A Crowded Weekend, FP+, And An Offsite Stay-Reporting Back (Very Long)

[JimmyV]

Now that we have been back home for several days and I’ve had a bit of time to digest everything, I thought I would post about our “off-site” experiences at the parks in general, and with FP+ in particular as they relate to traveling at a crowded time of the year. We were at AK on the Saturday of President’s Day Weekend, DHS on Sunday, Epcot on Monday, MK on Tuesday, and back to Epcot for the morning of that Wednesday before heading to the airport mid-afternoon. We booked our stay at the Dolphin well in advance of the park-wide implementation of FP+, and at the time of booking, we were expecting the usual treatment of guests at the Dolphin as being “on site” for all meaningful purposes. But the Dolphin and Swan are not treated that way for purposes of FP+, and it is very clear that the FP+ experience differs greatly as between being on and off site. I know that there are many who will say: “Great. That’s the way it should be.” But I do think that the Swan and Dolphin should not be lumped in with the Red Roof Inn on 192. When the Friendship Boats pull in to the boat dock there, you are announced as arriving at Walt Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort. You can book the hotels (and packages) through Disney Central Reservations. They have character breakfasts there. You get the use of EMH’s. But the inability of guests to pre-book FP+ is a significant blow as I will explain.

First, let me get one thing out in the open. The new FP+ experience did not ruin our vacation. In more ways than not, it was a non-event in terms of our personal enjoyment. At no point did I feel that we were benefitting from the new system. But rarely did we feel that we were suffering because of it, except at Epcot. Quite honestly, the single biggest impact that we found from FP+ was a visible deterioration of the beauty of the parks, and while that didn’t necessarily take away from our overall enjoyment, it did lessen the special feel that makes Disney World what it is. Allow me to explain.

The inability of offsite people to pre-book FP+ experiences means that approximately half (and probably more than half when local schools are on break like President’s Day Weekend) of the visitors have to fight for FP+s once they arrive. Disney has placed i-Pad carrying CMs in strategic places to assist with this. And as an editorial aside, I strongly recommend that the first one or two times that you book your FP+s, you do so by working with a human. Disney had a hard enough time with people trying to figure out finger scans and KTTK card turnstiles. Why it thinks that the average person will take so easily to a self-serve FP+ kiosk is beyond me. The greatest sense of frustration that we saw from guests were the ones waiting to use kiosks as the person at the kiosk fumbled around trying to link their cards, their friends cards, make their choices, photograph the screens, etc. We used humans to book our FP+s every day except the last, and on all but one occasion the CM ran into blips and glitches. They got booted out of the system and had to start over. They had trouble linking our cards. They were encountering no availability at attractions that they knew had availability. Each time they were able to work around these problems, but the average time with a CM was around 5 minutes. It doesn’t seem like much, but first, if you are the 12th person in line to work with that CM, then do the math to figure out how long it is going to take you to get what you need. Second the level of frustration and angst was heard (by me at least) from many, many guests who kept saying, “With the old system, I would have been done in 30 seconds.” One poor father who waited to use one of the kiosks at the International Gateway at Epcot sent his family ahead to line up to see the Frozen Girls because the person at the kiosk in front of him was taking 15-20 minutes to figure the whole thing out. He was seething.

But back to my comment about how FP+ use is impacting the visual beauty of the parks. First, as discussed above, offsite people have to queue up to get their FP+s. Our strategy each and every day was to arrive at RD and head immediately to a popular ride. Except on our first day, on our way to the Safari, we encountered several i-Pad CMs who were not assisting other guests. Since there didn’t seem to be a huge swarm of people bee-lining to the Safari, I calculated that we could nab our FP+s and still head to the Safari before the line got too big. The strategy pretty much paid off, with a couple of “blips”. The CM did run into several error messages along the way, apologized for the inefficiency of the new system that no CM seems to like, and got us on our way in about 7 minutes. Except the system was showing no availability for Everest even though she knew it was bookable. So she added a phantom FP+ for Primeval Whirl as a placeholder and told us to see a different CM in a little while to change that to Everest. We were on our way and got to the Safari with only a 5 minute wait. Success. At DHS we went straight to TSM and got our FP+s after riding from a CM right outside the ride entrance. Only waited behind two other people there, and got to ToT with only a 5 minute wait. At Epcot we went straight to Soarin’ and got our FP+s afterward from a CM in the garden area between The Land and The Living Seas. But by the time we got to Test Track, the wait was 70 minutes. That was our worst experience, and there will be more to come on that topic. At the MK, we went straight to Space Mountain and got our FP+s in Tomorrowland by the Lunching Pad. I only waited behind two other people at this point, but ETWB was completely booked except for 9:00 p.m. That was too late, so we decided to go straight there as a SB and it worked out fine. It did force a change of our Touring Plan to do Belle so early in the day, but it was all good. OK. So back to the point about the deterioration of park beauty. I have given you our RD experience. But the vast majority of guests do not arrive at RD. Instead, they arrive an hour or two (or three) later and have to queue up for their FP+s in and do so in areas of the parks where before, there were no lines and no people. And the lines grew to enormous proportions. Most noticeably, at DHS, there were huge crowds underneath the Hat. That entire plaza was filled with people waiting 60+ minutes to get to a CM with an i-Pad. At Epcot, lines of people waiting for FP+ spilled out into walkways. While the crowds were at the “7” to “9” level, it seemed worse than that due to the hordes of people standing around in random lines where lines weren’t designed to be.

But that was just one problem. Perhaps the bigger problem were the FP+ return lines at the attractions themselves. For example, the FP+ return line for Everest when we got in it extended all the way out of the indoor queue, and went clear OVER the bridge to the Nemo theater. A Cast Member had to hold up a sign that said “FP Return” to show people where the line formed, and still, people couldn’t believe it. The FP+ line for the Safari in the afternoon wound its way clear out of the normal queue and well into the walkway for the Pagani Forest Trail. The FP+ return line for BTMRR extended well into the Frontierland walkway. The FP+ line for Space Mountain went out the entrance and extended clear out to the elevator shaft of Astro Oriter taking up a good bit of Tomorrowland. Quite simply, a parks that had been cleverly designed to absorb crowds and hide them from view are no able to do so. People were spilling out into public walkways making the parks seem far more crowded than they actually were. It may seem like a small thing, but these lines really detracted from the visual beauty that Disney is known for. Now, before people get all up in arms about the length of these lines, I must say that at their peak, they took no longer than 17 minutes to get through. When we saw the Everest line and got in it across the bridge by Nemo, we were fearful that we would miss our time since we only had 30 minutes left in our window. But we got through that in 14 minutes. The huge line at the Safari took us 17 minutes. The huge line at BTMRR took us 14 minutes. People can react how they wish in terms of whether 14 minutes is too long for a FP+ line. But I am not here to debate that. My point is that a simple 14 minute line, which would otherwise be easily absorbed and “eaten” by a cleverly designed queue area, is now spilling out into the parks clogging up walkways, causing choke points, and hiding the visual beauty of the parks. Disney has got to find a way to have the number of people necessary to create a 14 minute wait in areas designed for waiting instead of having them crowd up the rest of the park.

So how, you may ask, can lines that extend so far out into the parks only take 15 minutes to get through? Well, it’s simple. At some point in time, the ride operators allow an extraordinary ratio of FP+ returnees to board the rides at the expense of the SB people. The 70 minute line at BTMRR was no longer in physical length than what a 20 minute queue would be under other circumstances. But they just don’t let those people board very often. I have a theory as to why. Disney knows that it has a lot riding (no pun intended) on this new system, and it cannot stomach the negative feedback if people report that their FP+ wait times were 45 minutes. So if you have a FP, you are going to board as quickly as they can manage, even if that BTMRR line extends well out into Frontierland. But to do that, they essentially have to say “the heck with the SB people”. It gets to the point where you almost have to have a FP to ride certain rides. SB people at Test Track were moving at a rate of about 10 feet every 15 minutes. No lie. As my astute daughter pointed out, certain rides (like the Safari, Everest and BTMRR) have always had dedicated FP return lines, and they never, EVER extended out to the areas where people are now waiting. So the logical conclusion is that they are doling out way more FP+ than they did FP-. And if that is the case, it will come to the point that the entire ride’s capacity will be taken up by the volume of FP+ people, leaving nothing left for the SB people. No longer is it: “Let in 20 FP people, then let in 30 SB people”. Now, (at least on this crowded weekend), it was “Let in 200 FP+ people, and let in 10 SB people.” The SB lines at certain attractions had become de facto “single rider” lines. So while I cannot join the chorus of people complaining that FP+ return lines are too long in terms of wait time, (I don’t think 14 minutes is too much of a burden), I can join the chorus of boos who complain that the queues are too long in physical length and are ruining the beauty of the parks. Disney spends way too much time, effort and money on themeing to have all that architecture and design blocked by hundreds of bodies. The parks looked way too much like a Six Flags for my taste.

My only other real complaint is with tiering, especially at Epcot. It’s been beaten to death, so I will skip the editorializing and merely give you our person experience so that you can plan accordingly. In the past, we used to arrive at DHS at RD, do a fast walk to the FP machines at TSM, grab our FPs, then hop in the SB line for about a 8-11 minute wait, then head to ToT and ride SB with about a 12 minute wait, then to RnR, pull FPs (as our window had opened by then), and ride SB with about a 15-20 minute wait. We had knocked off the “big three” in just about an hour and had FPs for TSM and RnR that could be used around 10:00 and 11:00 respectively. Later in the day, we would grab yet another FP for ToT, giving two rides (minimum) on each of those attractions with the longest wait being about 20 minutes. Last weekend, we went straight to TSM and rode SB with a 5 minute wait, got our FP+ from a CM, (RnR, ToT and Star Tours), went to ToT and rode SB with an 8 minute wait, and then, by the time we got to RnR, the wait was 90 minutes. I am not sure what happened, (cough, cough, 300 person cheerleader group, cough), but we were forced to hop in the single rider line for a 20 minute wait, which we never had to do before. We did get out second ride on both ToT and RnR with our FP+s, but a second spin at TSM was out of the question. And boy am I glad that I got my FP+s just after RD. The lines under the Hat to book FP+s were huge by 11:00 and never seemed to die down. Unfortunately, I cannot report back as to how early in the day things booked up solid, but I do know for a fact that they did. The final verdict at DHS is that RD is the only and best solution for offsite guests who want to ride the big rides there multiple times. FP+ has done nothing to improve on this situation, and given that we were only able to ride TSM once, I would have to say it was a negative. If you ask people who queued up for FP+s at 11:00 and who got shut out of the big rides forcing them to wait 70-90 minutes for each, I’m betting that they would have a few choice words for the new system for offsite guests. I refused to let that be me.

Our experience at Epcot was similar. We used to arrive at RD and head straight to Soarin’, ride, grab FPs, then go to TT for about a 15 minute SB wait, and then grab FPs for a second ride once the window opened up. We would ride each of those rides two times (minimum) with the longest wait being around 15-20 minutes. Last weekend, as I mentioned above, we went to Soarin’, got our FP+ (Soarin’, Spaceship Earth and Living With The Land (like you really need one of those..), then headed to TT. The sign (and the MDE APP and Touring Plans Wait times all said 30 minutes, so we hopped in the SB line. I set my timer. Total wait…..75 minutes. Why? Because so many geniuses had booked 9:00-10:00 FP+ return times that they were the only ones being let on the ride. It was a disaster. We wanted to do Sum of All Thrills in the morning, but by the time we got out of TT, the wait was an hour. Later in the day, we encountered people using FP+ for Figment. Why? Probably because they got shut out of anything useful. All in all, FP+ at Epcot was a “fail” unless you plan to spend two days at that park. If so, you can FP Soarin’ on one day and TT on the other day. When my daughter and I returned to Epcot on our last day, we wanted to see what touring would be like if we ignored Soarin’ altogether to see if that improved things. Boy, did it. We arrived about 5 minutes after the park opened and let the RD crowd clear out. We got our FP+s at a kiosk at International Gateway. I just had to see what using a kiosk was like once before we left. Having peered over the shoulders of the CMs as they used their i-Pads, I think I got the hang of it. Anyway, we booked TT for as early as possible, Mission Space for mid-morning, and quite frankly, I can’t remember what else we booked since I knew we wouldn’t be using it. We went straight to TT (feeling a little guilty about making people who arrived at RD wait longer than they should have.) Then we went to Sum of All Thrills and got right on. And we even had time to kill before our Mission Space FP+, so we took what turned out to be a private tour of the “Green Vision” House in Innoventions. Then went to Mission Space to use our FP+ there. So, if you plan two days at Epcot and are not dead set on doing both TT and Soarin’ both on the same days, Epcot can be very manageable. But if you want to do both of the biggies on the same day, you are in for a world of hurt. At least on a crowded day. (Our first day there was President’s Day, and was a recommended park on both EasyWDW and TP).

At the other parks, we did pretty much everything we wanted to do. Let’s face it. If you can’t knock off everything at AK in a day, you aren’t trying very hard. There just isn’t that much there. And at the MK, during a crowded time, the park is likely to have late hours, so you can use that to your advantage. My daughter and I stayed until midnight. My wife gave up at 10:45 and headed home. Would it be nice to have a fourth or fifth FP when the park is open from 8:00-1:00 a.m.? Sure. Three FPs in that stretch of time is a bit thin. But our riding wasn’t impaired. What was impaired was the visual beauty of the park. I do not want to see a FP line extend from the entrance of Space Mountain all the way to the elevator of Astro Orbiter. That is ugly. Same goes for the huge line at BTMRR. And when the Mine Train opens, watch out! The bottom line came from my daughter who said: “It is clear that this new system is designed to take Fast Passes away from people like us who used to use 5-6 a day and redistribute them to people who didn’t used to use them. But if the problem was that people weren’t using them because they didn’t understand the system, why didn’t they just take the same CMs who are now holding i-Pads and have them educate people on how to use the old system? I don’t see how this is money well spend when they could have built more rides.” A chip off the old block, she is! Honestly, I didn’t prompt her or my wife at all about the plusses or minuses of the system and tried to remain neutral so as not to spoil any of their anticipation about the trip. But neither of them really liked the system all that much. Though some of their complaints would have evaporated had the Dolphin been considered “on site”. But the Soarin’/Test Track issue will always exist until tiering changes.

So that’s it for now. I will answer any questions that I can. And hopefully, much of this will be moot once some changes are made.

 

[wiigirl]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[JimmyV]

And here are a couple of other random thoughts posted separately so as not to make an already overly-long post even longer.

As for the electronics of the My Disney Experience, we found the system to be lacking. Yes, I know that making every inch of every park wi-fi enabled is a huge task, but Disney decided to move in this direction and it had better up its game here. With the lines to use kiosks and work with CMs being as long as they are, people had better be able to use their smart phones to do what they need to do. We got way too many time-out errors, "blips" and endless "Retrieving" screens to call the system a success. Offsite guests cannot make changes on the fly, but they can use MDE to check ride status and wait times. But the system was about a 50/50 proposition. I was using a Galaxy S II and my daughter had a brand new S IV. Hers worked better than mine, but the Touring Plans wait time App was the best option and we found it to be just as accurate.

The CMs working the i-Pads seemed uniformly unimpressed with the new system and I could tell that they were not enjoying having to introduce it to guests. As is my practice, I greeted each of them warmly and with humor, trying to live according to the lesson that I try to teach my daughter, which is, "when you encounter someone who has a job that involves interacting with people, and that job is likely one that causes them frustration, be as kind as possible with the hope that at the end of their day, they remember their interaction with you as being the shining moment of their day". And we did. And through the humor and warm interaction, it was clear through the rolls of the eyes, and the "I can't really comment on what I really think" statements, that the CMs are not enjoying this roll out. So please don't berate them, complain to them about the system, or get testy with them. They didn't create the system and they don't like it any more than you. It is fine to pass along a comment such as "I really wish that Disney would....." and fill in that blank however you wish. But don't personalize your comment by saying "you" instead of Disney. The CM can't change the system, but perhaps they can pass along constructive criticism. We saw many visibly frustrated guests and I really feel for the CMs who have to tell a guest at 8:15 a.m. that the only available time for a FP to see Belle is 9:15 p.m.. It can't be easy for them, so cut them some slack.

As mentioned in another thread by someone who was at the MK on the same day as us, there were many, many problems with the rides. We missed out on Peter Pan by mere seconds. We were literally the next people to board when the ride went down and stayed down for a good bit of the day. By the time we went by it after it re-opened, the wait was 70 minutes. Nope. Never rode it. BTMRR had only one station open for a good part of the day and was running 3 trains instead of 5. We were going to be the next group to enter CoP, but it broke down and we never did get a chance to do it. I'm sure that whenever one has to manage so many highly technical attractions, things will break down. But it did seem to be a bit more noticeable this trip, and the out-of-service times were longer than what is typical. Our three stoppages while on Under the Sea were brief. But when PP and CoP went down, it was for large chunks of time. Since no one will ever tell you what the problem is, (it could be as simple as someone losing a hat on a ride, to a major computer malfunction), it is hard to say where the blame lies or what can be done about it. Just an observation that broken or stopped rides were very common.

 

[EMode]

Thank you for taking the time to report back

 

[mom2rtk]

Thanks for the very detailed report! I'm glad you enjoyed yourselves.

I really think your report supports the fact that this system would never work in DLR. Just not enough room for all those lines.

I suppose eventually they could just make the standby queue the FP queue?

 

[oliviaik]

Thank you for this information! Please send an email with this to Disney (wdw.guest.communications@disneyworld.com)! I have already sent an email with my concerns to them, but the more they hear these things the more likely they will be to fix the problems in the system.

 

[ciera321]

Thanks for taking the time to report! It sure seems like Disney is going to have to do something about these lines and problems before the huge crowds of spring break and Easter week arrives!

 

[ucfknight]

Thanks for the detailed write-up.

Just a point of clarifications... the Swan and Dolphin are not "Walt Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort". They are the the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin. There is no possessive. "Walt Disney World" is a location reference. The true Disney owned and operated resorts are officially named "Disney's" <enter resort name here>.

It is up to the owners of the Swan and Dolphin to pay The Walt Disney Company for the use of onsite FP+ benefits. They would have to shoulder the cost of any retrofitting needed for their door locks to work with MagicBands, as well as the cost of producing and delivering the MagicBands to their guests. They probably will at some point in the future, but for now they haven't.

 

[mom2rtk]

Sort of makes me just wonder where Disney would put all those additional people if they started selling the FPs everyone seems convinced they will.

 

[ucfknight]

Sort of makes me just wonder where Disney would put all those additional people if they started selling the FPs everyone seems convinced they will.

If Disney starts outright selling additional FP+ reservations, I'd be stunned.
I could certainly see Deluxe guests getting one or two more per day at some point, but I doubt they will sell front-of-the-line access like Universal or SeaWorld do.

I do agree either way capacity is a problem. They need to add ride capacity at AK and DHS especially to make the whole system work like they want it to work.

 

[Meggysmum]

We arrived on Tuesday night and couldn't believe our experience in MK on the Wednesday. We expected a fairly quiet day inbetween the holiday weekend and the half marathon but the place felt like it was in chaos. Like the OP we had a surprising experience.

We were onsite guests so had our FP+ already booked but I felt very sorry for people who were in enormous lines waiting to try and book their FP+ slots, it was a ridiculous situation. You are definitely right in that it certainly spoiled the aesthetics of the park. TBH booking our FP+ online was also a rather trying experience.

When we went to BTM for our time slot I couldn't believe how far the line stretched but at least it was roped so people knew where to go. With Space Mountain it went all the way back to TTA which had broken down so the lines were getting mixed up, people (especially the rather large groups of teenagers) were cutting inline all the time and there were no CMs manning the line so no-one could tell where they were queuing for!

We just couldn't work out what the problem was but we also came to the conclusion that they must be dishing out far more FP per slot.

Another problem we encountered on our other trip to MK was Space going tech for over 4 hours. In such circumstances they would normally have turned the FP machines off after a while so that there wouldn't be too many people coming back but by the time it came back online at about 5pm there were 4 hours worth of FP people trying to ride as well as the people who had the 5-6pm slot. We knew we could use our FP+ somewhere else but, like most in the line, Space is our favourite and we preferred to hang on to see if it started working again.

They had also changed the line for Speedway which stretched all over the place infront of Cosmic rays and we had never seen that before either.

We have travelled between Christmas and New year when the parks are heaving but somehow this trip the parks felt much busier as there seemed to be people everywhere.

 

[john398]

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, very good read

 

[JimmyV]

Thanks for the detailed write-up.

Just a point of clarifications... the Swan and Dolphin are not "Walt Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort". They are the the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin. There is no possessive. "Walt Disney World" is a location reference. The true Disney owned and operated resorts are officially named "Disney's" <enter resort name here>.

It is up to the owners of the Swan and Dolphin to pay The Walt Disney Company for the use of onsite FP+ benefits. They would have to shoulder the cost of any retrofitting needed for their door locks to work with MagicBands, as well as the cost of producing and delivering the MagicBands to their guests. They probably will at some point in the future, but for now they haven't.

True, but.....the people manning the microphnes don't always say it the way you printed it, (not that their error makes the hotels any more or less possessive.) Second, on the MDE website you can link an existing reservation to their system. If you try to do that, you will get a drop down box allowing you to select which of the WDW resorts you are staying at. The Swan and Dolphin are on that list. But they are not yet activated. I don't see any way that Tishman is going to pay to interface with Magic Bands. But it would take no effort at all to link a 9 digit reservation number into the MDE system so that your hard plastic admission cards which are already linked can be pre-loaded with FPs. Since the plastic cards interact with the glowing Mickey's in the park for purposes of FP+, the only change that would need to be made would be to allow the Starwood reservation number to be input into the MDE system. According to the people I spoke with at Starwood, they are playing the waiting game and are anticipating that offsite guests will have access to pre-booking soon enough. So they don't see the need to spend money to make any changes at this time. It might be like ADRs where on site people get a little head start. But any pre-booking would be better than the system now in place with people needing Fast Passes to get cut ahead of the FP+ waiting line.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

Sort of makes me just wonder where Disney would put all those additional people if they started selling the FPs everyone seems convinced they will.

The pool for the free FP+ would become smaller.

 

[madzy]

This makes me so nervous for our upcoming Spring Break trip.

 

[mom2mickeyfan]

Thank you for your report even though it made me sad. Glad to hear you still had a nice trip!

 

[mickeyluv'r]

I agree with most of your experience. (I was at WDW in January.)

I agree that Disney should come up with a new way to fix the problem of lines that are outside the attraction. I'm not sure there is an easy solution. Think about a ride like Buzz. If a guest without a FP 'accidentally' or intentionally tries to get into the FP line, the only easy spot to turn them away is outside the attraction. There's not really room to add a reject exit inside the ride, and even if here was such a spot, many guests would not take kindly to being asked to go back to the start of the standby line.
_____
Most of the time, when the continuous rides like HM, Little Mermaid, and Buzz stop for relatively short periods of time it is to load a disabled guest. (a true breakdown) In short, the number of disabled guests at WDW has increased over the years, also the willingness of ride operators to stop rides, as stopping a ride for a moment while a guest loads/unloads makes it safer for the guest to board.


As you say, most guests don't see why the ride has stopped. Many assume a malfunction of some kind.
________________
IT sounds like several attractions also had true breakdowns (as opposed to ride stoppages) during your visit. It's unfortunate when rides break down. It's a bummer if you are at the top of a queue when it happens. Sometimes- under the old system - if you go t to that point - the CM's would give you a paper fastpass for your lost time.

 

[mom2rtk]

The pool for the free FP+ would become smaller.

I agree. Which would make it just one more takeaway. But I still think they won't do it.

 

[JimmyV]

...I felt very sorry for people who were in enormous lines waiting to try and book their FP+ slots, it was a ridiculous situation. You are definitely right in that it certainly spoiled the aesthetics of the park. ...

When we went to BTM for our time slot I couldn't believe how far the line stretched but at least it was roped so people knew where to go. With Space Mountain it went all the way back to TTA which had broken down so the lines were getting mixed up, people (especially the rather large groups of teenagers) were cutting inline all the time and there were no CMs manning the line so no-one could tell where they were queuing for!

...They had also changed the line for Speedway which stretched all over the place infront of Cosmic rays and we had never seen that before either.

We have travelled between Christmas and New year when the parks are heaving but somehow this trip the parks felt much busier as there seemed to be people everywhere.

Thanks for backing me up! I know that eventually someone is going to chime in and say that they were there on the same days and didn't see any of this. It always happens. But I've been going to WDW since 1972 and have traveled there in every month of the year except January and have never seen people spill out into the park the way we witnessed it last week. The parks were no more crowded than usual and the waits were not any longer. But where people were waiting definitely shifted.

 

[mom2mickeyfan]

The CMs working the i-Pads seemed uniformly unimpressed with the new system and I could tell that they were not enjoying having to introduce it to guests. As is my practice, I greeted each of them warmly and with humor, trying to live according to the lesson that I try to teach my daughter, which is, "when you encounter someone who has a job that involves interacting with people, and that job is likely one that causes them frustration, be as kind as possible with the hope that at the end of their day, they remember their interaction with you as being the shining moment of their day". And we did. And through the humor and warm interaction, it was clear through the rolls of the eyes, and the "I can't really comment on what I really think" statements, that the CMs are not enjoying this roll out. So please don't berate them, complain to them about the system, or get testy with them. They didn't create the system and they don't like it any more than you. It is fine to pass along a comment such as "I really wish that Disney would....." and fill in that blank however you wish. But don't personalize your comment by saying "you" instead of Disney. The CM can't change the system, but perhaps they can pass along constructive criticism. We saw many visibly frustrated guests and I really feel for the CMs who have to tell a guest at 8:15 a.m. that the only available time for a FP to see Belle is 9:15 p.m.. It can't be easy for them, so cut them some slack.

Thank you for this reminder.