But how could they have expected that? Park reservations for MK for Oct 1 weren't available, and haven't been except a few refreshes that if you weren't clued into here, or a blog that posted about them you would have missed. I wanted to be there, my Dad wanted to be there. But I wasn't going to fly 2500 miles if I couldn't be guaranteed to be in the MK that day, and I was also having trouble getting a hotel booking when I was doing the looking, so I gave up. I doubt I was the only one. Disney controlled the park reservations, they knew exactly the range of how many people were going to show up at a park each day. Unless a lot of people made park reservations when they opened back in Spring, and then never bothered to cancel them when they realized they weren't going to make the trip. That's the problem with pinch points. Once that important thing is sold out a lot of people aren't going to bother with the rest.
I also hope that Disney bothers to staff the France Food & Wine booth. My Dad tried about 5 times to eat there. On each trip, we counted up to 10 people staffing the Canada booth, and all 3 registers open. And as a result, there was a very short queue. Meanwhile, France had one register open each time he checked, one person checking receipts and 2 people in the booth. And a line that wrapped around that newsstand.
IMO, Disney is playing with fire way more than they have in the past. People have had to put up with a lot during the last 2 years. First the pandemic, and now all the shortages. And for the most part, I think people have been pretty understanding about "unusual circumstances." But at some point, customers are going to want their back scratched, wooed a little in return for all their deprivation, patience and understanding. Even if it's just a friendly and competent interaction.
We just got back from Disneyland (since we couldn't do the 50th) and one of the most frustrating things was when the Plaza opened, I along with a lot of other people were there to get the chicken. There were two lines and ours was not moving. It turns out, that despite it being opening, despite people getting To Go orders at a much more frequent rate for months now, they did not have the To Go containers stocked at the food station. We were waiting for someone to go dig them out from the back and then make the guest's To Go orders. That is just fundamental and basic good service. A friend was at the 50th, trying to get a Coke from Captain Cooks. All the syrup for the Coke was empty, and so when she gave up and tried to fill her cup with another type of drink her chip said she had used all her refills. She asked the CM for assistance and the CM just shrugged, didn't know what to do either about the syrup in the machines or the cup. So my friend paid $4.49 for a drink and ended up with a partial cup of Orange soda and even speaking to somewhere got nothing. And now people stay counter service F&B is overstaffed? If you can't even get this type of stuff, how much more patience are you going to extend?
If WDW is "overstaffed" at F&B, things like that shouldn't happen, because obviously there were tasks to be performed. My earlier trips this year had several run-ins with empty napkin dispensers, empty fork dispensers, etc. Staff standing around is no guarantee that all tasks have been performed, and that was certainly true when my Mom was a CM and found herself having to cleanup many messes because no one else bothered, and there was no penalty for not doing them, and no reward for cleaning them up. I have on more than one recent occasion heard morning shift people moaning because the evening shift hadn't bothered to do many of their closing / get ready for tomorrow tasks.
This Spring there may have been a lot of pent up demand, but how many people weren't able to satisfy it in some way during the Summer of Freedom? Now that they've lived so long without a Disney trip, has the withdrawal worn off enough that when they plug their dates into the cost calculators they don't end up saying to themselves, "You've got to be kidding me!" Friend that had the soda problem, called my Dad last night and asked he wanted to go back to Universal. She had planned more WDW days, and had already done Universal, but all the Disney problems just became too much for her to ruin another day, when she had the choice to do something else.
