Help with Spring 2017 Refurbishments

RE1333

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jan 19, 2017
Messages
48
I'm a Walt Disney World veteran, and I just recently finished making reservations for my first trip to Disneyland. I was incredibly excited, but I'm already regretting it :sad:. I tried to do as much research as possible about the best times to go, and I ended up choosing March 5th-9th, 2017. These dates were looking good, but I've suddenly discovered a bunch of additional refurbishments that are taking place on or near my trip (World of Color, Pirates of the Caribbean, Matterhorn, etc.). They either weren't announced when I was booking or I wasn't trying hard enough when I was doing my research.

Can anyone help me with any of the following questions:

1. Where is the best place to find information about refurbishments? Disney does not seem to currently offer any clear, centralized location to see the official dates. And the numerous unofficial calendars available are not always complete or consistent. Where are the unofficial calendars even getting their information?

2. What information has been made available about the Pirates refurbishment? Was there any announcement? It seems safe to say that Pirates will be closing down on February 3rd, but I don't see any official word on when it's coming back. Several unofficial calendars have it marked as March 16th, but I don't see where the source of this information is.

3. Do we know anything about the World of Color refurbishment? Several unofficial sources have it marked as 2/21/17-2/24/17, but the Disneyland calendar seems to have it longer. And they don't appear to be taking dining reservations until March 7th. This seems encouraging for my trip, but I don't like the ambiguity.

Thank you for any help you can offer.
 
There is no single location where refurbishment information is posted (not even on the Disneyland website), nor does DLR always announce refurbishments with much notice. I think a lot of unofficial calendars get their information from talking with CMs and people who work for Disney and by collating a lot of pieces of information (e.g., using dining reservation to guess when shows will be dark).

In terms of Pirates, Disneyland.com has its closure listed as Feb 3 through March 15. It's not easy to find, but if you go to the Disneyland Resort map, change the date to during the closure (e.g., Feb 3) and then click on the PotC bubble, it says "Closed for Refurbishment Feb 3, 2017 to Mar 15, 2017".

In terms of WoC, I would go with the dining reservations as a good indication of when the show will be dark. It's possible that they had thought it would be a short closure, but something has come up and made it a longer refurbishment.
 
1) You could write a dissertation (or at least a master's thesis) about this. Disney makes it difficult to find complete closure date in a timely fashion. The fan sites seem basically to copy from the Disneyland web site, but often fail to update frequently - some seem to copy from others, as you can see errors duplicated. My "best place" is a Facebook page - see #dlrClosures.

2)
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3) There was an email message reported here, with the reopening date being March 6. I would trust the reservations being again available on March 7 as more likely to be accurate.
 
Thank you guys so much! That trick with the map is definitely the best thing I've seen so far. It's a shame that Disney has made it so difficult to track this information down. That would seem to confirm that Pirates, Matterhorn and Grizzly River Run will all be closed for our trip. And that's just in addition to the numerous closures I was already aware of (Tower or Terror, Fantasmic, etc.). I thought with all the Star Wars disruptions, as well as the Tower of Terror conversion, we would be safe from any additional major disappointments in March. I seriously wish I had not booked this trip.
 

Welcome to Disneyland....that's just the way they run things. Sometimes you're lucky if you get 2 weeks notice on some refurbs. They're horrible about this compared to WDW. The fact that they can't even get a schedule out until 6 weeks before your trip is the most ridiculous thing ever.
 
I'm there almost the exact same days as RE1333 so I really appreciate the feedback. One other question...are fireworks only on Fri/Sat/Sun? Our dates are Mar. 1-8.
 
I'm there almost the exact same days as RE1333 so I really appreciate the feedback. One other question...are fireworks only on Fri/Sat/Sun? Our dates are Mar. 1-8.

Yes, weekends only probably until late March or April for a few weeks of 7 days, and then back to weekends until after Memorial Day.

And back in the day when I helped websites with the DLR refurb schedule, my best source was CM's and park employees that worked for an outside vendor, but had a shop in the park. (Less restrictions on what they could say), I got all the CM printed material on a weekly basis, which included the internal expected dates for refurbs and other future info. Things have changed, and it is now internet based and restricted to those CM's that needed to know. But I was even getting expected attendance numbers for the parks. Plus I also got info from the Hotel owners (not Disney) who got some info from Disney in regards to future attendance expected, and also from execs in other parks, as they would all share the info with each other, and I became part of that "inside" group. Never could admit to it when I was doing it for financial gain, but now since it is just a hobby, I can admit to these backstage things. So the info was pretty accurate, but of course, Disney made changes when needed due to unforeseen issues, and since the info wasn't public, they would just change it, and then the info we posted looked wrong.

So you could blame people like me in the 1990's and early 2000's for how Disney keeps from posting refurbs and other info until just a few weeks before they happen. (They were trying their best to deal with Social Media and professional reports, and how we worked together to get the best info out there, and finally figured out to run their own Blog and release info over there with their spin before it can be leaked to the outside folks running websites. A lot different nowadays, versus the meals we had at different locations and different folks, including the Mayor of Anaheim, who liked to be kept up with the news and was will to share some of what he knew....
 
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