So I just got back from an unexpected four-day trip in mid July and the south/central American tour groups were in full force, as usual, but something seemed different. Their behavior, uniformly, across all four days of our trip, was much, much better than I've seen in the past. No running, screaming, pushing, lying down in the walkways; nothing of the sort, and their chanting was kept to an absolute minimum. In fact, the only times I can recall hearing them chant was when a monitor was gathering his group outside of the Land, where his kids had a wide open area to rally up the kids without getting in anyone else's way, and prior to the show at Fantasmic, where they chanted and started the wave, which everyone in the very full stands joined in with, myself included.
More notably, the groups seemed to have a higher concentration of young adult "monitors" who were easily identified by their flags and garish outfits. I also noticed dozens of rather stern-looking cast members in the parks wearing different uniforms with little Brazilian flag pins. I thought perhaps that they were interpreters, but I didn't see any other such language-specific pins worn by other cast members, so I can only assume that they were there to act as a liaison between the professional monitors and the parks, should the need arise.
The only times I witnessed the kids causing a "problem" were when cast members simply didn't know how to accommodate such large groups. The first was at the load station at Test Track, where the loader was attempting to put a tour group of about 30 kids into the cars. The kids, naturally, wanted to sit in their own groups with their friends, but the cast member seemed to assume that everyone with the same T-shirt ought to be grouped into as few groups of 6 as possible, and their monitor seemed to be too busy translating to figure out the problem. The other time was at the boat dock at Port Orleans Riverside, where a tour group was gathering in the shade under the dock, but also in line for the boat back to the French Quarter. There were "normal" guests before and after the tour group, but as the boat itself was around the corner we couldn't see the dock itself. When a boat came to load for guests, the tour group wasn't ready to depart yet, but no one called to the back of the line for anyone to come forward, so the boat ended up leaving mostly-empty and a bunch of us had to quickly hike back to French Quarter to make our DME bus. In both cases, I'd chalk up the problems to miscommunication rather than behavior.
So I'm wondering; have the years of complaints from "normal" tourists and families caused Disney to begin having some stern talks with the companies that run these tour operations? I really did sense a kind of sea change this year, for the better.
