Let us not forget the biggest of these travesties, making people wait outside of the amazing queue for the Indiana Jones Adventure.
Having had the privilege to visit Disneyland, that one killed me when I experienced the problem firsthand. There's
so much incredibly detailed queue space in there that just goes to waste since you breeze right through it... plus it makes what would be an air-conditioned, immersive queuing experience a sweaty, dull, unpleasant one.
While we're on this subject (because it does fascinate me), the reasons I find the aforementioned attractions Express solutions so obnoxiously poor are as follows:
Hulk - For the Single Riders queue (previously the Exprress queue), you travel straight through a backstage area that is nothing but chain link fences with some off the shelf tubing. No real theming attempted. Worse, you enter the station through what was once an emergency exit, flooding unnecessary/unplanned lighting into the building, damaging the carefully constructed atmosphere.
Doctor Doom - Almost entirely the same situation as Hulk. You travel through a combination of emergency exits and the exit pathway, through a door that's supposed to remain shut to keep the pre-loading rooms dark and foreboding.
Dudley Do-Right - The Single Riders line takes you through an emergency exit down an extremely narrow, unpleasant industrial staircase. To their credit, they added some of the parody movie posters to help this space, but it's still pretty tacky. It used to be worse - for Express, you went through several unthemed, backstage rooms and industrial staircases (literally with no theming at all) to reach the loading station.
Men in Black - for Single Riders, you enter the same hallway as express, but you completely skip the main auditorium with the television and alien AA's, as well as the armory. Instead, you go down a long hallway (which is actually pretty in theme, with posters and a similar aesthetic to the rest of the attraction despite technically being backstage) - the issue is at the merge point, where you're left waiting next to a maintenance stairwell (which is filthy as all hell), covered only by a dust-ridden black curtain. Ew.
Honorable Mention - Cat in the Hat used to have the dishonor of being placed on this list, with the Express Queue being routed briefly outside the building into 100% backstage territory (this was years ago, I recall people calling it "sketchy") before re-entering the building and proceeding the loading area. Mercifully, Universal devised a new queuing situation where you remain in the main queuing space the entire time.
, didn't shell out the ca$h for EP. This was the first time in a LONG time I didn't have EP. Anyway, we rode Mummy, Spidey, Doom, Bilage Rat Barges, and MIB in the stand-by line and I must say, I had NEVER seen the queues before! So my question is: Do you think you're missing out on some of the ride experiences as a whole by using EP?
