"One of those nights" at MK yesterday, would hate to be a CM

[Mambo Junkie]

Also, with no true off season anymore, does Disney really have the adequate time to take rides offline to really do the needed maintenance wihtout disappointing thousands of guests?

At least with planned maintenance the vacationers are aware of what is not running before you go. If you don't want to disappoint thousands of visitors, then have the attractions running consistently before they pay all the money for a vacation, and let them decide if they want to go at that time. When we went, we knew Soarin was down, but we thought (hoped) FEA would be up and running - no it wasn't, and we thought Rivers of Light would be going - no it wasn't. Going 1 day and having so many rides down (we never did ride Space Mtn.) and having a couple break down with us on it on other days, was disappointing to say the least. We had also had an 8 am BOG reservation with the hope of getting to ride 7DMT but it was down until sometime after 10 am. Not a big deal as we had a fp for it, but we never did ride it that day because of the backup. I would rather they schedule to shut the ride down and FIX it.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

This thread is a bit concerning.

 

[castlegazer]

We were there last night until after midnight and had the greatest day at MK ever! We experienced the electrical light parade delay - it wasn't that big of a deal. We walked on pirates, got a fourth FP for BTM and fifth for HM. It was packed but really awesome! The new shows at the castle were spectacular - friendship faire and celebrate the magic! Amazing! We had a blast eating at Skipper's Canteen and had the best food I've had at MK ever. But having rides go down does seem to be a big problem right now

 

[CinderellaElla]

Wow!! That's a pretty unexpected day at Disney! I would be pretty disappointed. I came close to that one day. I recently brought my childhood friend, who hadn't been to Disney in 15 years. My plan was to get to Seven Dwarfs first thing, then we had FP for Space mountain, buzz light year, and.... haunted mansion I think, SM and BL times were almost back to back. She had never been on seven dwarfs so I wanted to make sure she got on that, and this was (in terms of getting Disney FPs) late notice. So that's why we headed for that ride first; no FP available lol.

There were TWO lines waiting to get on that boat to MK and the monorail, once again, was not working. (My husband and I are AP holders, I can't tell you how many times that monorail over to MK has "not been active" in the mornings). So, my friend and I get into ONE OF THE LINES (there were two) for the boat to take us over to MK from the TTC. We waited half an hour just to get on the boat to go over to MK, I had no idea it would take this long. This isnt including the time it took on the shuttle from the parking lot to the boat. I am no Disney newbie but this was the first time I have ever had to wait half an hour for the boat over to MK from TTC. It was in April, so might have been during a spring break time, but still!! So we were late to opening of MK and therefore had to wait in line for quite a bit at Seven Dwarfs. The wait time said 45 mins, so we decided that was fine(since she had never been on it before, and wouldn't get a chance soon). The wait time ended up being over an hour.

Because of that, we barely missed our time for the buzz lightyear FP. We made it in the line, but the ride shut down when we were halfway through the FP line. We didn't get an extra FP for that....

Everything else in they day went okay, but if that MK monorail had been working in the early morning, like it used to, we would have had more more time to experience other rides in MK.

I felt so bad because I am an AP, an avid Disney lover, and I just wanted to show my best friend all the things in Disney she had not seen in 15+ years.

 

[A Mickeyfan]

The express monorails will not be running Tuesday's, Wednesday's & Thursday's from 11:30am to 6:30pm all summer! !! I found this out last week while there. According to Disney, it's off peak time and they are training for a new program that will begin later this year......summer off peak????? I know those aren't rush hour times but resort monorail went down and lines were crazy for all ferries. They do not provide bus transportation from the MK to the TTC or to monorail resorts

 

[Klayfish]

The number of and frequency of the break downs is concerning to me. Do you suppose at due to higher volume of people using them, i.e. more people in the parks?
Our MK day we ha 7DMT, Space Mtn. Barnstormer, Pooh and the train (those are he ones I knew of) then on our Epcot day TT was down some and Figment broke down on us. Every day I see on Lines that several are down daily.

We really haven't seen that happen in our experience. Like I said, the night I posted about was a first for us. We've seen one here, one there, but not the mass for extended times like we had. I've seen the Lines app report rides down that aren't actually down. It's also possible it was reported "down" when it was only down for a few minutes. I'll admit I did that once last week. Thought a ride was down because it had stopped for a few minutes (longer than it would stop for a wheelchair situation) while we were in line. Reported it as "down" and 2 minutes later, it was running again.

Yes, the monorails are taken down regularly during midweek. It's a bit of a pain but they seem to have all 3 ferry boats running at that time. Plus, the resort monorail still runs.

 

[MaybeMaybeline]

Space was also down with about a 25 minute fastpass wait after it came back up. That was the 4th time this vacation a ride has gone down during our fastpass window. Very frustrating. The anytime fastpass is a nice compensation but I've also noticed longer than normal fastpass waits at many attractions this trip. Not sure what's causing it, but it makes planning extremely difficult when you have no idea if your fastpass is getting you a walk on or a 15+ minute wait. The anytime fastpass also causes issues at tiered parks. If your tier 2 ride is down and you get an anytime fastpass, you must still book and use/expire another tier 2 fastpass before you can book your 4th (now actually your 5th) fastpass. This caused me a bit of a nightmare at Epcot when I was trying to nab test track. Oh and did I mention MDE and the park wifi were down? Not pretty.