We went this morning and I have to say, it SUCKED for us. We've done this event close to ten times, and this is the first time I felt it was bordering on a waste of money.
We arrived at about 7:35 and noticed that there was an honour system for the wristbands...I think it was like that last time as well, but I wonder if people who weren't supposed to have wristbands ended up with them, based on the crowds we saw (more on that shortly).
We were let in and hoofed it to teacups (DS has to start with that those every time...don't judge
). After that, we went over to 7D and saw...a posted 30-minute wait! WHAT??? They were sending people through the standby line, which I've never seen. We decided to go to Pooh- which was closed. Okay, on to PP. They ran us through the standby line there as well, never had this before there either. At well over a dollar a minute, that is a total waste of our time when we could have just gotten onto the ride using the FP line as usual.
After PP, we headed back to Pooh, which was up. Standby line again meant that we lost more time. It was close to a ten-minute wait as well. For POOH! Not cool.
We went to Little Mermaid, which used the FP queue (finally!).
We waited until we saw the wait time for 7D go down to 15 and risked it. The wait was indeed 15 minutes. Keep in mind that we are used to getting between 7-10 rides on 7D during this event with waits no more than maybe 3-5 minutes each time, and this was crazy to see, not to mention very disappointing. They opened up the FP line for it around 8:45am and the line was backed up to well outside of the entrance to the cottage path. We decided not to waste more time waiting for 7D and went back to PP (still standby line there, for no apparent reason, as it was now almost a walk-on).
At rope drop, we went straight to Big Thunder and then HM after that, then bolted to breakfast. Cosmic Ray's was packed and we had to wait for a table to free up. They started taking away food a few minutes before 10 and somebody complained, so another CM put it back out (fruit and meats area).
Overall, this was a huge disappointment for us today. I'm not sure whether to email Guest Services about it or not, since I've been writing them quite a few "love notes" recently and don't want to seem like I am trying to extract something from them- we did ride some rides and did eat the food, so it wasn't 100% wasted money. However, the issue with sending people through the standby line for this event is a big deal to me and I am wondering whether to raise this issue with them.
I am not sure if we will book it again if this trend continues, which would suck, because it's been one of our favourites.
Fingers crossed they announce it between then and now! To be fair, my 180 days is on Tuesday, but I was really hoping to have things booked that day. I accept that we'll just have to roll with it. 
