Just back 9/8-9/11

[jboehm]

Good: Rides where fun. Express pass as included with hotel stay was GREAT. Marvel Island was magical (I'm a comic book guy.) Loved the X-Men meet and great. Not crowded in the mornings. Front row of Dueling Dragons was pretty cool.

Bad:
* Understaffed - Each ride needed one or two more ride operators.
* Very inefficient ride loading -- Standing in line for a ride only to see several empty cars go buy
* !@#$% finger print scanners -- Only worked for me 50% of the time and REALLY SLOWED DOWN the lines.
* 0 carry ons on some rides -- I've never had a problem holding on to my water bottle even on Aerosmith, but NO, locker required the Mummy to store a water bottle. Then they charged me $2 for being a few min past my 30 min free window. Grrr
* Only 2 lines open for park re-entry. Have I mentioned how I hate the finger print scanners!!!
* Slow and infrequent boat transportation to the on site hotels.
* I actually over heard on CM talking to another CM that he refused to help a handicap person on to a ride because he got farted on last week. Mean while, current the handicap person is struggling to get into place out of earshot but still inexcusable.
* A special music event started at 4pm. The parks were saturated with teens and the staffing level did not seem to change.
* City walk can get down right scary in the later hours of the evening.
* Bought ticket thru Expedia thus the $7 gift card coupon in the Entertainment book was not valid.

Overall, fun rides bad execution and staffing, and I felt nickle and dimed to death. Will probably come back but definitely not sure. Definitely lacking the Disney Magic.

 

[Operamom]

Glad you seemed to enjoy yourself, sad to hear all the misfortunes. We're going in 9 days but staying off site. This will be our first time. Do you feel the crowds were large enough to warrent an express pass? Was it that busy? Just curious. Thanks

 

[aztecgoods]

I'm kind of thinking Disney has its share of nickeling and diming you to death too though, just goes with the territory. (Going on vacation=wallet busting) At least to the parks, laying on an isolated beach somewhere may be different.

 

[jboehm]

Do you feel the crowds were large enough to warrent an express pass? Was it that busy?

The express pass was alway nice for us. However, this was the weekend, durring the week it may not be needed. Even without it wait times were rarely over 20 min. After 4pm when the concerts started it got crazy and the express pass was very needed. It didn't help very much on dueling dragons because of inefficent execution and poor staffing.

 

[MassMom94]

Interesting. We were there 8/23 - 8/25 and didn't find the park understaffed at any attraction. Dueling Dragon loading was efficient (though do they always only run only one train on each side for this ride? I could see really long waits during high season if that's the case!) Waits were non-existent if you used the Express Pass line, as we were able to do as we stayed at the HRH. I wonder if they cut back on staff after Labor Day?

 

[Motherfletcher]

On Labor Day weekend the rides we visited were loading well and properly staffed. BTTF could of had more cars running. The only ride that I saw a tremendous advantage for having hotel express was Jaws since the regular queue is outside and visible. We walked directly around about 300 people and the boat was a walk on.

 

[highlander447]

doesnt sound like u had a good trip at all, the boats transfering from hotels to citywalk have steadily got worse over the years, we usually walk unless the boat is already there, as for citywalk never felt unsafe there, as for lacking disney magic, is there such a thing?, u get good staff and bad staff everywhere