Moonlight Magic at Disney’s CA adventure Poorly Run

[BarbossasWench]

At CA Adventure right now and the lines are horrendous. Very poorly run. Looks like at least an hour line just to get tickets in the ticket line.

This is Disney and they should be able to handle lines and control Things and not make you the guests feel like cattle. I told a cast member that things were much better handled at the Animal Kingdom event in May and and was told that this was just ‘thrust’ on them and she didn’t sound happy or welcoming.

Disney West Coast should be ashamed for treating their best customers this way.

 

[Nala11]

Agree. An hour to park because they closed the structure. 30 mins to get on a bus. Now in unending ticket line for what appears to be 5 open windows for thousands. Hungry cranky kids.

 

[Leesha.Monster]

This was my first MM event. It’s crazy.

 

[Douglas Dubh]

This is not making me want to buy more points.

 

[simba51104]

This was by far the worst Moonlight Magic event ever. Took two hours to park, get through security, and pick up tickets/wristbands. Food lines were also insane. Huge disappointment compared to the Disney World events.

 

[Douglas Dubh]

All the major rides have half hour to hour long waits. I’m pretty disappointed.

 

[BarbossasWench]

Went to Flo’s and gave up after an hour - probably would have been another hour wait. They have about six entrees on their menu. Asked to speak to a manager and she had all kinds of excuses, including blaming the kind of event.

I enjoyed the Moonlight Magic I went to at Animal Kingdom last May - very well organized.

Stopped for ice cream and they had run out.

 

[BarbossasWench]

I stopped to complain at Guest Services - the guy there could care less and just paid lip service. ‘sorry- we’re aware there were problems - I’ll let management know” in a monotone voice. ‘We’ll try to fix for next year’ - I doubt I’ll try next year after this year’s fiasco.

 

[DonnerB]

Due to my work schedule, we weren't parking until just after 9 pm last night. The wait was nonexistent at Mickey & Friends, security and the tram. At this point, I was thinking there would be zero wait to get checked in as well. Wrong. Even at approximately 9:30, we waited over 20 minutes. Not ideal, but clearly not the nightmare of earlier in the night.

Once inside the park, we decided we wanted to eat. Sent a friend to Smokejumpers, where the line was already well out the door and barely moving. Decided we'd wait a little longer since the lines had to die down, right? Wrong again.

We did manage to ride Guardians with a 5 minute wait and Soarin' with a 15 minute wait. Got in line at Pacific Wharf, and didn't order for 45 minutes. Sort of depressing to watch your limited minutes tick by, but hey, the bread bowls are one of my usual highlights of a day at CA! Wandered over to Pixar Pier, decided to skip Midway Mania with a 40 minute posted wait. Got in line for the Incredicoaster; standby said 30 and we were on in 20.

All in all, we weren't as successful as we would have liked to have been (no characters), but we enjoyed ourselves. I got to ride the Incredicoaster for the first time and loved it. And I got to do it for free while the park was beautifully decorated for the holidays. But that huge chunk of time to eat really bummed me out. To me, it seemed the issue was caused by a severe shortage of staff. The food lines everywhere were crazy right up until 0100.

Based on last night, I wouldn't be heartbroken to miss out on a future event, but there were enough positives that I'd definitely try to get tickets again out here. Definitely wouldn't try to arrange any cross country trip to WDW for one, though (even though per report, they seem better organized).

 

[bwvBound]

Agreeing with all the above! I may write more later ... but, wowza, what a poorly run event.

FWIW, we've now been to 3 at CA (DCA 2016; DL 2017; DCA 2018) and one at WDW (HS 2018) and are still stunned at the chaos of yesterday's event. Sure, we Disney folks are used to standing in lines ... but this was C-R-A-Z-Y!! And the CMs simply didn't seem to care. Sad.

 

[Best Aunt]

I went to one at Epcot. What drove me nuts was the lack of information.

Nobody knew where we were supposed to check in if we were already in the parks. The email was too vague. Tons of people were waiting around in the wrong area. The correct area was marked, but you would only see it if you approached the building from a certain direction.

Nobody seemed to know exactly what you got for the food coupon. One side? Two sides?

The character lines were long, but it was our choice to wait in them. What we didn't realize was that some would begin much earlier than the designated time, and others wouldn't.

You could get free soda fountain drinks, but we only found out when one of the people in our group went to ask for a cup of water.

I'm someone who enjoys myself more when I know what all of my options are, and then I make a decision. I get frustrated by lack of accurate information.

 

[CAlvarez]

Our party was just talking about this. We were fortunate enough to attend MM at Hollywood Studios, easy check in at our resort, food service was quick and easy, plenty of merchandise and shorter wait times. Don’t get me wrong I’m grateful for being able to attend the event at CA and would do it again, but they ran out of merchandise early in the evening and lines were brutally longer than we expected.

 

[Lauren in NC]

Lines were awful this year! We went last year and were pleasantly surprised by short lines for rides at the end of the night - this year, we just gave up riding anything at all, as it'd been easier to ride things during normal hours. We had a great time with the characters, though. Wreck-it Ralph did a mean cha cha slide, and my son's favorite part of the night was dancing with a bunch of Pixar characters at a dance party on Pixar Pier after midnight. We were already in the park when the wristband distribution began, so we only had about a half hour wait at the Hyperion. I honestly would've preferred free popcorn and soda over a meal voucher. We used ours pretty much as soon as we could, and that still had us eating around 7:30ish after we waited in a ridiculous line.

I felt bad for the CMs. At the beginning of the party, we decided to wait in line to see Woody and Jessie in front of Toy Story Mania, and the character CM was trying to figure out how to direct the line. Obviously, a lot of people walking by wanted to meet them, and the characters were spending a few minutes with each guest, so the line kept getting longer and longer. They couldn't keep the line straight along the walkway to the left because it would block the ride exit, and if it went to the right, it would block the entrance, so they were trying to get it to snake around in the small area right in front of them, but they didn't have any barriers. Eventually someone showed up with one pole and some rope, which was nowhere near enough to deal with the line.

A CM the next day told me they messed up the merchandise at the one store and started selling it at 6:30, which would explain why they were completely out of shirts when we stopped by shortly after 9. I guess we lucked out with where we used our food vouchers, because they just treated it like a $15 gift card.

 

[mixmastertoy]

Agree with everyone ... it was poorly ran. I have been to Animal Kingdom and Studios and it was so smooth. My major gripe was they said free entree and drink and when I went to give the cards I still owed 3 cents. I legit had to pay that and it was a burger and a water ... nothing crazy.

 

[dcfromva]

I agree with the previous posters.

Our experience was we checked in at Grand Californian-check in took a long time.
We took our meal vouchers over to Pacific Wharf - stood in line a really long time only to be told that we couldn't have any entree except the clam chowder because they had tried to enter the other entrees in the cash register and they got an error. But, we could get any of the other entrees if we wanted to pay for them. Or, go stand in another enormously long line at another of the eating establishments.

We took a time hack after we sat down to eat and it had taken 2 hours from the time we stood in line to get tickets for the event, stood in line for the food and then sat down to eat.

We went to get a tee-shirt a little after 9pm and both places advertised to have the special merchandise were sold out.

The ride lines that we cared to go on were too long.

I was a little embarrassed because I had talked up the event to my extended family and it was one of major reasons why we planned a visit during this time frame.

 

[KPeterso]

Another vote for poorly run!

We were staying at VGC and still had quite a line to get our wristbands and vouchers. Other events (such as Hollywood Studios in September), I was able to check in earlier in the day. But that did not start until around 6:30 either. And they did not give us the brochure/map for the event. Kind of frustrating since we needed to know where we could use the voucher and where to meet characters, and what would be open. I stopped in Guest Services who did not think they had those, but were able to scrounge 2 up (one for me and one for the other guy asking about it). We happened to wander into Elias around 7ish (I guess) and saw the merchandise, so grabbed it then. But, the t-shirts were not loaded into the system, so they had to get a lead to ring it up for us.

Then we headed in search of food. We decided on Pacific Wharf as it is a favorite for us. The line was ridiculous and took about 45 minutes at least. I come a lot as I live local and I have been there on busy Saturday nights and had much shorter lines there. While in line, I heard about the parking and ticket nightmares from those around me in line. I was able to get the items we wanted, but had to buy our cookies as a separate transaction. I knew I would owe on those, but apparently, that made it an extra transaction.

The actual party had lines longer than i was expecting. We use MaxPass when we visit on regular days, so definitely not used to waiting in long lines, so this was disappointing. We did ride RSR, Luigis, Maters, Guardians, and Toy Story. We had checked Soaring, but the line was longer than we wished to wait. We also met Mike Wazowski by the Monsters Inc ride.

The next day we were back in the parks. I ran into a DVC rep that I had chatted with in DTD on wednesday night for awhile. She was taking Thursday off to attend the party with some family who came to town. So when I saw her Friday, I asked her what she thought of the party and she quite truthful that she was also disappointed. She also felt like the park was never truly "cleared" of the day guests. I think some of the crowds also had to do with no nighttime shows to suck up the crowds like Fantasmic did last year. Last year's was great. HS was great in September. AK in 2016 was great. This ---- not so much. I cannot compare to 2016 DCA one as I was sick and missed that one.

 

[dcfromva]

She also felt like the park was never truly "cleared" of the day guests.

I had that impression, too. But, there wasn't much of an attempt to check for the wrist bands. We were asked to show our wrist bands when we walked over to Pixar Pier. Then, when we were in Knick's Knacks the same security guard asked to see our wrist bands 3 times as he circulated through the store. But, we didn't try to go on any rides since the lines seemed pretty long so maybe they were checking there.

 

[lilfaeriebrat]

My party and I arrived just before 5. We had two cars because there were six of us and an annual passholder in each car to get parked a little early. The friends I brought with us used to be Disney regulars but as their family has grown they've been priced out of the parks so we figured start the night with a window shopping trip through World of Disney. That way the kids could get an idea of their souvenir they wanted for the night. After making numerous loops in the parking structure looking for parking we finally got lucky and found spots. We were off the tram and heading to the store by 5:45 when we noticed the line for the nights tickets. I sent everyone else off to window shop while I waited in the line.

Ticket Windows opened at 6:30 and I think we were in the park about 7. A quick decision on what we wanted to eat had us heading to Smokerjumpers just before the long lines. The restaurant was already disorganized having us change cashiers 3 times. My husband and I had an extra $1 OOP (with pass discount) for our dinner and our friends had an extra $4 (no discount) but considering they got 3 adult meals and 2 kids meals with drinks on 4 meal vouchers everyone was happy. By the time we finished eating the line was extremely long. We saw lightening and went on Luigi's and Midway before 9. We hit incredicoaster right at 9 and they were checking wristband, maybe 15/20 minute wait. By the time we got off the ride the line was heading up the bridge.

Ice Cream cart here was very disorganized and slow with the line for Mr Incredible and Woody mixing it made for a lot of madness. The Pixar Dance party was fun and as we made our way around the pier grabbing more ice creams we found shorter lines and ice creams sandwiches sold out. All the counter services were long long lines and I was glad we got our food when we did. Even Poultry Palace had an insane line. Racers was a 60 minute wait at 11 but the kids really wanted to go on it. Actual wait was about 50. At midnight the line for Flos was still around the building. Characters in the backlot at midnight were a little lonely so it was nice getting short lines there.

As others said Merchandise sold out quick only thing left when we went was the pin. Since this was the first event we had ever attended I have nothing to compare it to so we were all very happy with the night except for the time it took to find a parking spot. Would I have liked shorter lines sure but when you think about what DCA has to offer as far as rides the lines were about what I was expecting. I did feel bad for the people waiting in the long lines for food. At 12:45 Award Wieners still had a line half way down the block.

 

[Frederic Civish]

We spent last week at Disneyland, but I wasn't able to book MM, because I didn't hear about it in time. I'm glad I didn't. We were walking around as MM was opening and the crowds were INSANE. I was shocked that they had allowed so many people to sign up. No exclusivity and no 'easy access' at all. It was very clear that the crowds were every bit as bad as on a typical 'Busy' day. Wait times in some of the lines were horrendous, and nobody was having fun. How could Disneyland have failed so miserably at this? My take away was that I plan to NEVER do a MM event at Disneyland.

(I was also shocked that there seem to be many many more DVC owners in Southern California than I had thought, considering the Grand Californian only has the equivalent of 50 2-bedroom units. AND, EVERY ONE OF THEM seemed to come for this MM event. Most of the owners there must be like me, and own elsewhere.)

 

[bwvBound]

(I was also shocked that there seem to be many many more DVC owners in Southern California than I had thought, considering the Grand Californian only has the equivalent of 50 2-bedroom units. AND, EVERY ONE OF THEM seemed to come for this MM event. Most of the owners there must be like me, and own elsewhere.)

As SoCal locals, we first toured DVC at WDW in 1998, first traded in (via II) in ~2002 and first purchased in 2004 ... long before the Grand Californian was ever announced.