popular than the last three 24 hour events.
By 6:30am there was already 16,000 people inside Disneyland, with 4,000 inside DCA. The early morning arrivals continued to be very heavy through Noon. The executive committee began to wonder if they’d underestimated the demand for the event by mid morning.
By 11:00am there were over 43,000 people inside Disneyland, which is the type of number you’d see on a crazy day during the week of Christmas. An additional 15,000 were in DCA, which is like an average weekday afternoon. Parking began to run out of inventory by early afternoon, and at 2:00pm there was 52,000 people inside Disneyland. That’s more than are allowed in on New Years Eve, but the decision was made to push the limit because thousands were already waiting along the parade route so the rest of the park wasn’t as busy as the in-park attendance might indicate. Disneyland’s attractions continued to have waits like an average busy holiday weekend, with longer lines at Matterhorn and Haunted Mansion.
At 2:00 the executive steering committee who had been monitoring the numbers and crowds all morning became very concerned that the event was getting out of control as people continued to pour into the Resort. The first phased closure of the Disneyland turnstiles began, jumping past the first two phases and starting with Phase 3, which suspended ticket sales and only allowed those with handstamps back into Disneyland.
In the afternoon Disneyland continued to fill with people who already had handstamps from earlier in the morning, and as word spread that the ticket booths were shutting down those inside Disneyland began to camp out. DCA was becoming busier with 24,000 in the park by 5:00pm
At 5:00 there was now 57,000 people inside Disneyland, which was the highest number anyone has ever seen in at least 20 years. Since so many people were waiting on the over-full parade route, the majority of the park felt very busy but not quite out of control. But Disneyland was in uncharted attendance territory and the executive committee was beginning to panic. For the first time ever, Disneyland triggered a Phase 4 closure of the turnstiles at 5:30, which means absolutely no one is allowed in, not even Club 33 guests, Premiere AP’s, or company executives with Gold passes. Of course, it took some time for that information to make its way to the front lines.
This is about the time that communication between departments began to break down. The Resort’s executives were holed up in the Emergency Operations Center located backstage behind Main Street. The decision was made to attempt to clear out the Esplanade by shutting down all bag check tents. This was also the time that the after-work crowd began to arrive, and tens of thousands more people arrived, using the last few thousand of the Resort’s 19,000 parking spaces they had to use on Friday.
The rest of the evening is pretty well known at this point. Throughout the evening the executive committee was feverishly trying to craft a strategy to deal with the thousands still waiting to get into the Esplanade, plus the 30,000 people now inside DCA who were getting angry that they weren’t allowed to park hop over to Disneyland. By 8:00pm the executive strategy for the Esplanade crisis became “shelter in place”, and the decision was made to keep the Esplanade on lockdown and keep Disneyland at Level 4 until sometime after Midnight.
There is no plan in place to use the audio speakers in the Esplanade and shuttle area to communicate as a public address system. There was also very little information trickling down to the lower management ranks and the hourly CM’s staffing the turnstiles and bag screening tents. The executive committee approved the usually perky Disneyland Today Twitter feed to begin putting out blunt Tweets about Disneyland’s indefinite closure. In their minds, that was effective communication, but the reality is that the thousands waiting to get in weren’t being told anything by the frazzled CM’s staffing the park entrances, and not that many guests use Twitter to find out information about their park visits. There was local media present from the Orange County Register, but they were inside the park waiting for the parade and fireworks and completely missed the real story taking place outside the gates.
In a full panic by late evening, the executives kept Disneyland’s gates closed until two hours after the final Paint The Night parade scheduled for 1:00am, even as Disneyland emptied out and most attractions had extremely short waits. The executives cut off alcohol sales at DCA by 11:00pm and closed the Guest Services building in the Esplanade due to the volatile and angry mobs. The Santa Ana Freeway was backed up for five miles north of the Disneyland Drive off ramp for hours that evening. The surface streets around Disneyland were severely congested, and occasionally gridlocked, from 7:00pm until 2:00am. The Cast Member parking shuttles used to get the CM’s back to Angel Stadium, where over 10,000 CM’s were parked on Friday, couldn’t get to the Resort and departing CM’s waited in long lines of up to an hour for a shuttle back to Angel Stadium. Never has Disneyland seen this type of crowd, and the plans TDA crafted to host 120,000 visitors for the 24 Hour Party collapsed under the weight of an estimated 175,000 that got in or attempted to get into the parks that day.
