Early entry closing early

[thRob]

After slogging through parking, security, and the ticket turnstiles, we made it to Galaxy's Edge today 10 minutes before general admission opening today as Disney hotel guests. We were not allowed early entry and were forced into the general admission queue without explanation.

I haven't encountered this before. We've always been able to get early entry right up until the official park open time. Is this the new normal?

 

[Genie+]

Was this happening to other onsite guests around you? I’m wondering if there was type of miscommunication because this is not normal. Sorry, that stinks. The only issue we’ve come across so far with Early Entry is wasting our time to get a headliner and the ride goes down.

 

[thRob]

Not a miscommunication. We've done it a million times, the typical row of CMs with a tablet scanning you through was not present

Asked guest services about it later, they unapologetically said early entry closed at 8:50 today due to high capacity, tough luck.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Not a miscommunication. We've done it a million times, the typical row of CMs with a tablet scanning you through was not present

Asked guest services about it later, they unapologetically said early entry closed at 8:50 today due to high capacity, tough luck.

First I’ve heard of it. I’ve accessed early entry up until a couple mins before general entry. And yes, it sounds absolutely ridiculous and I hope you filed a complaint with Guest Services! Sounds like a new procedure they’re testing out to me making feedback doubling important.

With only 30 mins to early entry cutting it off 10 mins early takes away a third of the experience! And frankly if the park has room for general public access to those areas at general park opening, they have room for early entry access to those areas. At an absolute minimum they should have had a holding area in front of the general public holding area for early access people.

 

[Genie+]

Yikes! It’s discouraging when they act blasé about not honoring what they sold.

 

[Dave006]

Sounds like a new procedure they’re testing out to me making feedback doubling important.

Actually it was very likely exactly what GS CM stated. This is part of the crowd ramp up to Easter weekend. What they did not mention is that they needed the CMs to get to their assigned locations for park open. Operations often makes daily adjustments.

Dave

 

[brockash]

Actually it was very likely exactly what GS CM stated. This is part of the crowd ramp up to Easter weekend. What they did not mention is that they needed the CMs to get to their assigned locations for park open. Operations often makes daily adjustments.

Dave

Totally unacceptable. Yet another reason that they should've never gone to allowing offsite guests into the park before the regular park opening. They wouldn't need multiple cm scanners at mult. locations. Total slap in the face to the onsite guest using their "perk."

 

[gottalovepluto]

Actually it was very likely exactly what GS CM stated. This is part of the crowd ramp up to Easter weekend. What they did not mention is that they needed the CMs to get to their assigned locations for park open. Operations often makes daily adjustments.

Dave

Still not ok. If they knew they might need to limit access to EE they should have told hotel guests via a push notice access will be stopped early if we reach EE capacity. OP got completely blindsided. This is a sold perk, the fine print leaves Disney able to do whatever they want but good service says you don’t just yank perks because you don’t want to put extra CMs on the day’s payroll. Nobody has reported this before and we have lots of DISers who do heavy holidays, I hold they’re trying something new at DHS.

OP, I’d also drop a complaint to the front desk at your hotel. This is sold as a perk of being an on-site guest so it reflects poorly on the hotel.

 

[Dave006]

Still not ok. If they knew they might need to limit access to EE they should have told hotel guests via a push notice access will be stopped early if we reach EE capacity.

I never said it was OK but just a normal daily operations type of issue that @thRob experienced.

There is no magic way to send a Push Notice to hotel guests on the fly on a dynmaic basis. You give the technology to much credit for a very slow manual process that would need approvals at many different levels before any Push Notification were to be sent to anyone. Not to mention legal sign-off.

As an example, they are still struggling with issues when the Skyliner is down and they need to redirect guests to buses. They have tried a couple of different methods but there is not automated or even consistent method to notify guests reiterate manually or via a magic MDE push message.

This is a sold perk, the fine print leaves Disney able to do whatever they want but good service says you don’t just yank perks because you don’t want to put extra CMs on the day’s payroll. Nobody has reported this before and we have lots of DISers who do heavy holidays, I hold they’re trying something new at DHS.

They did not yank anything. They just stopped EE at HS 10 minutes early due to a specific operational issue on a specific day. Things like this happen all the time. Attractions start late, run a modified queue or even a modified load process all the time. It is still not OK but a fact of daily operations.

Dave

 

[Brian Noble]

I'm in the "this was an unfortunate one-off" camp, and don't think this is a new normal. I also would not blame the front-line CMs for this--it's not like they decided to do it on their own, and they are probably not all that much happier about it than anyone else, because they are the first line of complaint.

That said, I think it is reasonable for @thRob to (politely) stop by Guest Services today to mention that they were disappointed, if they haven't done so already, and to leave feedback there. It's worth it to take a little time out of one's day to do that, and GS will sometimes do a little something to help smooth things over. No promises, of coruse, and I wouldn't specifically ask for anything if it were me, but it does give them the chance to do something.

(This also is another example of why making it to EE before it starts is as important as ever during holiday weeks. That's not to scold the OP---things happen, and I'm often late too. But it's one thing to be late in e.g. mid-January, and another during Easter week.)

 

[kylenne]

There is no magic way to send a Push Notice to hotel guests on the fly on a dynmaic basis. You give the technology to much credit for a very slow manual process that would need approvals at many different levels before any Push Notification were to be sent to anyone. Not to mention legal sign-off.

As an example, they are still struggling with issues when the Skyliner is down and they need to redirect guests to buses. They have tried a couple of different methods but there is not automated or even consistent method to notify guests reiterate manually or via a magic MDE push message.

They are a bit too selective about using push notifs tbh. The Skyliner issues are well documented but then I have also walked into Epcot before and as soon as I stepped through the tapstiles gotten notifs that Frozen has been down. Mobile app development is part of my professional wheelhouse (our team even won an award for this recently) and the technical requirements for something like this are beyond trivial, this is not an issue of capability unless Disney’s dev teams consist of Huey Dewey and Louie. It literally can be as simple as flipping a proverbial switch. Looking at it from the outside, it is point blank a policy issue to me--the inconsistencies really give the impression that the criteria for when they’re sent out aren't really set in stone.

This situation seems very much a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. A deliberate operational change like this is really not something decided on the fly, not with a company as analytics mad as Disney. If their guest projections for a given day are high enough to warrant something like this, it needs to be communicated to guests.

I would definitely be going to Guest Services. Ops needs feedback that this is a really bad way of handling it. And I agree with @brockash that offsite guests without EE privileges shouldn’t even be allowed to congregate inside the park--if we’re dealing with trying to manage capacity due to projected crowd levels then resort guests should be prioritized the same way they are during actual capacity closures. I don’t know why they changed this other that trying to avoid potential overcrowding at the tapstiles tbh. Absolutely not frontline CMs fault but poor management decisions, as usual.

 

[Brian Noble]

I agree with @brockash that offsite guests without EE privileges shouldn’t even be allowed to congregate inside the park

That's next to impossible during peak seasons. The entry plazas are not designed to hold backups particularly well. This is also why e.g. Studios used to open early in the early days of Galaxy's Edge. They didn't really have a choice, because so many people were getting there so early.

And that might be what happened here, too--they may have needed those CMs for crowd control. If they need them, they need them. No, it is not a surprise that this week is busy, and yes maybe they could have planned staffing better, but it is still an inexact science.

 

[traveler9]

They are a bit too selective about using push notifs tbh. The Skyliner issues are well documented but then I have also walked into Epcot before and as soon as I stepped through the tapstiles gotten notifs that Frozen has been down. Mobile app development is part of my professional wheelhouse (our team even won an award for this recently) and the technical requirements for something like this are beyond trivial, this is not an issue of capability unless Disney’s dev teams consist of Huey Dewey and Louie. It literally can be as simple as flipping a proverbial switch. Looking at it from the outside, it is point blank a policy issue to me--the inconsistencies really give the impression that the criteria for when they’re sent out aren't really set in stone.

This situation seems very much a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. A deliberate operational change like this is really not something decided on the fly, not with a company as analytics mad as Disney. If their guest projections for a given day are high enough to warrant something like this, it needs to be communicated to guests.

I would definitely be going to Guest Services. Ops needs feedback that this is a really bad way of handling it. And I agree with @brockash that offsite guests without EE privileges shouldn’t even be allowed to congregate inside the park--if we’re dealing with trying to manage capacity due to projected crowd levels then resort guests should be prioritized the same way they are during actual capacity closures. I don’t know why they changed this other that trying to avoid potential overcrowding at the tapstiles tbh. Absolutely not frontline CMs fault but poor management decisions, as usual.

The offsite entry line would get so long by the time park open came that finger scans were frequently turned off in order to expedite entry - which has its own set of problems. Also offsite guests can shop or get coffee when entering the park which brings Disney more $$.

 

[Dug720]

And that might be what happened here, too--they may have needed those CMs for crowd control. If they need them, they need them. No, it is not a surprise that this week is busy, and yes maybe they could have planned staffing better, but it is still an inexact science.

And even if they did plan staffing better, illness and/or personal emergencies still happen.

 

[thRob]

I'm in the "this was an unfortunate one-off" camp, and don't think this is a new normal. I also would not blame the front-line CMs for this--it's not like they decided to do it on their own, and they are probably not all that much happier about it than anyone else, because they are the first line of complaint.

That said, I think it is reasonable for @thRob to (politely) stop by Guest Services today to mention that they were disappointed, if they haven't done so already, and to leave feedback there. It's worth it to take a little time out of one's day to do that, and GS will sometimes do a little something to help smooth things over. No promises, of coruse, and I wouldn't specifically ask for anything if it were me, but it does give them the chance to do something.

(This also is another example of why making it to EE before it starts is as important as ever during holiday weeks. That's not to scold the OP---things happen, and I'm often late too. But it's one thing to be late in e.g. mid-January, and another during Easter week.)

I did stop by guest services and explain the situation in a very polite and non-confrontational way. They were completely unapologetic and said that's just "how it works" when it's busy. She said I should have gone to toy story land instead.

She made it seem like this is normal operating protocol, which is why I started the thread. Sounds like no one has experienced it before, so she was probably just gaslighting me.

Honestly she was kind of rude about the whole thing, it really put me off. Maybe a bunch of other people had been complaining about it already that day

 

[Brian Noble]

Oh, I'm sure it happens from time to time---it just hasn't happened (yet) to anyone else reading this thread. But, it probably doesn't happen every day, or even most days, becuase it hasn't happened yet to anyone else reading this thread.

 

[gottalovepluto]

There is no magic way to send a Push Notice to hotel guests on the fly on a dynmaic basis.

Disney does this periodically. Among those I have personally seen- day of notifications about rides or lands closing early, apologies about major rides suddenly being down, notice of a special Fantasmic preview just for APs that night, and once in a blue moon a notice that the Skyliner is down. They have the tech to send such a notice to all hotel guests, they chose not to.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I did stop by guest services and explain the situation in a very polite and non-confrontational way. They were completely unapologetic and said that's just "how it works" when it's busy. She said I should have gone to toy story land instead.

She made it seem like this is normal operating protocol, which is why I started the thread. Sounds like no one has experienced it before, so she was probably just gaslighting me.

Honestly she was kind of rude about the whole thing, it really put me off. Maybe a bunch of other people had been complaining about it already that day

WOW. I’d leave feedback here since that CM obviously wasn’t gonna make a note of it.

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/help/email/