Magic Kingdom...not so magical.

larryz

I'm Just A Tourist!
Premium Member
Think about it like reservations for a restaurant. Instead of going to restaurant to restaurant looking for the shortest wait time, or even sitting there waiting 2-3 hours for your table to be ready, doesn't it make sense to call in, or make reservations online? If one isn't available that day, you go somewhere else. If its a 2-3 hour wait, you put your name in and show up in 2-3 hours.

Why isn't it the same for rides? What practical purpose does it serve to have to wait in a caged in area and walk every now and then for hours? Why couldn't the waiting be anywhere? Mainly, you know going in beforehand if you'll be getting on or not. Stand-by lines just make little practical sense over a reservation system.
The difference? I don't pay for access to a restaurant just to find out I can't eat there. If I walk into a Fleming's Steakhouse and can't be seated in an appropriate time, I can leave without losing a day's admission to a theme park.

The original concept of FP (move guests out of attraction lines so they could spend money in restaurants and gift shops) would work only if WDW could somehow exclude people with FP+ reservations from other attraction lines. Without that restriction, guests are double-dipping and taking up twice the ride queue space they're nominally entitled to by their admission tickets. WDW got away with it until (a) the advent of FP+, and (b) the latter part of the 20-teens, when the increase in visitors far outstripped their static inventory of attractions. Sadly, FP+ turned into a "minimum ride rationing system" instead of the shopping and dining boost it was designed to be.
 
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MurphyJoe

Well-Known Member
Why isn't it the same for rides? What practical purpose does it serve to have to wait in a caged in area and walk every now and then for hours? Why couldn't the waiting be anywhere? Mainly, you know going in beforehand if you'll be getting on or not. Stand-by lines just make little practical sense over a reservation system.

From a management standpoint: People in lines require less support staff and room than if they were waiting elsewhere. Which leads to if people aren't waiting, then customers need something else to do. Under the various FP schemes, Disney is hoping people will spend money; however, in practice people are choosing to wait in other lines. If the option to wait for a different attraction was removed, all those people are now needing something to occupy their time and space to do it in. Even if free waiting lounges were provided, which would take up more space than the current lines and require increased staffing, more people will feel they can't do anything during their visit because the number of attractions they experience and the wait for them is right in their face, even if total attractions experienced is the same without reservations. At least with a line, it feels like you're accomplishing something even if the end result is the same. To support true virtual queuing and customer satisfaction, Disney would need to have a serious build out of free, no line attractions and increase the quantity of seating at their various dining establishments (if not also increasing the number of establishments too).
 

Lilofan

Well-Known Member
From a management standpoint: People in lines require less support staff and room than if they were waiting elsewhere. Which leads to if people aren't waiting, then customers need something else to do. Under the various FP schemes, Disney is hoping people will spend money; however, in practice people are choosing to wait in other lines. If the option to wait for a different attraction was removed, all those people are now needing something to occupy their time and space to do it in. Even if free waiting lounges were provided, which would take up more space than the current lines and require increased staffing, more people will feel they can't do anything during their visit because the number of attractions they experience and the wait for them is right in their face, even if total attractions experienced is the same without reservations. At least with a line, it feels like you're accomplishing something even if the end result is the same. To support true virtual queuing and customer satisfaction, Disney would need to have a serious build out of free, no line attractions and increase the quantity of seating at their various dining establishments (if not also increasing the number of establishments too).
The pre show and post show is what I enjoy and take in. Kudos to WDI in creating the magic. If I wanted to just hop on a ride and hope off, then the local or state fair amusement park will suffice.
 

Trackmaster

Well-Known Member
The difference? I don't pay for access to a restaurant just to find out I can't eat there. If I walk into a Fleming's Steakhouse and can't be seated in an appropriate time, I can leave without losing a day's admission to a theme park.

The original concept of FP (move guests out of attraction lines so they could spend money in restaurants and gift shops) would work only if WDW could somehow exclude people with FP+ reservations from other attraction lines. Without that restriction, guests are double-dipping and taking up twice the ride queue space they're nominally entitled to by their admission tickets. WDW got away with it until (a) the advent of FP+, and (b) the latter part of the 20-teens, when the increase in visitors far outstripped their static inventory of attractions. Sadly, FP+ turned into a "minimum ride rationing system" instead of the shopping and dining boost it was designed to be.

Speak for yourself! When I go to Disney I spend about 4-5 hours, and use about 6-7 FP+'s, all on the top rides. I only do stand-by for the shows or the walk-ons. OK, I'll admit, you have to abuse the FP+ and know the loopholes to make it work, if you're using it as intended, it kind of sucks.
 

Trackmaster

Well-Known Member
From a management standpoint: People in lines require less support staff and room than if they were waiting elsewhere. Which leads to if people aren't waiting, then customers need something else to do. Under the various FP schemes, Disney is hoping people will spend money; however, in practice people are choosing to wait in other lines. If the option to wait for a different attraction was removed, all those people are now needing something to occupy their time and space to do it in. Even if free waiting lounges were provided, which would take up more space than the current lines and require increased staffing, more people will feel they can't do anything during their visit because the number of attractions they experience and the wait for them is right in their face, even if total attractions experienced is the same without reservations. At least with a line, it feels like you're accomplishing something even if the end result is the same. To support true virtual queuing and customer satisfaction, Disney would need to have a serious build out of free, no line attractions and increase the quantity of seating at their various dining establishments (if not also increasing the number of establishments too).

Keep in mind, that in theory another possibly outcome of FP+ could be that people try to get to the park later, or leave the park when they've finished with their FP+'s and can't get anymore. That would be a positive outcome where giving away reservation doesn't just abuse the stand-by waits. I think a theory too is that it allows local Annual Passholders to be better informed in regards to when they go, so that they can leave the busier days for the traveling guests who have less flexibility and the APers staying home would make those days less manageable. I know I won't bother going if I can't get the FP+ line-up that I want.

And I personally think that Disney has a lot to do if you're not on an E-ticket compared to other parks. A bunch of the rides will just never get lines, there are shows that you can always make if you get there early enough, and there are different things to see and do that pop-up periodically.
 

bryanfze55

Well-Known Member
I can tell you from experience that you can go to Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, both parks that are comparably busy and see comparable attendance but see WAY less optimized staffing and significantly fewer FP attractions (along with a better, more user friendly FP system), and get a ton more done per day, and average waits are often far more reasonable.

Yes, Tokyo gets nuts on weekends, but weekday crowds are very comparable to average MK crowds IMO.

I second this. Why is it that in Disneyland you can almost always get on Pirates of the Caribbean in 15 minutes? Jungle Cruise in 10 minutes? Granted, during a week like this, that won’t hold true - but it does hold true for most of the year. At Disney World, those rides seem to almost always be 30+ and 60+ minutes, respectively... I was stunned to see those wait times when I first went to WDW after visiting Disneyland. I mean, seriously, Jungle Cruise at 60 minutes??? Even Winnie the freaking Pooh seems to be regularly at 45 minutes at WDW. At Disneyland, Pooh being anything over 10 minutes tells you the park is packed.
 

matt9112

Well-Known Member
MK is my wife’s and mine least favorite park of the 4.

We try not to visit in the fall because of Xmas parties, but we were there last week, and it wasn’t too bad.

still, number 4

Yeah im in agreeance i have silver passes and the MK is our least visited park by far. The irony is it has the most attractions but from a logistical stand point is the most broken. The other parks simply dont pull enough people out of the MK. The sea of strollers is insane to navigate and the lack of alcohol not only hurts disneys bottom line but makes it all that less bearable. They also need to really up the pace of modernizing the theming the old stuff looks so jarring next to say NFL or animal kingdom etc.
 

larryz

I'm Just A Tourist!
Premium Member
The sea of strollers is insane to navigate and the lack of alcohol not only hurts disneys bottom line but makes it all that less bearable.
Surely there are innovative and imaginative ways around this impediment. I can recall attending college football games in the '70's where the "No Alcohol" announcement was gleefully cheered by most of the student section waving their flasks and mixed drinks at the scoreboard.
 

Kingtut

Well-Known Member
Unfortunately, the questions you can ask are very limited. In situations where it is not obvious that the dog is a service animal, staff may ask only two specific questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability? and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform? (NOTE: You cannot ask the nature of the disability)
I thought it was acceptable to ask for the service dogs training certificate (license/diploma - I am not sure just what it is called - Sorry) and require that it is wearing the identification vest.
 

matt9112

Well-Known Member
Surely there are innovative and imaginative ways around this impediment. I can recall attending college football games in the '70's where the "No Alcohol" announcement was gleefully cheered by most of the student section waving their flasks and mixed drinks at the scoreboard.

Yes i bring rum and coke in my yeti but im honestly a beer guy. So thats a bit harder im not trying to get wasted i want to enjoy a nice cold one.
 

Rich Brownn

Well-Known Member
I thought it was acceptable to ask for the service dogs training certificate (license/diploma - I am not sure just what it is called - Sorry) and require that it is wearing the identification vest.
There's no such thing as an official license or diploma. Anyone can throw on the vest and claim its a service dog -- there's no law requiring any accreditation
 

Trackmaster

Well-Known Member
There's no such thing as an official license or diploma. Anyone can throw on the vest and claim its a service dog -- there's no law requiring any accreditation

Either we live in a very watered down, dumbified society (which I don't doubt) or people are full of crap when it comes to the law requiring accommodations and the service animals and vendors or entertainment providers not being allowed to even ask for credentials. I don't see how a law could tie somebody's hands and force them to provide service and special accommodations and not even allow them to see the verifiable credentials. Either no law exists, or we just live in a terrible society.

Nobody has a right to entertainment. People have rights to things like food, water, electric, safety, healthcare, dignity, etc. But they have no right to Mickey Mouse. Its a commercial transaction -- you give them money and they entertain you. You can choose to not give them money, and they should be able to choose to not entertain you and not take your money. Its a two-way street. If a baker can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple, parks should be able to choose to not let a dog that hasn't been house trained into their park.
 

Chi84

Premium Member
Either we live in a very watered down, dumbified society (which I don't doubt) or people are full of crap when it comes to the law requiring accommodations and the service animals and vendors or entertainment providers not being allowed to even ask for credentials. I don't see how a law could tie somebody's hands and force them to provide service and special accommodations and not even allow them to see the verifiable credentials. Either no law exists, or we just live in a terrible society.

Nobody has a right to entertainment. People have rights to things like food, water, electric, safety, healthcare, dignity, etc. But they have no right to Mickey Mouse. Its a commercial transaction -- you give them money and they entertain you. You can choose to not give them money, and they should be able to choose to not entertain you and not take your money. Its a two-way street. If a baker can refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple, parks should be able to choose to not let a dog that hasn't been house trained into their park.
I don't think people have an issue with the protections afforded by the law, it's the lack of enforcement provisions leading to rampant abuse that is causing concern. No one has a right to entertainment, but if you decide to open a business providing entertainment to the public, there are laws ensuring that you can't exclude people on the basis of, say, race or physical disability. Sexual orientation is still being decided due to asserted conflicts with religious freedom. So if you open a jazz club, the ADA provides that you have to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled, such as wheelchair ramps or allowing a sight-impaired person to bring in a service animal. The ADA provides that the animal must be trained (which at a minimum means house-broken) but has little in the way of ensuring enforcement of that provision. If everyone acts as they should, only people needing service animals would bring them into businesses, and the animals would be trained. That's the way it worked for many years - you never saw an animal on public transportation or in a grocery store unless it was a "seeing-eye" dog.

Two things have changed, in my opinion. Medical science has advanced to the point where service animals are able to assist in new and expanded ways - such as animals trained to detect diabetic episodes or epileptic seizures (and I'm sure there are more). This means more service animals on the whole. Second - and this is the problem - there has been a proliferation of self-entitled goofs who take their pets everywhere and claim they are service animals. The ADA was trying to protect the privacy of disabled people by not subjecting them to having to hand over their "papers" stating the nature of their disability to random business owners every time they wanted to go somewhere. It was supposed to give them some semblance of normalcy to lead their lives the way everyone else does. But of course this now will be changed in order to prevent attacks and misbehavior by people's untrained pets. It really is sad.
 

Jumpr71

Member
I thought it was acceptable to ask for the service dogs training certificate (license/diploma - I am not sure just what it is called - Sorry) and require that it is wearing the identification vest.
Not acceptable and not legal. 2 questions can be asked. Is that a service dog? and What is it trained to do? . Service dogs are not required to wear a vest and there is no such thing as a “certificate” or license for a service dog. A disabled person can self train a dog, have someone else train a dog, or purchase a dog from a service dog trainer. Each animal is uniquely t
I thought it was acceptable to ask for the service dogs training certificate (license/diploma - I am not sure just what it is called - Sorry) and require that it is wearing the identification vest.
I don't think people have an issue with the protections afforded by the law, it's the lack of enforcement provisions leading to rampant abuse that is causing concern. No one has a right to entertainment, but if you decide to open a business providing entertainment to the public, there are laws ensuring that you can't exclude people on the basis of, say, race or physical disability. Sexual orientation is still being decided due to asserted conflicts with religious freedom. So if you open a jazz club, the ADA provides that you have to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled, such as wheelchair ramps or allowing a sight-impaired person to bring in a service animal. The ADA provides that the animal must be trained (which at a minimum means house-broken) but has little in the way of ensuring enforcement of that provision. If everyone acts as they should, only people needing service animals would bring them into businesses, and the animals would be trained. That's the way it worked for many years - you never saw an animal on public transportation or in a grocery store unless it was a "seeing-eye" dog.

Two things have changed, in my opinion. Medical science has advanced to the point where service animals are able to assist in new and expanded ways - such as animals trained to detect diabetic episodes or epileptic seizures (and I'm sure there are more). This means more service animals on the whole. Second - and this is the problem - there has been a proliferation of self-entitled goofs who take their pets everywhere and claim they are service animals. The ADA was trying to protect the privacy of disabled people by not subjecting them to having to hand over their "papers" stating the nature of their disability to random business owners every time they wanted to go somewhere. It was supposed to give them some semblance of normalcy to lead their lives the way everyone else does. But of course this now will be changed in order to prevent attacks and misbehavior by people's untrained pets. It really is sad.
So does anyone in this thread actually use a service dog in their daily life? More specifically, is there anyone in this discussion who is not mobility impaired using a service dog?
 

sfbntpc

Member
I was there after Christmas and noticed a few questionable pets, but most were definitely working. I have a dog that we will be training as a service pet in the next year and I actually looked up Disney’s policy and they don’t require any formal paperwork to prove the dog is actually working. I have also looked on Amazon for an “in training” vest, and was shocked to see that anyone can order a vest for their “working” dog. Disney should really require some sort of paperwork from a doctor, therapist, or trainer to prove that the is needed/has been properly trained
 

JoeCamel

Well-Known Member
I was there after Christmas and noticed a few questionable pets, but most were definitely working. I have a dog that we will be training as a service pet in the next year and I actually looked up Disney’s policy and they don’t require any formal paperwork to prove the dog is actually working. I have also looked on Amazon for an “in training” vest, and was shocked to see that anyone can order a vest for their “working” dog. Disney should really require some sort of paperwork from a doctor, therapist, or trainer to prove that the is needed/has been properly trained
The people who make ADA laws would disagree with you
 

sfbntpc

Member
The people who make ADA laws would disagree with you
In what way??? I’m actually new to all this stuff and I would be perfectly fine with providing documentation. I will say I got aggravated one day in a certain chain store because I left my dog in the car because their policy says no dogs and when we walked in someone had a dog in a doggie stroller and no one said anything to the couple. We have been trying to get her used to any situations, but because she isn’t even in training yet, I follow the rules of each establishment
 

mlee10

Well-Known Member
My daughter (9) uses a service dog in her everyday life. She has epilepsy and anxiety (which can trigger her seizures). Our dog Nala alerts us if she is having a seizure and just seems to know when her anxiety is high. We have done Disney 2 times with out bringing Nala. She was still young and we did not want to stress her out.

We are going in March and are still trying to decide if Nala is coming with us or not this time. She has been in very crowed areas and does great so I'm not worried about her being over worked. Our only thought for bringing her is that this will be the first trip where we do not do a stroller as Layla is to big for a stroller. When we had the stroller, she was able to just sit and hang by herself to decompress. We have looked at getting a "special needs" stroller that would work for her size. Having Nala would just make her more comfortable without her stroller....it's a toss up for us!

There is zero question that Nala is a service dog. She does not get distracted by other people around her, she uses the bathroom on comand, she doesn't flinch when people come up and per her without permission (although not many people do as she is a German Shepard), she is 100% focused on Layla until her release word is given. She is a love and has been such a blessing to our family. I had to see people bending the rules to suit their wants.
 

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