I'm gonna stick my head out from Bar Command to give you folks my $0.02 here...
Worst traffic for a disney park in all of my 40-50 trips to WDW. Insane is an understatement
I haven't seen traffic at WDW like that since the 1970s. No joke.
From what I've read, there were some traffic accidents that also contributed to some of the congestion also.
Weeeell... traffic was
so bad that some cars were overheating or running out of gas.
if more people used disney busses this would me a much smaller problem.....so let me hear about you driving to the parks eveyday so you dont have to wait for a bus...nights like this should only be for disney resort guests ONLY using provided transport.....
Remember, kids: don't feed the trolls.
Disney Resort Guests only???? That will NEVER happen!
cough ExtraMagicHours cough
I'm wondering with all the reports of the crowds and such, was this event open to Cast Members? Maybe all the ones who had off + the excitement of a non-ticketed event to the general public?
Yes, it was open to off-duty CMs. Yes, some with a sense of entitlement showed up -- I saw several of them myself. No, it didn't ruin my night.
I think the bigger issue was that, for all intents and purposes, from 9:00pm to 1:00am,
DHS was the only theme park in Central Florida that was open (not counting the hard-ticketed
MNSSHP at the MK). And when the MK closed to day guests at 7:00, they were directing angry guests to the Studios.
I think Disney would be crazy not to at least consider some options after tonight.
Oh, they're definitely considering options. I see it going one of two ways: either they'll turn it into a hard ticket event, or they'll just decide it was more trouble than it was worth (and Disney is paying
dearly:
thousands of furious guests -- and let's not even go into how much they lost in comped nights and merch) and not revisit it again.
I see alot of complaining and the traffic was intense.. Took me 3 hours, but I had a great time.
I did, too... and it took me 2.5 hrs to get to the Studios from the TTA. We took the Bus, because I was certain they were turning away cars. Turns out I was right.
The park was definetaly under staffed. We finally made it into the parking lot at DHS at 6:30pm, it tooks us 45 minutes for something that usually takes 5min. and there were only 2 CM working the Parking Lot...Ate at Commisary and they had 5 CM and about 5 managers helping out, all in all, at that time, it was around 8:30pm it went pretty smoothly. While waiting to get into the parking lot I saw CM walking out on the main road, wearing their costumes trying to get to the park for their shifts...
I wasn't pleased when I waited in line around 10:00
outside Sunset Sweets to get a couple of cokes -- only to discover
ONE cash register was open. Bad form, Disney. Bad form.
Just to let you know, one of the CM handing out the cards to email Disney about getting a picture an autograph of the Villains was Dan Cockerell, Vice-President of DHS.
Yes, he was there. And I have it on good authority that there was a fairly grim meeting this morning at Team Disney regarding the events last Friday night at the Studios. They are
well-aware of the issues.