The Miscellaneous Thought Thread

[Rich T]

Yeah, cats can catch mice and other rodents but they are not good with rats.

I beg to differ. My cat was the champion rat and gopher catcher of my neighborhood.

 

[Rich T]

It was a nice, sunny 78 in Central Florida today. And my neighbor Lord Snapz says hi.

 

[CaptinEO]

I'm so glad you had such a wonderful time! Since you have a season pass, are you planning on going back? Their Christmas event is pretty impressive (second only to the park I'm about to recommend below), and they tend to shift their offerings around a little bit for each festival they offer.

That sounds awesome! We would love to do that. No plans to go back quite yet but of course anything can happen! I'm a sucker for Christmas decorations.

Believe it or not, people actually used to like Mystery Mine before the roughness set in! It's basically a much older version of Hangtime at Knott's made by the same company, but with better theming and epically worse restraints/layout. I don't fit anymore, but it's one of the few rides where I'm not bothered by that fact.

I see, so it used to be pretty smooth then? Every ride was so smooth it was really jarring for us to go on Mystery Mine. It feels like the park has their maintenance in check besides this one ride. I didn't realize they have a version at Knotts. Glad it seems Knotts made some improvements. Mystery Mine theming was horrifying. Dolly must have been in a dark place when she approved that one.

Sounds like you got some good southern cooking in and out of the park. It's just a very different philosophy that's very regional-more than enough to eat, and all of it delicious and artery clogging. I love visiting the south, but the food is part of the reason I don't think I could live there-too many delicious-but-terrible-for-you options everywhere you look that I'm not sure I'd be able to resist.

Yes the southern food is so different! Every restaraunt would give us soup, fritters, pies, etc all for free and the portions were HUGE. Also every restaraunt has the same few items. We lived it up though and loved the meals.

I agree about how tempting the food is, we both said if we lived there we would probably die from food alone.

If you're looking for something similar to Dollywood, I highly recommend Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO (itself somewhat similar of a town to Pigeon Forge or Gaitlinburg). While it's not affiliated with Dolly, it's owned and operated by the other company involved with Dollywood, Herschend Family Entertainment. The two parks can be broadly compared within their company to the Disney parks-Silver Dollar City is the Disneyland to Dollywood's Walt Disney World. In terms of atmosphere, if you picture the Craftsman's Valley area of Dollywood and made it the size of an entire park, that's essentially what Silver Dollar City is. SDC is similarly built into mountainous terrain, has great customer service and food options, unique coasters, a Blazing Fury-esque ride called Fire in the Hole (unfortunately closing after this year with a replacement version already under construction), a Flooded Mine dark ride that's of similar vintage to Pirates (with the budget being of course much closer to something you'd see at Dollywood than Disneyland), their own unique foods, their own spin on Cinammon Bread, and the park is also sitting on top of a cave that can be toured for free with your park admission. Free parking too, and 50% off with your Dollywood Season Pass!

Silver Dollar City sounds awesome then! And we loved the family friendly Vegas vibes we got from Gatlinburg so it sounds like Branson is right up our alley. We used to love Vegas but we don't drink or smoke and it's gotten to bougie for us as well as scary. Even though we don't have kids we'd rather go to the family friendly areas.

I love that you say it's similar to craftsmen valley and has those old dark rides (too bad about their blazing fury though)

That whole area is something else. So much to see and do, from the respectable (the National Park), to the unbearably tacky yet frequently delightful tourist traps, and everything in between. I used to go every once in awhile back in the day, but haven't been in about nine years. That area, already growing fast at that point, has only exploded since then. It's like Vegas if there was no gambling, the emphasis of everything was on Family Friendly stuff, and it was growing at an exponential rate.

Hahaha this emphasizes what I was just thinking! It's totally like a family friendly Vegas! We were thinking the same thing!

We had a short time there and wanted to do more tourist trap stuff like the Sky Bridge and alpine coasters but had to save it for a future trip.

Some of the tourist trap stuff looked so corny it was drawing me in for the wrong reasons.

The national park was beautiful. We drove the cades cove loop but didn't see any Bears unfortunately, probably too cold for them at this time of year. My wife got a kick out of me making a wrong turn that ended up adding 2 hours to our time driving through the national parks. Unfortunately we had no GPS and by the time I did I had "exited" through a different park entrance than the one we arrived in (and the original entrance we came in from was also the closest route back to the airport).

 

[CaptinEO]

This strategy of closing early at night when there was rain that morning will always be baffling to me. It's so clearly a lame attempt by TDA to claw back some profit for the day and reduce labor costs because it was only Mildly Crowded instead of Very Crowded.



There was steady light to moderate rainfall at Disneyland today from park opening until about Noon. It is currently overcast and breezy, but dry. It's unusually cold in SoCal for late March. (It would even be cold for early January). The park was supposed to close at 11pm tonight, but will now close at 10pm. More rain showers are forecast to move through central OC this evening, but spottier than this morning's steady rain.

The park is still fairly busy today. Most E Tickets have a 30 to 45 minute wait at 3pm. Indy is an hour wait, and Star Wars Rise is at 90 minutes. Lots of outdoor entertainment/fireworks will be cancelled due to wet ground and winds. So running rides are most important.

So why close an hour early exactly? Labor costs, apparently.

Mattercam at 3:03PM. Overcast, breezy, unusually cold, not very attractive. But it hasn't rained in Anaheim since Noon.

View attachment 705357

I feel for these people. They probably paid out the ears for these days to visit because its prime spring break time so Disney charged them extra.

This is all for the privilege of showing up on a rainy day. To top it all off they close the parks early just to ruin the already diminished customer experience that much more.

 

[Californian Elitist]

This is all for the privilege of showing up on a rainy day. To top it all off they close the parks early just to ruin the already diminished customer experience that much more.

What?

This is more likely than not due to safety. Disney will never purposefully end opportunities to bring in more revenue from guests early if it wasn’t something serious.

No customer service was ruined by taking precaution.

 

[CaptinEO]

What?

This is more likely than not due to safety. Disney will never purposefully end opportunities to bring in more revenue from guests early if it wasn’t something serious.

No customer service was ruined by taking precaution.

They have been closing the park an hour early nearly every rainy day over the last few months. It is not a safety issue from what I can tell.

These days are losses for the company and they are skimming away the final hour when the parks would be mostly dead. It's a business decision that hurts the costumers that want to tough out the rain and cold.

 

[Californian Elitist]

They have been closing the park an hour early nearly every rainy day over the last few months. It is not a safety issue from what I can tell.

These days are losses for the company and they are skimming away the final hour when the parks would be mostly dead. It's a business decision that hurts the costumers that want to tough out the rain and cold.

It likely is safety. You think they’re closing the park early for funsies? Have you ever worked at the parks? They take safety very seriously.

The amount of rain Southern California has gotten has been extremely rare and even dangerous. The customers aren’t being hurt by having to leave 60 minutes earlier than expected.

Safety first.

 

[CaptinEO]

It likely is safety. You think they’re closing the park early for funsies? Have you ever worked at the parks? They take safety very seriously.

The amount of rain Southern California has gotten has been extremely rare and even dangerous. The customers aren’t being hurt by having to leave 60 minutes earlier than expected.

Safety first.

I have worked at a themepark. I don't get why you are assuming at 11pm every time there is rain something bad happens. What's the safety risk? They can close rides on an individual basis for safety. It has nothing to do with the whole park.

Customers are being hurt over losing an hour that they paid for. I know especially when I was younger I'd stay from opening to closing.

 

[PiratesMansion]

That sounds awesome! We would love to do that. No plans to go back quite yet but of course anything can happen! I'm a sucker for Christmas decorations.


I see, so it used to be pretty smooth then? Every ride was so smooth it was really jarring for us to go on Mystery Mine. It feels like the park has their maintenance in check besides this one ride. I didn't realize they have a version at Knotts. Glad it seems Knotts made some improvements. Mystery Mine theming was horrifying. Dolly must have been in a dark place when she approved that one.


Yes the southern food is so different! Every restaraunt would give us soup, fritters, pies, etc all for free and the portions were HUGE. Also every restaraunt has the same few items. We lived it up though and loved the meals.

I agree about how tempting the food is, we both said if we lived there we would probably die from food alone.

Silver Dollar City sounds awesome then! And we loved the family friendly Vegas vibes we got from Gatlinburg so it sounds like Branson is right up our alley. We used to love Vegas but we don't drink or smoke and it's gotten to bougie for us as well as scary. Even though we don't have kids we'd rather go to the family friendly areas.

I love that you say it's similar to craftsmen valley and has those old dark rides (too bad about their blazing fury though)

Hahaha this emphasizes what I was just thinking! It's totally like a family friendly Vegas! We were thinking the same thing!

We had a short time there and wanted to do more tourist trap stuff like the Sky Bridge and alpine coasters but had to save it for a future trip.

Some of the tourist trap stuff looked so corny it was drawing me in for the wrong reasons.

The national park was beautiful. We drove the cades cove loop but didn't see any Bears unfortunately, probably too cold for them at this time of year. My wife got a kick out of me making a wrong turn that ended up adding 2 hours to our time driving through the national parks. Unfortunately we had no GPS and by the time I did I had "exited" through a different park entrance than the one we arrived in (and the original entrance we came in from was also the closest route back to the airport).

Well, I don't know if Mystery Mine was ever SUPER smooth, but it definitely didn't used to be that bad!

Yep, Hangtime at Knott's is basically the same idea as Mystery Mine, but it's much smoother because it's newer, and it also uses lap bars. So even if it does go to seed over time, at least it won't ever bash you in the head the whole time in the way MM does.

Branson's very similar to Pigeon Forge/Gaitlinburg. Not QUITE as booming/bustling, but a very similar overall feeling. Hilly in a different way-there's very little truly flat land out there. It's all a bit more manageable than PF/G. There are definite similarities but at the same time a vibe that's distinct. Mostly I just go to Silver Dollar City in all honestly, but there's definitely a lot of active redevelopment happening in Branson after a few years where it seemed stagnant. The future of the town seems bright, and SDC itself is clearly prepping itself for a huge expansion, much like the one Dollywood's in the midst of right now.

As an aside, it's a little crazy to see that Dollywood continues to be on such a huge growth trajectory, because even if the park stopped building anything new right now, it'd already be pretty unrecognizeable from the park I first visited in 2005. Back then, that pathway from Thunderhead to Tennessee Tornado didn't exist! You'd literally walk up the hill from the park entrance to Thunderhead (at that point the hot new ride), which was its own dead end, with nothing else up there other than a little shack of a gift shop and a pair of restrooms. To get to Tennessee Tornado, you'd just have to turn around and walk the fifteen minutes all the way back to TT, at that time ALSO at a dead end. That park has to have grown more than any other this century and it just keeps on trucking.

The Christmas event is probably their most notable, but both Dollywood and SDC have a number of different festivals throughout the year that tends to bring with it redone menus, new entertainment sets among the park acts, new entertainment brought in just for the festival, etc. They'll do events or weekends based around certain types of music (Bluegrass, country, gospel, etc). They do a family friendly Halloween event with lit up pumpkins everywhere that is also very popular. That's part of the reason I love those parks-they don't just open for the year and call it done. I know that the SoCal parks do this to an extent also, but the beauty of SDC and Dollywood is that you can visit during each festival and it feels just a little bit different from the ones you've done before. It's a great touch that makes repeat visits more rewarding than at many other parks.

It would take dozens and dozens of visits to do everything in Pigeon Forge/Gaitlinburg. Watching from afar, I truly can't believe how many things have been added or changed. There's one theme park YouTube channel I follow that always has a 30 minute long video of all the new stuff that's come to the area each year. Just completely insane growth that nothing has seemed to put a dent into.

Unfortunately, I can absolutely believe that National Park driving story! Just a huge and confusing labrynth of different roads and topography that skews with your sense of orientation.

I hope I'm able to get back to the area sometime soon, I just keep getting distracted by other destinations (Disneyland and SoCal frequently among them).

 

[PiratesMansion]

It likely is safety. You think they’re closing the park early for funsies? Have you ever worked at the parks? They take safety very seriously.

The amount of rain Southern California has gotten has been extremely rare and even dangerous. The customers aren’t being hurt by having to leave 60 minutes earlier than expected.

Safety first.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say safety never enters into the equation with decisions like these, the others are likely right that in this case; it probably is a case of cost savings more than anything else.

Other parks do this semi-frequently. If it rains long enough or hard enough, the crowd will inevitably head home early or just not come at all, and the park will call an audible and close early. It's not fun, but it happens from time to time. In areas where it rains more often, most people understand that they are taking a risk if they go to a park on a day where bad weather is supposed to happen, so they either choose not to go or go with the understanding that they need to make the most of whatever the day allows them to do.

A lot of times when a park would close especially early (like my home Six Flags), they would hand out vouchers that would let each guest back in another day that season for free to make up for the weather. But that's if the park closed super, super early or the weather was especially, persistently bad and interfering. Not so much if a park closed an hour earlier.

I don't condone this early closure behavior on the part of the parks, and it's pretty rare for this to happen at a park that has resort hotels full of guests. But at the same time, if the guest got almost a full scheduled day of operation out of it and the crowds decreased because of the weather, it likely was dramatically easier for guests to do everything they would have wanted to do anyway in less time than normal, and chances are everyone who so desired would have enough time to do everything they wanted to do in the time the park stayed open (assuming that they weren't extremely adamant about riding Alice that day). So the park probably figures that almost no one will be upset if they close an hour early since they probably got to do everything they wanted to do in the time they were open.

While I have never worked at Disneyland or any other park, I've been to enough of them over time to have a general idea of how they operate. SoCal, by virtue of its geography, has an exceptionally unique weather system that means that most of this time they just don't have to think about this most of the time, but this is not unheard of behavior elsewhere. And if SoCal guests are genuinely averse to rain as has been implied in many threads over time, AND this weather is more severe by SoCal standards than normal rain, AND if other parks down the street will surrender to the weather and just choose not to open at all because of it, hardly anyone is going to point to Disneyland as closing early to save money. But the fact remains that unless Disneyland has exceptionally bad drainage or is exceptionally understaffed, they're probably not closing early primarily because of safety concerns. If they felt they were going to make anything approaching what they would on a normal day, they'd probably stay open their full scheduled operating day. But they don't (and almost no one will call them on it), so they won't.

 

[Californian Elitist]

I have worked at a themepark. I don't get why you are assuming at 11pm every time there is rain something bad happens. What's the safety risk? They can close rides on an individual basis for safety. It has nothing to do with the whole park.

Customers are being hurt over losing an hour that they paid for. I know especially when I was younger I'd stay from opening to closing.

You’re the one making assumptions. I used the word “likely” for a reason.

How do you know it has nothing to do with the whole park? I’m not going to pretend I know what exactly the safety risk is. There are plenty of things I would have never considered to be safety hazards that are actually safety hazards. I’m speaking from experience working directly in the park.

A paid ticket doesn’t guarantee being able to stay in the park until closing. How else have guests been hurt by having to leave 60 minutes earlier than expected?

 

[TP2000]

It likely is safety. You think they’re closing the park early for funsies? Have you ever worked at the parks? They take safety very seriously.

Safety? Nope! That's a total farce.

Why was it not dangerous to open the park at 8am this morning in light, steady rain and pack it as full as possible with as many people that showed up on such a drippy and cold day? But then they had to close the park early at 10pm when the last rain shower had ended two hours earlier? If it's suddenly unsafe to operate Disneyland in light rain, why did they even open in light rain at 8am this morning?

Here's the rain gauge two blocks east of DCA on Katella. There was light steady rain at park opening at 8am, moderate showers in the late morning and late afternoon, and then no rain for the last few hours of the night. But by Noon they had announced they would close early due to "heavy rain". The total rainfall in the Resort District the entire day since Midnight was 1.57 inches as of 10pm.

This graph is measured in tenths of an inch per hour. When Orlando, Tokyo and Chinese theme parks measure rainfall in inches per hour.

Here is the weather radar for SoCal at 10pm, when Disneyland closed early yet hadn't seen rain for several hours and there was no rain headed to Anaheim within the next hour or two. "Safety"? Or just labor cost savings?

The amount of rain Southern California has gotten has been extremely rare and even dangerous.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about operating a theme park in light to moderate rain.

If there was something dangerous about operating Disneyland in light rain and unseasonably cold temps, they would have evacuated everyone out of the park at 11am when a moderate rain shower passed overhead for 20 minutes, as seen in the weather station data above.

But that doesn't explain how all the other Disney theme parks around the world routinely operate in heavy downpours, cold, and/or snow.

The customers aren’t being hurt by having to leave 60 minutes earlier than expected.

Safety first.

No one is physically harmed by closing an hour early 10 hours after light to moderate rainfall. But it's tacky. And cheap. And clearly a greedy grab at labor savings and profits on a day that was slightly less busy than it should have been.

At the early park closing of 10pm, the wait time at closing for Indy was still 60 minutes and Space Mountain was 45 minutes. They cancelled both parades, both Fantasmic! performances, and the fireworks due to rain and breezy winds. All they had today was rides, and they closed early.

Personal Weather Station Dashboard | Weather Underground

Weather Underground provides local & long-range weather forecasts, weather reports, maps & tropical weather conditions for locations worldwide.

www.wunderground.com

 

[TP2000]

While I wouldn't go so far as to say safety never enters into the equation with decisions like these, the others are likely right that in this case; it probably is a case of cost savings more than anything else.

I've lived in over a dozen other states coast-to-coast besides California. I can tell you from SoCal experience that while today's weather in Anaheim was dreary and definitely not worthy of a TV commercial; highs only in the 50's, drippy, showery, breezy, it was not unsafe or unusual in any way. Especially for a global theme park company that also operates identical theme parks in places with often severe daily weather and heavy rainfall like Tokyo, Orlando, and Hong Kong.

This is a cheap and rather tacky cost saving tactic that TDA uses far too often, in my opinion.

Especially during a busy vacation period like Spring Break where you've got full hotels and tens of thousands of people from out of state or overseas visiting. They cancelled all the major entertainment today in both parks because of light rainfall and/or breezy winds at higher elevations. Then they closed early at 10pm, when Indy still had an hour long Standby wait.

When it's raining in the morning and they don't meet their attendance estimate for the day, they announce they are closing early 12 hours later. TDA does this even if the rain stopped hours ago and there is no inherent danger in being inside Disneyland when it's cold and damp.

A one-day, one-park ticket to Disneyland on Tuesday cost $169 per person. Or $194 if you added the $25 Genie+ option. Then they cancelled all the major entertainment and closed an hour early because of light rain earlier in the day.

That's just tacky and greedy. It's also not nice. Never mind the long since abandoned concept of being a good "host" to your "guests".


.

 

[CaptinEO]

You’re the one making assumptions. I used the word “likely” for a reason.

How do you know it has nothing to do with the whole park? I’m not going to pretend I know what exactly the safety risk is. There are plenty of things I would have never considered to be safety hazards that are actually safety hazards. I’m speaking from experience working directly in the park.

A paid ticket doesn’t guarantee being able to stay in the park until closing. How else have guests been hurt by having to leave 60 minutes earlier than expected?

The park isn't even saying it's for safety. Why would the rain be safe in the park for most the day but not at 11pm?

Each time they announce it it's usually in the late afternoon. So you are arguing that in the late afternoon every day it is raining Disney has insight that requires them to close at 11pm for safety?

A paid ticket doesnt guarantee much due to terms and conditions but a greedy company can abuse this to their advantage.

 

[TP2000]

The park isn't even saying it's for safety. Why would the rain be safe in the park for most the day but not at 11pm?

Each time they announce it it's usually in the late afternoon. So you are arguing that in the late afternoon every day it is raining Disney has insight that requires them to close at 11pm for safety?

A paid ticket doesnt guarantee much due to terms and conditions but a greedy company can abuse this to their advantage.

Exactly.

That some folks would claim it's for "safety", which obviously makes absolutely no sense looking at the facts and actual data, only emboldens a greedy management team to continue to be greedy.

"There was a steady light rain falling when we took your $169 and let you into the park at 8am, which caused our attendance to be 20% under estimates, so we're going to cancel all major entertainment for the day and then close an hour early tonight when it's no longer raining. Safety First!"

 

[Disney Analyst]

What is happening in California?

 

[TP2000]

What is happening in California?

Unseasonably cold weather for the entire Western US has driven strong low pressure systems south out of the Gulf of Alaska all winter. Now that the unseasonably cold weather is battling the natural spring warm-up as the planet tilts towards the spring sun, you get wild weather!

The NWS gave this short tornado a FE0 rating, the lowest rung on the six ratings in the FE0 to FE5 scale, but it still did some damage. Ripped roof tiles and debris off of these industrial buildings in Montebello this morning!

 

[TP2000]

The good news for all this winter weather is that the California drought for the entire state is over and done with, and the drought further east in the Western Great Basin is also ending soon too.

Tomorrow morning the US Drought Monitor updates it's Drought Map, but because the info is delayed by three full days, all of the rain that has fallen all over California the past two days won't be counted in the Drought Map update tomorrow.

But even then, the rain that fell last week will push the vast majority of California out of drought status as of tomorrow morning. It's looking like there will be pockets of drought left only in the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, and the far northern Sierras and Siskiyou mountains (where most of the water is still locked up in snow and won't melt until May).

Orange County will be removed from Drought status entirely with the next map update. This is great news for Disneyland's mature landscaping. Any gardener in the West knows you can water a lawn easily, but to keep an old, mature tree looking its best there's no replacement for a winters worth of drenching rains from Mother Nature! Especially on the northern/western edges of the park where the trees are many decades old with deep root systems and large branch canopies. Sprinkler systems can't make those monsters thrive like natural, long-term rain can.

 

[Californian Elitist]

What is happening in California?

The experts warned us, but what they say is moot and pointless, remember?

 

[TP2000]

The experts warned us, but what they say is moot and pointless, remember?

No, the experts told us four months ago that this winter would be drier and warmer than normal for Disneyland and California.

The exact opposite happened. Consistently, from November through March.

The experts weren't just a little wrong, they were entirely wrong and massively inaccurate. Which makes them worthy of ribbing and mockery because they still pretend to be "experts". Expert at what, being completely wrong and still claiming competence?

Here was their Expert Winter Outlook for this winter.

This last one is my favorite of their Expert Predictions from a few months ago, and we will discuss this drought topic more tomorrow and next Thursday as almost all of California and much of the West is officially removed from Drought status.

The experts actually predicted the three year old drought would actually get worse this winter in California! .....