Five Strikes Against Magic Kingdom On Thanksgiving Night

[hypercatmatt04]

Strike One: The line for Fastpass on Space Mountain was longer than the regular line. We ended up waiting about half an hour in the Fastpass line because they were letting in more people in the regular line than the Fastpass line

Strike Two: This one doesn't really affect me, but anyways. On Jungle Cruise, a little girl was getting off the boat and the driver started driving away. The father had to yank the girl off the boat, and she almost fell in. How safe!

Strike Three: Walking onto Thunder Mountain, yet again the Fastpass Line was longer than the stand-by line.

Strike Four: In line for Thunder Mountain, I noticed I was walking in sand. I recognized this sand from when I worked at Six Flags, and realized I was walking in an attempt to clean up vomit. My shoes still smell like puke and sanitizer.

Strike Five: I went to get on TTA, and they were evacuating. I went on Space Mountain, and when I got out, the TTA was up and running. YAY! We reach the top of the escalator type thing, and realize that the line is backed up and for some reason people were not getting into the cars. All of a sudden, there was yelling and panicking. The people on the escalator kept coming up and couldn't stop, and everybody was getting squished. A little girl fell over and a man was being pushed into by about ten people. The line went into chaos, and people were yelling "STOP IT!". Both the ride and the escalator stopped, and I don't know if the ride ever reopened.

On the plus side, my turkey dinner was good.

-end rant here-

 

[MAGICFLOP]

I was there last thanksgiving and thats why I was not there today..

 

[crazydaveh]

Sorry to hear you had a bad day at the MK. Tomorrow can only get better!

 

[wedway71]

Strike One: The line for Fastpass on Space Mountain was longer than the regular line. We ended up waiting about half an hour in the Fastpass line because they were letting in more people in the regular line than the Fastpass line

Strike Two: This one doesn't really affect me, but anyways. On Jungle Cruise, a little girl was getting off the boat and the driver started driving away. The father had to yank the girl off the boat, and she almost fell in. How safe!

Strike Three: Walking onto Thunder Mountain, yet again the Fastpass Line was longer than the stand-by line.

Strike Four: In line for Thunder Mountain, I noticed I was walking in sand. I recognized this sand from when I worked at Six Flags, and realized I was walking in an attempt to clean up vomit. My shoes still smell like puke and sanitizer.

Strike Five: I went to get on TTA, and they were evacuating. I went on Space Mountain, and when I got out, the TTA was up and running. YAY! We reach the top of the escalator type thing, and realize that the line is backed up and for some reason people were not getting into the cars. All of a sudden, there was yelling and panicking. The people on the escalator kept coming up and couldn't stop, and everybody was getting squished. A little girl fell over and a man was being pushed into by about ten people. The line went into chaos, and people were yelling "STOP IT!". Both the ride and the escalator stopped, and I don't know if the ride ever reopened.

On the plus side, my turkey dinner was good.

-end rant here-

I know they pressure wash the streets everynight but I wonder what they do in ride ques as far as cleaning every night in like Big Thunder Mountain when someone barfs in line after park closes?:hurl:

 

[v_misses_epcot]

It's turkey day, what do you expect?

Test Track was at 100 minutes today =D Not as wonderful as the 130 for soarin. That's why I'm taking my small vacation on monday =D The week after the madness.

 

[juan]

It's turkey day, what do you expect?

Test Track was at 100 minutes today =D Not as wonderful as the 130 for soarin. That's why I'm taking my small vacation on monday =D The week after the madness.

those are pretty short
i saw them around the 4th of july up near 160 for TT and 170 for soarin

 

[pheneix]

It is crowded, but the problems this poor guy had aren't due to crowds, they are due to incompetent cast members being morons. No wonder Disney is putting such a focus on guest service this year.

 

[PintoColvig]

Well, at least you were at the MK today. I'm sitting in KY watching the recording of Survivor.

 

[Plutoboy]

The holiday season has always been chaos at the parks. I worked for Disney 10 years as a friend of the characters and it seems that year after year we were less prepared for the holiday season. I would disagree that the CMs are incompetent morons but rather that they have not received the training that they should be...in other words lets rush to get everyone in a costume and out in the parks.

No doubt that all of the Orlando attractions are short staffed but it seems like Disney has held a major job fair twice a month just to get ready for what looks like will be a rough holiday season

 

[Epcot82Guy]

The holiday season has always been chaos at the parks. I worked for Disney 10 years as a friend of the characters and it seems that year after year we were less prepared for the holiday season. I would disagree that the CMs are incompetent morons but rather that they have not received the training that they should be...in other words lets rush to get everyone in a costume and out in the parks.

No doubt that all of the Orlando attractions are short staffed but it seems like Disney has held a major job fair twice a month just to get ready for what looks like will be a rough holiday season

Agreed. It is undermotivated management that does not have the reason/incentive to push training and "above-and-beyond" service (and, not saying lower management is incompetent. It is a breakdown of the system more as a whole).

 

[DznyGrlSD]

It is crowded, but the problems this poor guy had aren't due to crowds, they are due to incompetent cast members being morons. No wonder Disney is putting such a focus on guest service this year.

woah...Woah....WOAH!!!!!!! That was UNcalled for!!! Try working on a holiday and having the park at capacity at 1030am, not being home with your family, and having people yell & complain at you because the lines are so long, and try having to deal with all of that and keep a smile on your face for 10+ hours. I did not work at MK yesterday, but I worked at MK on Xmas day 2004 and that's what it was like...so unless you've been there in that position...do NOT call Castmembers incompetent morons. :fork::fork::fork: ...and have a MAGICAL day!

 

[marni1971]

The TTA load shambles sounds bad bad bad - I thought the speedramp up was tailored to match the rotation speed of the load platform? Or you mean the ride was running empty and the load system was running normally - ie when people got to the end of the rotating platform they staggered onto the static platform? Ouch!

 

[Stitch_626_UK]

woah...Woah....WOAH!!!!!!! That was UNcalled for!!! Try working on a holiday and having the park at capacity at 1030am, not being home with your family, and having people yell & complain at you because the lines are so long, and try having to deal with all of that and keep a smile on your face for 10+ hours. I did not work at MK yesterday, but I worked at MK on Xmas day 2004 and that's what it was like...so unless you've been there in that position...do NOT call Castmembers incompetent morons. :fork::fork::fork: ...and have a MAGICAL day!

well said :sohappy:

 

[800Miles2Magic]

To paraphrase a quote from Johnny Dangerously.....

"I was at the park on Thanksgiving..................ONCE"

 

[EPCOT.nut]

YIKES! How can it not be chaos with that many people in the parks? Going on peak days is not fun - I am surprised people still do that! You can't expect to go to WDW on one of the published busiest days of the year without having problems and stress! Same reason I don't shop on Black Friday...Wonder what Wal-Mart was like this morning? :lol:
I hope all the chaos is gone when I go on Wed 11/29! And the puke, too.

 

[Polyman]

To: EPCOT.nut - you'll be fine. Management expects the parks to be empty. Effective this Sunday 11/26 all CM's hours have been cut to the bone. Full timers are down to the minimum of 32 hrs/week, and many, if not all CR's have had their hours cut. I'm a CR who only works on Sat. & Sun. and I'm not even scheduled for this Sunday:hammer:

 

[EPCOT.nut]

Polyman - THANKS for responding to my question. I really want to go Sunday but I don't want to torture my husband too much with any crowds! I think he was Disney'd out by Summer. I am going to go on Sunday now and see how it goes! Sorry you are not on the schedule since you said you usually work weekends - that's weird! Do they ever have y'all on PRN so if they see that it is getting really unexpectedly busy they call you in? I envy you working at WDW! I see a lot of CMs post on this site and it is neat to see their perspective, and I know customer service is a really hard and under-rated job and although we pay steep ticket prices to WDW we should all be very thankful of the great people that work there. Except for one irritable monorail queue man in all of my 13 trips this year - I have to say all the CMs have been fabulous. :xmas:

 

[pheneix]

That was UNcalled for!!! Try working on a holiday and having the park at capacity at 1030am, not being home with your family, and having people yell & complain at you because the lines are so long

I did it last Christmas at Space Mountain. But you know what? Dispatching a ride vehicle with a guest disembarking is unacceptable whether or not there are 8,000 or 80,000 guests in the park. So is leftover sansorb in a queue, though I can only imagine that is from where the operations staff got disgusted with waiting in custodial and just started cleaning it themselves. At least they were trying there.

Sorry for putting it so harsh, but sometimes the shoe has to fit on some of the cast members Disney hires. Yeah, the pay is real crap, but even with the current staffing issues there is more than an adaquate amount of staff so that everyone can do their job safely. So when I see things like I saw posted in this thread, that only tells me that the cast members on duty at these locations are incompetent or just don't care.

 

[Amber]

We had the same thing happen to us with the TTA ramp on a random day in September. People were taking their sweet time loading and no one realized what it was doing to the back of the line. Everyone just laughed at it and we mentioned that hey, it's Disney, we are all family here anyway. It really wasn't that big of a deal. We thought it was kind of weird that the CM that was loading didn't notice, but we really didn't care.

 

[One Lil Spark]

Wow, sorry you had such a bad experience. Then again, you have to expect that not everything will go perfectly on Thanksgiving. I imagine it was hard for the cast members who were away from their family and friends working on a day that the park is filled to maximum capacity with cranky people. :lol: Not a good day in the parks from either perspective!