Computer Crashes for 30 Minutes, Chaos Ensues at Disneyland Main Entrance?

[PiratesMansion]

Because I'm old and I remember when Disneyland actually did provide World Class Guest Service.

They were the Nordstrom of theme parks. Now they are just another WalMart when it comes to service.

This computer crash, and the frozen-in-fear LOCK THE TURNSTILES! response by management to that problem proves that. And it's very sad.



I would be surprised to have a turnstile CM even smile a bit now. They aren't trained well, and clearly have weak on-site management.



What this proves is that you've never experienced an outage like this as a customer of a truly good business.

I have a couple of examples that are springing to mind, that I've used here before so a search can find them. But I'm remembering a computer crash with Singapore Airlines as a pre-paid customer of a premium cabin class, and after a few minutes of delay and gracious apologies I was sent straight to the lounge where champagne was waiting for me as they fixed their mess and eventually brought the corrected paperwork documenting the solution to me. I wasn't left standing in front of the counter for 30 minutes being told "We're down. Computer says no. Please wait. You don't have to stand here, you can go home. Computer still says no."

Just like in the pre-App days when a ride broke down and they'd give you those little paper slips that got you on another ride through the exit or Fastpass for free, when the computer at the main entrance shuts down for 30 minutes they need to figure out a way to keep letting customers through the turnstile into the fully operating theme park they already paid for.

Blaming the current lowered standards for CM's, and their bad training, and their poor management isn't a good enough excuse.

The only thing this proves is that you have absolutely no idea how Disney operates now, or how dependent most businesses are on computer systems that do occasionally crash once in awhile, or how little autonomy most employees have working for ANY company.

Using an example where you were paying business class on a super luxury airline isn't the flex or equivalent that you think it is. You, who paid for an extra fancy seat on an extra fancy airline, were treated super well? What a shock!

Do you expect they'll give people a comped ticket for a system outage? They have no idea how long it will take for the computers to be brought back up. If they were down for a super long time, they might have, but this isn't the same as a ride breakdown.

You can say I'm excusing Disney. I'm not. I'm just explaining the reality of what happens when tech issues happen in US corporations where employees have essentially zero abillity to do anything beyond their ten or so explicit job duties. I'm being realistic.

 

[Disney Irish]

I have a couple of examples that are springing to mind, that I've used here before so a search can find them. But I'm remembering a computer crash with Singapore Airlines as a pre-paid customer of a premium cabin class, and after a few minutes of delay and gracious apologies I was sent straight to the lounge where champagne was waiting for me as they fixed their mess and eventually brought the corrected paperwork documenting the solution to me. I wasn't left standing in front of the counter for 30 minutes being told "We're down. Computer says no. Please wait. You don't have to stand here, you can go home. Computer still says no."

But Singapore Airlines didn't allow you on the plane while the system was down just trusting your seat reservation was valid without verification. That is what you're suggesting Disneyland to do here, just allow access to the Park trusting the persons ticket and reservation are valid without verification.

 

[TP2000]

You're making lots of assumptions that no one in that crowd has a fake or resold ticket trying to get into DLR, all of which happens daily. So you assume that everyone in that crowd is honest and a true paying customer, good for you. Disney Security would like to have a word with you regarding your plan. As once you let them in the gate there is no way to verify that person was a valid guest or not, despite the little slip of paper that will immediately be thrown away by most guests.

Your junior management training at WalMart has apparently paid off! Congrats!

Please remember this excuse you now have the next time anyone complains that Disneyland CM's have drastically lower standards today and are more like slovenly and lazy McDonald's or WalMart employees than the "Cast Members" of yore.

 

[TP2000]

But Singapore Airlines didn't allow you on the plane while the system was down just trusting your seat reservation was valid without verification. That is what you're suggesting Disneyland to do here, just allow access to the Park trusting the persons ticket and reservation are valid without verification.

Nope, that's not it. Singapore Airlines allowed me to continue on to the facilities I'd already paid for while they fixed their mess. The plane wasn't going to take off for Tokyo empty with 450 people still waiting in the departure lounge.

Similarly to that airport lounge we were ushered on to while they fixed their mess, Space Mountain was still operating while a thousand people stood out at the locked turnstiles. Disneyland was operating just fine. The system that makes the turnstile go bing-bong wasn't working. But instead of overriding the bing-bong system that no customer cares about so that the pre-paid customers could go on the rides they did care about, they just froze and shut it all down.

Computer says no. You don't have to wait here, you can go home.

 

[Disney Irish]

Your junior management training at WalMart has apparently paid off! Congrats!

Please remember this excuse you now have the next time anyone complains that Disneyland CM's have drastically lower standards today and are more like slovenly and lazy McDonald's or WalMart employees than the "Cast Members" of yore.

We live in a different world now my friend. Just because you want to trust everyone doesn't mean people are actually trustworthy. Loss prevention costs companies over $100B yearly.

 

[TP2000]

You can say I'm excusing Disney. I'm not. I'm just explaining the reality of what happens when tech issues happen in US corporations where employees have essentially zero abillity to do anything beyond their ten or so explicit job duties. I'm being realistic.

I'm just quoting that as admitted proof that Disneyland "guest service" and CM standards have now become nothing more than an average WalMart.

 

[Disney Irish]

Nope, that's not it. Singapore Airlines allowed me to continue on to the facilities I'd already paid for while they fixed their mess. The plane wasn't going to take off for Tokyo empty with 450 people still waiting in the departure lounge.

Similarly to that airport lounge we were ushered on to while they fixed their mess, Space Mountain was still operating while a thousand people stood out at the locked turnstiles. Disneyland was operating just fine. The system that makes the turnstile go bing-bong wasn't working. But instead of overriding the bing-bong system that no customer cares about so that the pre-paid customers could go on the rides they did care about, they just froze and shut it all down.

Computer says no. You don't have to wait here, you can go home.

Ok, so then I can get onboard with TDA building a waiting area with CMs handing out champagne so guests can wait while they fix the system. There its now the same as your Singapore Airlines experience, which still didn't allow you on the plane until the system was up.

But what isn't going to happen is TDA just letting guests into the Parks without verification, never going to happen.

 

[TP2000]

We live in a different world now my friend. Just because you want to trust everyone doesn't mean people are actually trustworthy. Loss prevention costs companies over $100B yearly.

The Esplanade was full of people who had bought some sort of ticket. It wasn't the streets of San Francisco that are now full of drug addicts and criminals. These were middle-class Americans who had already bought tickets to Disneyland and were waiting in line to use their tickets to get in to the operating theme park. Would 100% of all tickets have been used correctly if they'd been manually over-rided? Probably not. Some folks who didn't have park hoppers might have hopped parks, or started in the wrong park, or what have you.

But you are acting like this unplanned and unannouced system outage was dealing with San Franciscan street life instead of Disneyland guests, rife with criminality and liars and cheats who had been hiding in the bushes just waiting for an unplanned computer crash to pounce!

This is NOT who was waiting to get in to Disneyland without a ticket...


This is who was waiting to get in to Disneyland because they'd already bought tickets...

 

[TP2000]

Ok, so then I can get onboard with TDA building a waiting area with CMs handing out champagne so guests can wait while they fix the system. There its now the same as your Singapore Airlines experience, which still didn't allow you on the plane until the system was up.

Nope, you just operate the Disneyland turnstiles the same way you operated them from 1955 to 2020.

The CM looks at a piece of paper (or image on a phone) that shows someone bought a ticket, and lets them in. The turnstiles spin freely already, so the CM isn't even doing anything but the same job they had from 1955 to 2020.

 

[Disney Irish]

Nope, you just operate the Disneyland turnstiles the same way you operated them from 1955 to 2020.

The CM looks at a piece of paper (or image on a phone) that shows someone bought a ticket, and lets them in. The turnstiles spin freely already, so the CM isn't even doing anything but the same job they had from 1955 to 2020.

Um, for the last 10-15 years (probably longer now) they have been using a ticket verification system to scan the barcode on all tickets including the paper ones to make sure they were valid, this is the system that went down. This idea that CM just eyeballed the ticket to verify them up until 2020 is just false.

 

[Disney Irish]

The Esplanade was full of people who had bought some sort of ticket. It wasn't the streets of San Francisco that are now full of drug addicts and criminals. These were middle-class Americans who had already bought tickets to Disneyland and were waiting in line to use their tickets to get in to the operating theme park. Would 100% of all tickets have been used correctly if they'd been manually over-rided? Probably not. Some folks who didn't have park hoppers might have hopped parks, or started in the wrong park, or what have you.

But you are acting like this unplanned and unannouced system outage was dealing with San Franciscan street life instead of Disneyland guests, rife with criminality and liars and cheats who had been hiding in the bushes just waiting for an unplanned computer crash to pounce!

This is NOT who was waiting to get in to Disneyland without a ticket...


This is who was waiting to get in to Disneyland because they'd already bought tickets...

No one is claiming this hyperbolic scenario you're dreaming up.

 

[TP2000]

Um, for the last 10-15 years (probably longer now) they have been using a ticket verification system to scan the barcode on all tickets including the paper ones to make sure they were valid, this is the system that went down. This idea that CM just eyeballed the ticket to verify them up until 2020 is just false.

No, I know there have been barcodes on them for many years now. That's where the bing-bong noises came from.

But up until 2020 it was still possible to only buy a paper ticket on the day of the visit from a ticket booth and not have to be on any App based system at all to get into the park.

Nowadays, they mostly force you to be on an App-based system and to show your phone. And advance reservations are required. That's really the big change since 2020.

The Dockers-clad managers for the badly trained CM's at the main entrance turnstiles simply need the autonomy and a paper backup system ready to go to use the next time the system crashes like this. To be so dependent on computers and off-site IT departments is not going to work when you have upwards of 50,000 to 75,000 customers who have pre-paid and made reservations in advance for that day's visit.

Computer says no. You don't have to wait here, you can go home.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I'm just quoting that as admitted proof that Disneyland "guest service" and CM standards have now become nothing more than an average WalMart.

If you want to read it that way, that's your right. I'm just saying that mostly what you're proving in this thread is that you have no actual clue how things work for low level employees of ANY company in the US right now, nor do you have an idea of how basically everything everywhere runs on tech now, and apparently have you paid any attention to how anything at Disneyland actually works in some time.

No, I know there have been barcodes on them for many years now. That's where the bing-bong noises came from.

But up until 2020 it was still possible to only buy a paper ticket on the day of the visit from a ticket booth and not have to be on any App based system at all to get into the park.

Nowadays, they mostly force you to be on an App-based system and to show your phone. And advance reservations are required. That's really the big change since 2020

The Dockers-clad managers for the badly trained CM's at the main entrance turnstiles simply need the autonomy and a paper backup system ready to go to use the next time the system crashes like this. To be so dependent on computers and off-site IT departments is not going to work when you have upwards of 50,000 to 75,000 customers who have pre-paid and made reservations in advance for that day's visit.

Computer says no. You don't have to wait here, you can go home.

...You need the computer to be working for them to scan the barcode to let you into the park, and it was that way 2020 and before that too, you know...

 

[TP2000]

No one is claiming this hyperbolic scenario you're dreaming up.

You are saying they can't do the human override scenario circa 1955 to 2020 because someone in that crowd might get in for free, or get a park hopper upgrade they didn't pay for.

That would be a very tiny portion of that Esplanade crowd during an unplanned outage like this.

To manage to the exception instead of the majority is customer service failure. They used to teach that sort of stuff at Disney Institute. Back when Disney actually had customer service standards they could brag about.

 

[Disney Irish]

No, I know there have been barcodes on them for many years now. That's where the bing-bong noises came from.

But up until 2020 it was still possible to only buy a paper ticket on the day of the visit from a ticket booth and not have to be on any App based system at all to get into the park.

Nowadays, they mostly force you to be on an App-based system and to show your phone. And advance reservations are required. That's really the big change since 2020.

The Dockers-clad managers for the badly trained CM's at the main entrance turnstiles simply need the autonomy and a paper backup system ready to go to use the next time the system crashes like this. To be so dependent on computers and off-site IT departments is not going to work when you have upwards of 50,000 to 75,000 customers who have pre-paid and made reservations in advance for that day's visit.

Computer says no. You don't have to wait here, you can go home.

This is where you keep missing the point. Even if they went back to the paper tickets, or even a paper backup, it wouldn't have mattered no scanner no entry. This has been the same system in place since at least the early 2000s, if not the 90s.

 

[PiratesMansion]

You are saying they can't do the human override scenario circa 1955 to 2020 because someone in that crowd might get in for free, or get a park hopper upgrade they didn't pay for.

That would be a very tiny portion of that Esplanade crowd during an unplanned outage like this.

To manage to the exception instead of the majority is customer service failure. They used to teach that sort of stuff at Disney Institute. Back when Disney actually had customer service standards they could brag about.

Do you have any evidence that a DLR turnstile employee or supervisor in 2020, given the strict picture rule that had been in place for almost a decade at that point, would have just said, "Sure pal, come on in and have a Zip A Dee Doo Dah Day?"

Do you think that a turnstile CM would have just done that or their supervisor would have just okayed it?

That would not have happened. Flat out would not have happened.

 

[Disney Irish]

You are saying they can't do the human override scenario circa 1955 to 2020 because someone in that crowd might get in for free, or get a park hopper upgrade they didn't pay for.

That would be a very tiny portion of that Esplanade crowd during an unplanned outage like this.

To manage to the exception instead of the majority is customer service failure. They used to teach that sort of stuff at Disney Institute. Back when Disney actually had customer service standards they could brag about.

Once again this is not new to just 2020. This has been the same ticket scanning process since at least the early 2000s if not the 90s. CMs haven't been eyeball verifying tickets for a long time now.

The only thing that changed is the usage of the app. But even going back to paper tickets would still use the same ticket scanning process they've been using for well over a decade or more, ie the same system that went down.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

You're making lots of assumptions that no one in that crowd has a fake or resold ticket trying to get into DLR, all of which happens daily. So you assume that everyone in that crowd is honest and a true paying customer, good for you. Disney Security would like to have a word with you regarding your plan. As once you let them in the gate there is no way to verify that person was a valid guest or not, despite the little slip of paper that will immediately be thrown away by most guests.

Scenario 1: let everyone with a ticket in and risk letting in a handful of people with a fake ticket. Outcome, a few people get a free day at DL and Disney loses a few dollars in hypothetical sales.

Scenario 2: Deny everyone entry despite the fact 99% paid for a valid ticket. Outcome, everyone is angry and you shortchanged 99% of your paying guests roughly $10 of the value they paid for the ticket.

This should have been a simple choice from a customer service perspective and it sounds like they chose to go with the wrong scenario. This was Disneys issue, if anyone should have lost a few dollars over it it should have been them, not their guests.

It’s possible they offered something for the inconvenience, like a Fastpass or a food voucher, which would be the ideal way to handle the situation, but no one’s mentioned that that happening so I assume it didn’t.

 

[TP2000]

You need the computer to be working for them to scan the barcode to let you into the park, and it was that way 2020 and before that too, you know...

Just let the pre-paid customers into the park. That's all.

Show me something, anything, that says you have a ticket that day and you get in until the system comes back online. Show me any of the Disneyland App info you are required to have on your phone. Show me a credit card receipt. Show me a picture of you on your phone in Cars Land you took 40 minutes ago. You're in! Here's your paper slip to act as a park ticket and help all other Resort CM's today recover your experience you paid for at Lightning Lane rides, or meal reservations, or theater seating, or Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boutique appointments, or whatever else is impacted by the turnstile computer not working.

You remove all responsibility to fix the problem from the customer (who is faultless and has already paid for the product), and you put all responsibility for the problem onto the employees and management to fix quickly and graciously. Problem solved! Have fun today, gang!

What you don't do is hide behind IT departments and TDA red tape and bad training and weak management and lowered standards and say...

"Computer says no. You don't have to stay here, you can go home."

Yes, I fully understand that Disneyland's standards have fallen dramatically in the past 10 years. Yes, I fully understand that many of today's CM's were never trained to that higher standard and have weak on-site management who doesn't know how to see expectations through to delivery. Yes, I fully understand (and have been railing about this for several years!) that TDA's executive leadership quite obviously never uses their own products as their customers are forced to do.

But there are plenty of businesses in 2023 that do have high standards and don't punish the customer for their mistakes and messes.
Computers crash sometimes, we all get that. Great customer service still happens daily in this country. Great customer service is still possible. I see it quite regularly, and then reward those companies with my continuing business.

It's a real shame Disneyland is now on par with WalMart. With plenty of excuses to offer anyone who is disappointed in that.

 

[TP2000]

Scenario 1: let everyone with a ticket in and risk letting in a handful of people with a fake ticket. Outcome, a few people get a free day at DL and Disney loses a few dollars in hypothetical sales.

Scenario 2: Deny everyone entry despite the fact 99% paid for a valid ticket. Outcome, everyone is angry and you shortchanged 99% of your paying guests roughly $10 of the value they paid for the ticket.

This should have been a simple choice from a customer service perspective and it sounds like they chose to go with the wrong scenario. This was Disneys issue, if anyone should have lost a few dollars over it it should have been them, not their guests.

It’s possible they offered something for the inconvenience, like a Fastpass or a food voucher, which would be the ideal way to handle the situation, but no one’s mentioned that that happening so I assume it didn’t.

Thank you for getting it!

I was starting to think I was typing in Swedish or something and no one could understand.