-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Computer Crashes for 30 Minutes, Chaos Ensues at Disneyland Main Entrance?
- Thread starter TP2000
- Start date
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
I would have kindly either gotten some ice cream from across the street or went to In-N-Out, then returned.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
I mean, a 30 minute outage is sort of nothing. Seems like their backups and redundancy plans are fine if that's the worst glitch they have.
Elijah Abrams
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
If I was at Disneyland when this incident happened, I would have gone to Knott’s Berry Farm instead.
MarvelCharacterNerd
Well-Known Member
Not when your Lightning Lane/Genie+/Mobile Food Order/Merchandise Mobile Order/PhotoPass/food discount/merch discount isn't working. They've made it so you can barely function in the parks without their digital systems. And if your phone isn't working, you don't know when your boarding group is called so you miss it. Or your food order is ready so you're charged for a no-show and don't get to eat. Or you missed the show you wanted to see because you couldn't check the times without the app since they no longer print a daily entertainment guide.
THEY NEED BACKUPS. Like allowing us to have a printed pass. Or being able to standby order food at more than one register while the multiple mobile order cast members stand around waiting for something to do.
MarvelCharacterNerd
Well-Known Member
Not when they didn't know if or when it would come back up again. Standing around in the Esplanade with hundreds of other people being told they've no idea when the system will be back up again is beyond frustrating. Especially if you're missing your attraction boarding time, your dining reservation, the show you want to see, the last time a character is out for the day... and on and on...
Yes, exactly. There are families who have flown in from Seattle and Sydney and Seoul in that crowd. There are parents who have budgeted to take their kids to Disneyland and who drove the minivan from Bakersfield or Boise or Billings. And having the park suddenly crash, and be stuck in a huge crowd outside the gates with ticket taker CM's saying nothing more than "System is down, we have no estimate for how long this will take, have a magical day." is not helpful. Or acceptable.
Anyone who is not a local AP on their 327th visit as a single adult is not going to be able to just shrug it off and say...
They should have just sent a CM with a bullhorn out into the Esplanade to announce "Disneyland is closed because computer says no. It's impossible for us to unlock the turnstiles and let you in with your paid ticket because computer says no. Please go across the street for an ice cream or take an Uber to the In-N-Out on Ball Road and check back with us later. Computer says have a magical day."
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
I'm sure the IT guys knew exactly when it would be up again.
PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
Some of y'all are acting like this is the first time a computer system has malfunctioned in any company ever. It happens. I remember working at Target and there was one day our systems went down for a similar amount of time. It sucked, but there's not much that can really be done about it until it's fixed. Thankfully, people were mostly pretty understanding and not entitled while the system was rebooted.
For people saying they need a backup like paper tickets to circumvent this-a paper ticket wouldn't have helped at all in that situation because they still need to be scanned into the very computer system that crashed before people enter the park. If you're thinking Disney or any company would just handwave people in given the circumstances-have you been to any event run by any company ever in the 21st century? It wouldn't have happened that way. Not when they feel like massive ticket fraud would occur if they can't ID the user of each and every ticket through their photo system. Paper tickets wouldn't have resulted in the situation being any different.
Could they do better? Sure. Were some people undoubtedly annoyed and inconvenienced? Sure. But these things happen. As long as people who were unable to make good on their dining/LL reservations were compensated, it's not that big of a deal.
For people saying they need a backup like paper tickets to circumvent this-a paper ticket wouldn't have helped at all in that situation because they still need to be scanned into the very computer system that crashed before people enter the park. If you're thinking Disney or any company would just handwave people in given the circumstances-have you been to any event run by any company ever in the 21st century? It wouldn't have happened that way. Not when they feel like massive ticket fraud would occur if they can't ID the user of each and every ticket through their photo system. Paper tickets wouldn't have resulted in the situation being any different.
Could they do better? Sure. Were some people undoubtedly annoyed and inconvenienced? Sure. But these things happen. As long as people who were unable to make good on their dining/LL reservations were compensated, it's not that big of a deal.
Figments Friend
Well-Known Member
So what's the deal with this?
Disneyland computer crash traps massive crowds outside front gates in ‘crazy scene’
The crippling computer issues prevented visitors from entering Disneyland and DCA, parkhopping between parks or using the parking structures, according to social media reports.www.ocregister.com
A massive computer system crash brought Disneyland and Disney California Adventure to a grinding halt with visitors unable to enter the front gates or use many technology-dependent features at the Anaheim theme parks.
An outage with the Disneyland Resort’s ticketing system on Thursday, April 20 affected the turnstiles at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, according to Disneyland officials.
The computer issue was resolved in about half an hour and Disneyland cast members addressed any impacts with guests on a case-by-case basis, according to Disneyland officials.
The crippling computer issues prevented visitors from entering Disneyland and DCA, parkhopping between parks or using the parking structures starting at about 11:30 a.m. Thursday, according to https://.com/2023/04/breaking-disne...es-briefly-down-crowding-and-delays-at-gates/ and social media posts.
MagicBand wearable tech devices were not working and Disneyland annual passholders were unable to scan their tickets for discounts. Disneyland parking lot attendants were forced to hand out paper parking tickets rather than scan barcodes on visitors’ smartphones.
The system outage trapped thousands of visitors in a “crazy scene” outside the gates of the plaza between Disneyland and DCA, according to Twitter user Kevin Penfold.
“Nobody new can be let in until system gets fixed,” Penfold wrote on Twitter.
See, this would not have happened it we still had paper tickets!
Bring back the ticket books!
And Mulit Days…with the rubber ink stamps!
Hell yeah!
Sometimes having everything rely on tech is not the answer.
It can be nice to keep things simple and as tech free as possible…..
( goes away to yell at kids on my front lawn…)
-
I love Target, and I think we all have a good understanding of what a typical Target run looks like for Americans, so this is... not a good analogy at all.
Taking the family for a day at Disneyland is nothing like a Target run. No one plans for weeks or months or years to go to Target. No one does two hours of online research to determine which motel to stay at within walking distance of Target. No one reserves 90 days in advance with the Target App which aisles and departments they will be allowed access to at what times and in what sequence during their Target visit. No one has to pre-order their celebratory Icee via the Target App from the Target snack bar.
And most importantly, when the Target computer crashes and the checkstands freeze up, they don't close the store and lock the front doors. They still let people in and out if they want to just peruse or wait for a bit.
What was most annoying about closing the main entrance because of a computer crash was that just past the turnstiles that were locked shut by human CM's, there was a functioning theme park with running rides and marching bands and cheeseburgers for sale. The pirates all kept singing, the ghosts kept dancing, the bobsleds kept going clackety-clack up into the fake mountain past the roaring snowman, the submarines kept gliding past bubbling clams, etc., etc. The burgers kept being flipped at Tomorrowland Terrace, the Monte Cristos kept frying at Blue Bayou, the souvenir popcorn buckets kept getting filled with fresh popcorn, etc., etc. Overpriced Chinese made plastic crap no one actually needs kept being sold at The Emporium and Star Trader and Black Spire Outfitters, etc., etc. The Disneyland Band marched out and refused to play Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. And Ky'le From Tustin pulled people into his fascinating backstory as he wiped the counter at the Blue Milk stand.
The park kept operating as normal, and all the rides and restaurants and facilities and entertainment were going full blast... just past turnstiles that were locked on purpose by lower-middle managers because computer said no. That's not nice to the customers. Or sensible.
Agreed. There needs to be a way to override a frozen computer that says no.
And when your business system crashes, you don't put the onus on the pre-paid customer to wait for you. You turn it around within minutes and give the pre-paid customer the benefit of the doubt. This is basic good customer service, not rocket science.
I'd give IT 10 minutes to fix it. But by the 10 minute mark, you just start letting people in who can show you their ticket on their phone or paperwork, and give them a little paper slip with a date code stamped on it. Just like the old paper "Re-Admission Tickets" they used to give you when the ride broke down, CM's at rides and restaurants would know that whoever had that main entrance override paper ticket with the day's date code on it would be allowed to have their LL or App-based product waived or hand processed to provide "World Class Guest Service" for that paying customer.
Look at me!
In 2 minutes I just thought of a process you could use to override the computer and let everyone in to get on with their day. I'm sure the highly paid brain trust in TDA could schedule a series of one hour meetings over a few days to work out details, but by this Wednesday they could have a new system ready for rollout for the next time the computer crashes. Because there will be a next time, and it might be 90 minutes instead of only 30 minutes.When you've got over 1,000 customers who have already paid for their expensive admission and upcharged App purchases standing out in an open plaza like this, you don't just say "We're closed, no estimated opening known, computer says no" and hope they don't turn ugly.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Agreed. There needs to be a way to override a frozen computer that says no.
And when your business system crashes, you don't put the onus on the pre-paid customer to wait for you. You turn it around within minutes and give the pre-paid customer the benefit of the doubt. This is basic good customer service, not rocket science.
I'd give IT 10 minutes to fix it. But by the 10 minute mark, you just start letting people in who can show you their ticket on their phone or paperwork, and give them a little paper slip with a date code stamped on it. Just like the old paper "Re-Admission Tickets" they used to give you when the ride broke down, CM's at rides and restaurants would know that whoever had that main entrance override paper ticket with the day's date code on it would be allowed to have their LL or App-based product waived or hand processed to provide "World Class Guest Service" for that paying customer.
Look at me!
When you've got over 1,000 customers who have already paid for their expensive admission and upcharged App purchases standing out in an open plaza like this, you don't just say "We're closed, no estimated opening known, computer says no" and hope they don't turn ugly.
Except within 2 seconds one can just outwitted your "fix" with a screen shot of a ticket barcode. So your "fix" just allowed in potentially hundreds of people that shouldn't be there because there is no way to verify if the person has a valid ticket or not. The reason why these systems exist in the first place is to prevent fraud and resale/reusing of tickets.
The real fix is they need to have a backup ticket verification system that IT can switch to quickly if the primary ticket verification system goes down. Which I suspect will be in-place in short order to prevent this from happening again.
PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
How is it an incompatible analogy? Both require computer systems to be up and functioning in order to do what you need to do.I love Target, and I think we all have a good understanding of what a typical Target run looks like for Americans, so this is... not a good analogy at all.
Taking the family for a day at Disneyland is nothing like a Target run. No one plans for weeks or months or years to go to Target. No one does two hours of online research to determine which motel to stay at within walking distance of Target. No one reserves 90 days in advance with the Target App which aisles and departments they will be allowed access to at what times and in what sequence during their Target visit. No one has to pre-order their celebratory Icee via the Target App from the Target snack bar.
And most importantly, when the Target computer crashes and the checkstands freeze up, they don't close the store and lock the front doors. They still let people in and out if they want to just peruse or wait for a bit.
What was most annoying about closing the main entrance because of a computer crash was that just past the turnstiles that were locked shut by human CM's, there was a functioning theme park with running rides and marching bands and cheeseburgers for sale. The pirates all kept singing, the ghosts kept dancing, the bobsleds kept going clackety-clack up into the fake mountain past the roaring snowman, the submarines kept gliding past bubbling clams, etc., etc. The burgers kept being flipped at Tomorrowland Terrace, the Monte Cristos kept frying at Blue Bayou, the souvenir popcorn buckets kept getting filled with fresh popcorn, etc., etc. Overpriced Chinese made plastic crap no one actually needs kept being sold at The Emporium and Star Trader and Black Spire Outfitters, etc., etc. The Disneyland Band marched out and refused to play Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. And Ky'le From Tustin pulled people into his fascinating backstory as he wiped the counter at the Blue Milk stand.
The park kept operating as normal, and all the rides and restaurants and facilities and entertainment were going full blast... just past turnstiles that were locked on purpose by lower-middle managers because computer said no. That's not nice to the customers. Or sensible.
No one reserves anything other than potentially hotels 90 days in advance at DLR. Presumably you know that. It's never been like that.
They don't close the store when the computers go down, but things that require the computers to function shut down. So you can't buy things, do returns...you know, things people go to stores to do. So in the case of DLR, things that require computers to function include, and have included for some time, scanning tickets to let people into Disneyland. Those computers aren't exactly new to being there-they've been there at least as long as I've been regularly going to the parks. You do realize that tickets have to be scanned into their system in order to let people into the park, right?
Spare the histronics. It was a minor inconvenience that was resolved and nothing more.
Has any behavior Disney has engaged in remotely recently led you to believe they would just take the guest's word for it? No? Then why are we surprised that Disney...acted like Disney has for quite some time?
Is there any evidence that turnstile CMs have any agency to do such things? I have never seen any in the last ten years.
The only thing this proves is that you've never experienced an outage like this as an employee. Generally speaking, you have no ability to do anything except wait. Your managers will give you zero leeway to do anything else. Zero. None.I'd give IT 10 minutes to fix it. But by the 10 minute mark, you just start letting people in who can show you their ticket on their phone or paperwork, and give them a little paper slip with a date code stamped on it. Just like the old paper "Re-Admission Tickets" they used to give you when the ride broke down, CM's at rides and restaurants would know that whoever had that main entrance override paper ticket with the day's date code on it would be allowed to have their LL or App-based product waived or hand processed to provide "World Class Guest Service" for that paying customer.
Look at me!
They don't say that, they say "we apologize for the inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience."
There is zero evidence that things turned ugly or that things were in danger of turning ugly. I'm sure some Karens and Chads posted about it on social media, but I'm sure they still went to the parks and didn't turn away in a huff.
These posts are just drama for drama's sake.
This isn't a normal day. This is an abnormal occurrence. It all happened quickly and without warning, so there's no one who jumped in their car and drove to Anaheim because Disneyland was letting people in for free until IT fixed it.
This is called good customer service. Your system crashes, so you take your customers word (who has been standing in front of you this whole time, waiting in the sun in long lines for 20 minutes for you to do something) and let them into the operating theme park with an apology and a smile. And a little paper slip that helps park CM's recover for them whatever App-based product they already bought from you (LL, Mobile Order, seating reservations, etc.) Bingo!
What you don't do is look out at a sea of a thousand pre-paid customers waiting to be let in to your fully operating theme park and say "Someone out there in that crowd may try to scam us out of a ticket! Keep these turnstiles LOCKED!"
What you do is acknowledge your system crashed, apologize, and you take care of your customers within 10 minutes or less. Even if it means a few crummy teens or lying cheats got their one-day DCA ticket turned into a Disneyland park hopper. You don't penalize 95% of your customers because 5% or less may get an unpaid upgrade.
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.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
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.
I understand its an inconvenience, but its the whole reason the system exists in the first place, too many cheats ruined the previous system. And they've been using it now for a few years and this is the first crash? Come on, its not like this happens daily. TDA will make sure there is a proper backup system in place so this doesn't happen again. And it won't be your "just let everyone in the gates because we trust everyone" plan.