An unpleasent experience

[Lam]

I was in line for the Safari ride in Animal Kingdom today with my friends and family, and (as some of you may know) the queue-area is pretty disorganized at times..

There was this family of 5 mexican-americans, a huge dad, his wife and 3 teenage sons.. They were line cutting all the time, and at one point the youngest son tried to cut in front of me, so i stepped in front of him blocking the way, and he said "hey!" or something, but i pretended i didnt hear it.. Then the father grapped my arm and said "Is there a problem or what?".. I didnt want any trouble so i just said "nope", and they cut right past us, while the father was grinning/laughing right at me......

*sigh*, how do you guys deal with people like that? I felt rather intimidated to be honest, and had a bad feeling afterwards :/

 

[blackthidot]

Apparently to some morons here this is a pretty awesome way to act while not cutting in line.

 

[UberPlannerMom]

I was in line for the Safari ride in Animal Kingdom today with my friends and family, and (as some of you may know) the queue-area is pretty disorganized at times..

There was this family of 5 mexican-americans, a huge dad, his wife and 3 teenage sons.. They were line cutting all the time, and at one point the youngest son tried to cut in front of me, so i stepped in front of him blocking the way, and he said "hey!" or something, but i pretended i didnt hear it.. Then the father grapped my arm and said "Is there a problem or what?".. I didnt want any trouble so i just said "nope", and they cut right past us, while the father was grinning/laughing right at me......

*sigh*, how do you guys deal with people like that? I felt rather intimidated to be honest, and had a bad feeling afterwards :/

I just remind myself that eventually they will have some of that horrible behavior come back on them. I suppose you could have stood your ground- I mean is someone really going to haul off and hit you in the middle of Disney World? It would make for an expensive punch when their whole family got kicked out!:shrug:

 

[Ziffell]

I was in line for the Safari ride in Animal Kingdom today with my friends and family, and (as some of you may know) the queue-area is pretty disorganized at times..

There was this family of 5 mexican-americans, a huge dad, his wife and 3 teenage sons.. They were line cutting all the time, and at one point the youngest son tried to cut in front of me, so i stepped in front of him blocking the way, and he said "hey!" or something, but i pretended i didnt hear it.. Then the father grapped my arm and said "Is there a problem or what?".. I didnt want any trouble so i just said "nope", and they cut right past us, while the father was grinning/laughing right at me......

*sigh*, how do you guys deal with people like that? I felt rather intimidated to be honest, and had a bad feeling afterwards :/

Your approach was rather passive aggressive, which is the worst way to deal with any issue or conflict. By getting in front of the smallest one in the bunch, it positioned you more as a bully than anything else. Then by "pretending to not hear", that was, forgive me... a spineless way of dealing with it. Somebody once gave me some advice that I have never forgotten: Choose your battles wisely... big enough to matter, and small enough to win. Aside from having someone else (such as a CM) deal with it, there are really only two ways to deal with line cutters. Either you just let it roll off, and not worry about it (i.e. NOT big enough to matter), or you deal with it head on. Not in a confrontationally antagonistic way, but just in an even, assertive tone. I'm not excusing the line cutters, but at the same time I'm frankly not surprised at all that the outcome was the way it turned out.

 

[Ziffell]

I was in line for the Safari ride in Animal Kingdom today with my friends and family, and (as some of you may know) the queue-area is pretty disorganized at times..

There was this family of 5 mexican-americans, a huge dad, his wife and 3 teenage sons.. They were line cutting all the time, and at one point the youngest son tried to cut in front of me, so i stepped in front of him blocking the way, and he said "hey!" or something, but i pretended i didnt hear it.. Then the father grapped my arm and said "Is there a problem or what?".. I didnt want any trouble so i just said "nope", and they cut right past us, while the father was grinning/laughing right at me......

*sigh*, how do you guys deal with people like that? I felt rather intimidated to be honest, and had a bad feeling afterwards :/

Btw, I didn't see how their ethnicity was of any relevance whatsoever to your story. Just curious why you felt it was important to mention that detail. :veryconfu

 

[Lam]

Your approach was rather passive aggressive, which is the worst way to deal with any issue or conflict. By getting in front of the smallest one in the bunch, it positioned you more as a bully than anything else. Then by "pretending to not hear", that was, forgive me... a spineless way of dealing with it. Somebody once gave me some advice that I have never forgotten: Choose your battles wisely... big enough to matter, and small enough to win. Aside from having someone else (such as a CM) deal with it, there are really only two ways to deal with line cutters. Either you just let it roll off, and not worry about it (i.e. NOT big enough to matter), or you deal with it head on. Not in a confrontationally antagonistic way, but just in an even, assertive tone. I'm not excusing the line cutters, but at the same time I'm frankly not surprised at all that the outcome was the way it turned out.

Well, the "small guy" (note: a 15 year old) was the first one to try, so it wasnt like it was aimed directly at him, or like i was cutting him off from his group.. He tried to cut the line, and his father stepped in to protect his sons behaviour when i blocked the way, basicaly. And since i'm only 16 myself, i fail to see what else i should have done. It usualy works.

 

[Lam]

Btw, I didn't see how their ethnicity was of any relevance whatsoever to your story. Just curious why you felt it was important to mention that detail. :veryconfu

I mentioned it simply because that was one of the things i remembered. People should stop being so paranoid whenever a racial group is mentioned in random contexts.

If i had said "They had black hair", that wouldnt be an attack against black haired people either, just a detail for people to visualise the persons better.

 

[powlessfamily4]

We dealt with line jumpers earlier this year. My brother has a pretty sound tactic. He loudly said Oh no... I am not letting you go ahead (then turning around and pointing to the line behind him) and having all of these people you just cut in front of get mad at me. You need to go back to the end. He did it 3 or 4 times that day and each time the rest of the line all chimed in and said yeah ... go the end of the line. They all sheepishly went to the back.

 

[Flower'sChild]

I have been reading some different threads about topics like this. I am not sure what Disney's rule is on this. Is there a rule that says you can't hold a place for your friend while you are in line?

For one example. Let us say there are 2 people and we will call them person A and person B. Both person A and person B want to ride Thunder Mountain. But person B wants to buy a drink first. So person A goes ahead and gets in line. Then about 5 or 10 minutes later person B joins with Person A.

Anyways that was my example. So is there a rule that Disney has that says that people can't do this?

 

[fireman17]

To me this doesn't matter. I've been to WDW enough times that this sort of behavior does not bother me in the least unless it is physically going to injure one of my family members.
I do believe in what goes around comes around case in point this past June. While waiting in line for the boat at DHS with my family in the rain two teenagers cut right in front of the entire line for the boat I turned around to see the Mother motioning the kids to try and go further now I could have said something to the mother but let it go seeing that we would get on the boat.
Well don't you know that at the second dock the boat leaves and the Mother realizes that her teenage kids got off without her she was livid!!
She had to get off at the next dock and try to get over to where her kids were the whole time she was cursing up a storm enough for the whole boat to hear her. And then another person chimes up with "maybe you shouldn't let your kids cut in front of the line".
Her face was priceless and I couldn't help but laugh the entire time..

 

[CleveRocks]

I mentioned it simply because that was one of the things i remembered. People should stop being so paranoid whenever a racial group is mentioned in random contexts.

If i had said "They had black hair", that wouldnt be an attack against black haired people either, just a detail for people to visualise the persons better.

So now you're saying that people of Mexican heritage all look alike?

It's truly not "paranoid." The basis of prejudice is pre-judging people based upon how they are different from you. Chances are, if you are white and the family was white, you would not have said "a family of whites." Would you have even thought to write that? If they were white, and you were white, would you ever in a MILLION years have thought to write down that they were white? Of course not, that would seem silly to you, because they fact that they were white would seem "normal" and not worth noting.

It's not paranoid at all. When I read your post, I was waiting for some part of your story to hinge on the fact that they were Mexican-American, such as them not underdstanding English, or your having difficulty understanding them due to a thick accent or whatever. And then I was disappointed when I saw nothing about your story that had anything to do with their ethnic background.

I know my writing this is going to have no real effect upon you, but I ask you to think about it.

I'm a therapist. I work with individuals and their families in their homes. I'm white. My boss is white. A few years back, I had been treating an individual for about a year, and my boss had to go to his house for a meeting. After the meeting, she congratulated me for never having mentioned to her that this client of mine was black. I'm a therapist, she's a therapist, we delve into the tiny details of people's lives. But his race was never a factor, so I never even thought to bring it up with my boss. I didn't hold back, I didn't decide NOT to share it, but it just never came up.

 

[CleveRocks]

I have been reading some different threads about topics like this. I am not sure what Disney's rule is on this. Is there a rule that says you can't hold a place for your friend while you are in line?

For one example. Let us say there are 2 people and we will call them person A and person B. Both person A and person B want to ride Thunder Mountain. But person B wants to buy a drink first. So person A goes ahead and gets in line. Then about 5 or 10 minutes later person B joins with Person A.

Anyways that was my example. So is there a rule that Disney has that says that people can't do this?

I recently read a post from someone who e-mailed this question to Disney. Not surprisingly, the official Disney response is that people should be in line together, with the exception of emergencies such as the bathroom.

But of course, there's no real way to enforce this. We're just left to suffer the rudeness of people. It would be great if everybody was civil and decent to everyone else, but as we can see, that doesn't even happen in Fantasyland.:ROFLOL:

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Going back to OP...the minute the guy said "is there a problem" I would have said yes. And then I would have been very loud about how they can't cut in line and demand to know what makes them so special that they can push in front of everyone else.

While it helps when others around you back you (and being loud about the cutting helps encourage people to jump on the bandwagon, DH and I have done this in other places where I hold the line and continue to verbally berate the rude cutter while he gets security or police. I know lots of you just let this go on and can't be bothered with calling people out, but you're just enabling these people. The more you sit back and let them do it- the more it's going to happen. i.e. they're going to keep doing it, their kids will grow up to be line cutters b/c nobody publicy humiliated them on their infraction, and at least one person on line who thought about cutting in the past is likely to try it after seeing how someone got away with it. But the more people stand up against this crap- the more the potential cutters are going to think twice about it.

My question...what does Disney security do if you do involve them?

 

[lwalker8]

The best thing to do...

Just ignore it and enjoy yourself. Being the line police while you're on vacation is no fun if you ask me. Take the extra 20 seconds that you'll lose in line and just let it go. Save the policing for people who Disney pays to be there. I know it's hard sometimes when people are so blatantly rude, but there isn't much you can do to change that.

That's how I try to look at it anyway.

 

[Andrew54]

I don't think he intended to make a racist comment, leave him alone. Why drive this thread into that?

 

[CleveRocks]

I don't think he intended to make a racist comment, leave him alone. Why drive this thread into that?

You're right. I apologize. Line jumping is more important to deal with than prejudice.

 

[mike10]

Is there a reason why no one calls security or calls assault? You were assault had PLENTY of witnesses who saw it and you did nothing.

Will Disney security not kick them out of the park? I always thought if you caused a scene or started a "fight" then you would be escorted out of the park.

Bet that would put a damper on their day since they spend all that money and wouldn't be given a refund.

I'm not a big guy either only 5'9 at about 140lbs but I don't care if the person is 6'7 275lb pure muscle I'm going to stand toe to toe with them for what is right. After all I'm not going to be the one who becomes bubba:lol: in prison.

I just don't understand why so many people do nothing about it or is it too busy in the summer months to bother with it?

Sorry I just don't understand the not doing anything about it.

 

[mike10]

Well, the "small guy" (note: a 15 year old) was the first one to try, so it wasnt like it was aimed directly at him, or like i was cutting him off from his group.. He tried to cut the line, and his father stepped in to protect his sons behaviour when i blocked the way, basicaly. And since i'm only 16 myself, i fail to see what else i should have done. It usualy works.

You have EVEN a worst case since your a minor. So what that father did was assault on a minor. If it's his first offense it would be up to a year in jail or probation. At the very least kicked out of the park.

 

[gwhb75]

You're right. I apologize. Line jumping is more important to deal with than prejudice.

The OP had no intention of "dealing" with prejudice, only line jumping.

 

[harveyt0206]

I think the way the Safari que is set up is unfortunately part of the problem. It doesn't really encourage "single line formation" due to its width. My mom and I had a similar situation in March. The wait time for the ride was only 10 minutes, which meant that most of the actual que area was open. We were walking at what I would consider a normal pace, but had several folks almost run past us. I didn't really mind until a large group of teenagers practically pushed us to get around us. One of them was even jumping over ropes and the wooden dividers.

I guess my point is that you unfortunately can not control how others act. Not every one has the same level of courtesy that you yourself consider appropriate. Next time simply let them pass and try not to let it ruin your time at Disney. It is better than someone putting their hands on you, which is never appropriate.