Park entry security checks

[WDWTrojan]

Ah, okay. I haven't been to Napa Rose since Christmas 2019 - before Covid and its 18 month closure.

The Grand Californian looks great from 50 feet away, but once you get up close you discover it's fairly amateurish and unpolished with its service. And at its price point, that's criminal.

You just get the immediate sense the Grand is being managed by people who have never actually gone to a real hospitality college program, but instead were theme park ride operators and burger flippers who got promoted to a manager job and now just play "Fancy Hotel!" for a living.

Same issue at WDW. They refuse to really hire hospitality experts. At the Ritz Carlton, you interview to work at the Ritz Carlton. You don't interview with a central Marriott casting office in hopes of getting a lucky assignment at a Ritz Carlton property.

At WDW, you interview and could be randomly assigned to the Grand Floridian or to the All Star Music resort. They should be hiring the best of the best for their flagship resorts and you should have to go for a secondary interview with a resort manager, but alas, they don't care.

 

[TP2000]

Same issue at WDW. They refuse to really hire hospitality experts. At the Ritz Carlton, you interview to work at the Ritz Carlton. You don't interview with a central Marriott casting office in hopes of getting a lucky assignment at a Ritz Carlton property.

That's a perfect analogy.

I think Disney fails the most at its highest price offerings like the Grand Californian by constantly transferring CM's from around the property to work there. I've had a Steakhouse 55 waiter tell me proudly he used to work on the canoe ride. Uh... okay, that's cute but not actually impressive.

It's obvious that many of the Grand CM's and their supervisors have no formal training in hospitality from any American college, let alone a truly top-notch hotelier school in Switzerland or France. Their qualifications seem to only be the ability to smile really big while they say "Oh, I'm sooooo sorry!"

At WDW, you interview and could be randomly assigned to the Grand Floridian or to the All Star Music resort. They should be hiring the best of the best for their flagship resorts and you should have to go for a secondary interview with a resort manager, but alas, they don't care.

It's likely similar at Disneyland. The fact that all these CM's openly brag about the entry-level position they started in (ride operator, shopclerk, custodian, etc.) before they transferred to Steakhouse 55 or Carthay Circle or the concierge lounge at the Grand Californian, etc. is a huge warning flag.

If I was the manager of a $600 per night hotel, I would tell the transferred ride operators to shut up about how they used to pull down lapbars at Space Mountain. That's not why people are spending huge amounts for a mediocre, beige hotel room. So it's best if you just be quiet and pretend you have some formal training.

But the hotel managers likely also transferred from a theme park job, so they have no idea it's not something to brag about when you are charging $600 per night for this beige shoebox...

 

[chadwpalm]

I think the "logic" behind not allowing PP guests to cut through GCH is the minimal size of the bag checks going into both DTD and DCA. If they allowed people to cut through from PP or even the Katella hotels, it would make the bag check lines quite long and wouldn't be fair to the GCH guests who paid more to stay closer to have to wait in super long bag check lines.

If we are going to Disneyland can we get bag checked by the monorail station and go in there?

Not sure if this got answered in the midst of all the other replies. You should have already been bag checked into DTD by the time you get to the monorail station, so you won't have to do it there. You are already in the "security bubble" at that point.

Since you would have to go the route TP2000 outlined above, you can definitely take the monorail and save about 1800 feet of walking.

 

[drizgirl]

I think the "logic" behind not allowing PP guests to cut through GCH is the minimal size of the bag checks going into both DTD and DCA. If they allowed people to cut through from PP or even the Katella hotels, it would make the bag check lines quite long and wouldn't be fair to the GCH guests who paid more to stay closer to have to wait in super long bag check lines.



Not sure if this got answered in the midst of all the other replies. You should have already been bag checked into DTD by the time you get to the monorail station, so you won't have to do it there. You are already in the "security bubble" at that point.

Since you would have to go the route TP2000 outlined above, you can definitely take the monorail and save about 1800 feet of walking.

This is exactly why they did it. The change (to not allowing cutting through GCH) occurred when they moved the security perimeter back to include DTD.

And you can take the monorail, but I don't advise ever doing it for rope drop. Even pre-pandemic it was too unreliable and you could be left standing there while crowds were streaming into the park before you.

 

[mickEblu]

What they should do is re-install the park entrance into Paradise Pier for Paradise Pier Hotel guests.

Or, if they can't do that, allow Paradise Pier Hotel guests to use their room card to scan into the sidewalk gate into the Grand Californian so they can get their kids to Cars Land quicker.

Or, if they can't do that, train their CM's to not yell and scold paying hotel guests who don't follow the "guidelines!" on a winter weekday when some little kids from Utah just want to get to Cars Land.

Paradise Pier guests used to have a park entrance in Paradise Pier? Where was it?

 

[chadwpalm]

Paradise Pier guests used to have a park entrance in Paradise Pier? Where was it?

Yesterland: The Original Private Entrance Exclusively for Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel Guests

www.yesterland.com