Trudy,
I paid almost $800 for plane tickets that I had planned my vacation around and timed my vacation plans to. Also I haave issues with the types of flights that I need to take due to the inability of my wife's willingness to do a stop during a flight. Since my flight was cancelled and there was absolutely no attempt to contact me to reschedule or at the very least notify me of a change in my plans, I think I have the right to be a little upset about it and let someone know that they cost me time and money to rectify the situation due to their lack of consideration for their passengers situations. My making someone miserable on the other end of the phone was not an ego boost at all, simply extreme frustration at the complete lack of consideration for peoples travel plans and a too bad take it or leave it attitude from the airline that I have patronized for years. Hotel accomodations, car rentals and monetary considerations areaffected when schedules change, and the lack of notification and the changing of the type of flight I purchased for specific reasons prompt frustration more than the actual changing of the time of the flight itself. When someone says to me that they can't do any thing for me and that they will give me a refund one day prior to leaving on my vacation with absolutely no chance of finding flights that timed into our schedules, I think that would kinda qualify as the right to vent at someone who basically could have cared less that I flew or not. They wonder why people don't want to fly.
Bailybrad,
I spent no time waiting for anything including splash mountain, all week. I do not see where people were waiting for anything. Every park I visited was pretty empty, all week. I was in shows at MGM that didn't even fill the seats for millionaire, Drew Carey, the Muppets or Indiana Jones.
As you stated waiting in line is part of the Disney experiance sometimes and if it happens, it happens. I just see people complaining that they have to wait in line. That goes with the territory. I'm sorry for those that had to wait, but from the reports that people hve posted even the wait times are shorter tht at other times of the year when it is very crowded. If people had to wait more that 30 minutes for a ride consistantly for every ride in the park every day then I think that something would have been done to adjust the park times and accomodate the crowds. I didn't see the necessity for that on our visit and Disney probably doesn't see it in the cash box at the end of the day either I bet.
As for blaming Disney for Sept 11th, I am refering to the tone at which people are expressing how upset they are at Disney, (hence the title of the post) not that they actually blame Disney for the event that changed the world. Disney clearly had signs posted, had information available for anyone that needed it, and probably would have notified us as soon as humanly possible, if any of the planned events had changed like reservations for specific events.
Delta clearly was at the opposite end of the spectrum, not caring if you knew about your flights and not caring if you even flew. They had the full use of my money for 11 months and knew full well that finding other forms of transportation at the 11th hour was next to impossible and their attitude is what prompted my vehement anger and expression of such anger at those to whom I spoke.
Companies spin things and Disney is no different. Using security as an excuse may have a certain amount of truth to it, but clearly this is not their primary motivation to make the adjustments they have. Disney has always adjusted park hours to compensate for either excessive traffic or light traffic and these adjustments will produce some lines at some points, none that our party of 10 noticed anywhere at any time whether we were together or split between parks on any given day. Maybe we were lucky everywhere we went, but I just didn't see enough people to justify keeping the parks open extra, and did see reason to adjust park times downward and hotel accomodations for some people. To close off 1500 + rooms and delay almost 6000 rooms from coming on line in the near future, thats a lot of people that just are not going on vacation any more. The weekends will be busy with locals, but during the week we saw light attendance everywhere.
Extra security cost extra money. They had many more security people roaming the parks as well as checking ID's at resorts and searching bags the the entrances. If you spend money somewhere you have to cut from somewhere else, especially when you do not have the anticipated revenue stream to pay all of the bills.
Everyone, go on vacation, help them out. Be more understanding to the complexities of running a huge corporation that tries to do right by their guests, not take advantage of people. From my experience this week I really feel they are doing their best to accomodate everyone and are not making everyone completely happy. This is bound to happen, the more people you try to make happy, sometimes makes more people unhappy. I noticed that they are trying, and that counts for a lot in my book.
