Disney World's New Ride Has an Old Problem Frozen Ever After has broken down in each of its four day

Bacon

Bacon

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Things haven't gone the way that Disney (NYSE:DIS) planned for its newest ride at Disney World's Epcot. Frozen Ever After opened on Tuesday. The Frozen-themed ride made headlines for its long queue that stretched as long as five hours at one point, but the family friendly indoor boat ride has also proven to be a tough attraction to keep open. Frozen Ever After has had prolonged outages in each of its four days of operation.

That's bad news for guests who planned early summer vacations, hoping to catch attractions like Frozen Ever After, and the Rivers of Light nighttime show at Animal Kingdom that has yet to open. The same can be said at Comcast's (NASDAQ:CMCSA)Islands of Adventure, where the originally slated June reopening for the retracked and slightly rethemed The Incredible Hulk roller coaster won't happen until later this summer. Skull Island: Reign of Kong has opened sporadically for guests in the afternoons, but without an official announcement for a grand-opening date.

Disney and Comcast have stumbled in June, and they're being quiet about their shortcomings. Disney -- which is typically pretty chatty about new attractions on its official parks blog -- has yet to publish an entry about Frozen Ever After's opening. It could be waiting for the ride to operate reliably, but who knows when that will happen.

Comcast's Islands of Adventure was supposed to have a social media event on Wednesday, encouraging pass holders to enter for a chance to attend a mixer at Skull Island: Reign of Kong. However, it quietly pulled the event without informing the entrants if they had been selected.

It's been a rough few days in Orlando for various other reasons, but horrific area events don't explain why the country's two largest theme-park operators have been fumbling during the first few weeks of the peak summer travel season.

The cold never bothered me anyway
It had been down most of the afternoon.
 
Wdw62114

Wdw62114

Well-Known Member
Yeah this awaken summer hasnt really started off as strong as Disney had hoped. When 7DMT opened, that ride went down almost every day for a couple months it seemed by what I remember and they did a soft opening for that. They need to figure out a solution for these rides being functional when it opens because now with MM+, Disney wants all guests to plan their itineraries down to every hour of their trip and a broken down ride snowballs all plans after that. Id much rather see delays if it means getting things right vs. Rushing and seeing issues like this
 
Goofyernmost

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
EOD K9 said:
Mine Train, as a new ride, I could understand there being a problem when it first opened. Maelstrom/Frozen has been there for a while, there shouldn't be an issue....unless it's due to the new animatronics.
Click to expand...
I believe that is the problem and you know how testy everyone gets if any AA isn't working. BAD show, BAD show! Back in the day at DL they shut down the rides and fixed things right away. Something about that thought pattern has a major contradiction. Let's see, if they don't close it down then they are straying from Walt's vision. If they do stop it because something isn't working then they have messed up the planning. And someone should be fired! By god! There have been very few, if any, attractions that worked properly at start up. They all had unanticipated problems that had to be worked out over time. As for people that plan their vacations to coincide with new attraction opening, well, perhaps they shouldn't do that. I don't blame Disney for that. Reality is such a scary thing to think about.
 
PorterRedkey

PorterRedkey

Well-Known Member
If you spend a year and a half on shoehorning an IP ride into Epcot, at least you could make it work consistently.

Hey, Disney, 900 guest per hour for a new ride makes for long waits. Waiting for an hour and a half for a 5-minute ride leads to disappointed guests.

The ride is nice, but people are only waiting because World Showcase is so starved for attractions. New attractions to WS should be themed to the countries that they actually represent.
 
Cowboy Steve

Cowboy Steve

Well-Known Member
These things happen. Unfortunately there is no reliable way to test a new attraction under continuous guest load without... um... guests... lol. There is a big difference between simulations and real world when it comes to these rides. You can engineer something till the cows come home, but some problems just don't show up until it has been running for 12 hours straight. Combine that with budget constraints, and UM insisting an attraction opens on time - as promised - and wa-la! The more realistic and "Wow!" factor they put into these attractions, the higher the probability there will be issues. I don't want to date myself here... but... when the 'Back to the Future' 3D simulator ride was built at US, we actually got to ride it a month before the official opening. It was termed a 'technical rehearsal', and they would run it for an hour or two, then stop to evaluate comments from random riders, then open for another couple hours. With today's social media and the internet, it would be really hard to do that without too much data coming out about the attraction. Disney's policy of pretty much letting you video or take pictures of anything and everything works against them if they want to try and test something with the public before it officially opens while keeping elements a secret (other than verbal descriptions).
 

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