*FP+ is annoying, parks were MUCh more crowded than predicted, but my number one reason was the cast members we dealt with. So many were rude or had a bad attitude. Now, we often run into one or two, but this trip, it was everywhere. Do you suppose they are stressed by all this FP+ mess? Are guests being ruder to them? Is it just a result of all the crowds?
WDW is going through what is effectively a Go Live for a major ($1billion+)change. I work in IT. Go Live is NEVER easy.
Something like this is the perfect storm...
A new system which not every CM is completely well versed in because it's new.
The new system has bugs, because every new system does.
The bugs annoy the guests who are paying a lot of money for their expected perfection of a Disney vacation, so when perfection is not achieved they get cranky and take it out on the CMs.
The CMs, getting ragged on by thousands of people are, quite understandably, on edge and cranky.
Plus we must remember that CMs are also being pulled from current society, and so many of them have not been criticizd or had to deal with people being unhappy with them, so they have less tolerance for and knowledge of how to deal with negative interactions.
I think the one big mistake WDW has made is not impressing upon the CMs that during this Go Live period, don't argue with a guest if they can show you reasonably well that they are attempting to use the system as it is designed to be used.
When we were there in January, we had several instances in our travelling group where the
MDE/MB/FP+ thing wasn't in sync. One example....One family had mother, father, 3 young (under age 12) children. Staying onsite. Going to get on a ride with their FP. Mother, father and 2 of 3 children had no problem with their MB/FP+ working. Their youngest child's MB/FP+ didn't show that he had a FP. The father showed the FP reservation on MDE, which included all 5 family members. The CM continued with "If his band doesn't have the FP on it then he doesn't have the FP". The father says "Why would I make FPs for 2 of my 3 children?". CM says "I have no idea but if his band doesn't have FP on it then he has no FP". This went back and forth until finally our friend said "Find me someone who can rectify this because it seems that you can't". At that point, the CM let them through. Now realistically, to me that was a frustrated CM "breaking it off" on someone because 5000 people had probably "broken it off" on the CM that day. But in the grand scheme of the issue, once our friends showed an appropriate reservation on MDE which showed ALL names on the FP, the conversation should have ended. The CM should have said "Thank you for showing that to me. I apologize for the inconveneinec while we work out the bugs in the new system. I'm going to make note of this issue so we can look into it". Even if he wasn't go ing to make note and even if no one had any desire to look into it, just say ot for crying out loud. Instead the CM left a guest with a bad taste in their mouth for no good reason.
I am fairly certain that if the CMs were not approaching interactions with guests as if the guests were trying to rip off WDW or game the system, then even with the bugs and kinks, there'd be a lot less frustration.
And for those of us who are guests, we would do well to remember that the CMs are not the ones who made the decision to start this debacle, so we should try not to take it out on them when it doesn't work right. I had a 5 hour continuous event with MDE/MB/FP+ not working completely properly in one aspect or another. As frustrated as I was, I made sure not to take it out on the CMs who were genuinely trying to help me.
), I got the cold on the last 2 days. 
