That's a completely ridiculous way to treat a little kid.
My son is also 39.5 inches tall. Our trip's not until October so hopefully he does some good growin' this summer.
It's not ridiculous. They are either tall enough or not. And there are many factors that go into being tall enough.
From experience and retrospect (after having DS turned down at the second measuring stick and his reaction and later reactions to it) I believe that a child who isn't mature enough to stand straight and tall *consistently*, who reacts emotionally to not making the height, etc, might not be mature enough to go on that ride. Even though "our" CM shouldn't have done what he did, it had lots of benefits later on for DS and our family, because DS realized that NO ride is guaranteed, which made ride stops, randomly closed rides, etc, that much easier for him to deal with.
Is it just me or are the bars that measure height in Disney a little high than the height they state they are?
That hasn't been my experience (except with one ride out in Anaheim).
My DS who was 5 at the time JUST made the height for RnR. He was so excited. We rode it with no issues and he LOVED it. It was freakishly unbusy in DHS that night for some reason and there was only a 10 minute wait so we got right back in line. The girl outside REFUSED to let him on. We literally walked right back in line, and his head was clearly brushing the bar but she just seemed to be on a power trip for some reason.
She didn't let him on because brushing the bar isn't hitting the bar. It was almost certain the very ride you had just been on that caused it. The forces from coasters are HUGE, and on a little guy it'll squish you down. If you guys had waited awhile before re-riding it might have been different.
Universal used to use your room key as proof of you staying onsite to utilize the Express Pass lines, but now they have installed kiosks at the resorts that take your picture and print out a card with your face on it and the length of your resort stay. Couldn't something similar be done for height requirements? A card with the child's picture and color coded in some way to show what height requirement they meet (over 36", over 40", etc) so that it can't be swapped with another child?
Identical twins who aren't the same height would be one problem with that.
And have you seen the horrible resolution of those pictures on the EPs at Universal? I could easily swap with DS and they wouldn't even question us. Dark, grainy, just really bad pictures.
My niece rode RnR several times one trip and then got turned away on our last day because a CM took a credit card and slipped it under the bar to show she was not tall enough. I thought that was a bit much, but rules are rules.
The only time I lost my temper was on SM. We had been cleared and were literally getting on the ride - a much older CM grabbed one of my DS7 twins (they were 5 then) and pulled him out of the seat by his arm to be measured. He scared my DS and he started crying hysterically, so of course measuring him was almost impossible at that point. And the guy was such a jerk about it, saying that if he could not stand up straight we had to leave. Talk about grumpy - apparently he was having an extremely bad day. I wish now I had asked for a manager or told GS about him, but at that point it was our last day and all I wanted to do was calm my son down and get out of MK and put it behind us.
DS had a piece of paper slide between his head and the bar. At the second stick, after thoroughly hitting the first. But the CM had his hand on DS's shoulder, pushing down. And DS at 3 was too young and immature to understand that he needed to stand straight and tall, that he WANTED to hit that stick (how against nature is that, to want to hit something with our heads?), and he didn't have to squash down just because the CM was pushing on him.
Our CM was wrong for pushing on him, but my DS was too immature to go on Star Tours that time, in retrospect. If he couldn't make the height he couldn't make the height!
(of course, if DH had thought faster he could have told DS to stand straight and tall and perhaps asked the CM to get his hand off his shoulder...if only I'd been there!)
