Pete's return and his appropriate rant.....

I respect your opinion, but I disagree - especially with MK. But we talked about that already :) Regardless, my point was that any security point presents an area before security where people are gathered, and that alone presents a target. Brussels saw that last year. There's only so much that can be done to prevent that. No security is instantaneous. And if places that have done this for *decades* only have a 5% success rate in actually catching weapons, then that leaves me with the thought that perhaps the method itself just is not all that effective.
The major security changes would only happen at MK. The rest of the parks would just get expanded security (everyone goes through metal detectors). We don't know what Disney's success rate is nor would they probably release that info.

While I also respect your opinion I am a bit confused as to why you don't think there would be less of a bottleneck?

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This isn't my photo this is from roj2323 on wdwmagic. As you can see here people coming from the monorail and boats would be prescreened at the resorts or at the TTC. Those walking or taking a bus are screened at the right of the MK entrance. Each monorail station at the resorts would likely have a small security set up. The TTC would have a larger one due to the amount of people coming from that area.
 
The major security changes would only happen at MK. The rest of the parks would just get expanded security (everyone goes through metal detectors). We don't know what Disney's success rate is nor would they probably release that info.

While I also respect your opinion I am a bit confused as to why you don't think there would be less of a bottleneck?

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This isn't my photo this is from roj2323 on wdwmagic. As you can see here people coming from the monorail and boats would be prescreened at the resorts or at the TTC. Those walking or taking a bus are screened at the right of the MK entrance. Each monorail station at the resorts would likely have a small security set up. The TTC would have a larger one due to the amount of people coming from that area.

As others on these types of threads have said, the more spread out security is, the more holes there are for people to sneak through. I'm also thinking of things like level 10 crowd days where all of these areas are bottlenecks now - and were huge bottleneck issues well before metal detectors were ever in place even for just some people.Metal Detectors for everyone, even if you spread them out, aren't going to make that any better on those high level crowd days.

As for Disney's success rate - as I said, my comments are about the method itself, not who is implementing the method. I have far more confidence in the security we *don't* see at Disney than I do in the security theatre they put out front.
 
I'd rather they figure out a n efficient way to get everyone through metal detectors faster than do this "random" selection process

I haven't seen the random too often and when they are doing it, there's is 2-3 times more security around eyeing everyone and that's only the uniforms. ak has always been everyone scans, as well as epcot international gateway entrance. epcot more often than not some group is getting everyone scanned. also the trained dogs they are using have really increased in numbers..

If you go by a recent report, ready creek is dropping some serious money on deputies with a guess that spending is up 4 times what it was previously (and you can see it, they are everywhere with random officers in some interesting spots watching roads and walking traffic like never before. that doesnt' count how much disney itself is spending... they've never played around but right now its 5-7 times what it was when everyone was here for the megameet (and this was before the guns were discovered).


there is something going on construction wise that at first I thought was making a space for ferry waiting to be off the walkway for boats (a few really bad nights with massive crowds over the summer)... but it's also in a spot that if you reworked the walkway everyone could easily be scanned further from the ticket entrance.... Hollywood has the space to shift around some of the

This is from oct 1 and it was zoomed in as it was a far away shot but you can see the green walls from left of the ferry dock all the way to the edge of the dock that for awhile was a smoking section. what you can't really tell from it is it also goes far right ended just before the exit you take from the ferry and includes the walkway aroudn they put ropes up for the ferry waiting overflow and then it goes back (towards the mk entrance) ending at the edge of the walkway (but I suspect they might push further out when it's closer and can have people walk a different way..

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since that picture was taken, the extra unused dock has has it's overhang removed and you can see from the monorail that it's been completely leveled like they are about to build a new building or something they would want a flat area for..

Here is my best @Robo impression for where the walls are roughly (from memory).

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From this view it looks like they might plan to close off the gap that right now is the ferry and bus walkway around the walls and make it a larger scanning area, different ferry entrance and could have monorail and resort come across to it and remove that middle entrance or leave it as an exit .. you could also shift the ferry waiting to be on the other side of the ferry building when they need more space in that area with the soda machines at the entrance of the second bus loop.

EDITED TO ADD: When the second set of tables is in use, there is almost nobody at the middle security scan, that's about 95% of the people entering MK so it makes sense to rework that area to me and a minor inconvience for people getting off resort boats or monorail to walk a few more feet over to it also.
 
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I still say that all of this added security is more of a warning/deterrent than a fail-safe way of detecting and eliminating threats. The idea is that if a place seems like it has robust security, the bad guys will be less likely to try and infiltrate it. And the press they are getting for catching the few people recently should help to dissuade others from bringing in weapons.

In any event, I'm all for added security if it doesn't detract from the overall happy feel of my favorite place. That might not be a popular view for the doomsday preppers but I go to WDW to escape the real world and it was originally designed for just that - an escape. So I would prefer that they keep the security somewhat under the radar so I can still experience my happy place without feeling like the gestapo is around. I guess I am hoping for a balance between security and "the show". But don't ask me how - I'm sure there are smarter people than me to figure that out :)
 

I still say that all of this added security is more of a warning/deterrent than a fail-safe way of detecting and eliminating threats. The idea is that if a place seems like it has robust security, the bad guys will be less likely to try and infiltrate it. And the press they are getting for catching the few people recently should help to dissuade others from bringing in weapons.

In any event, I'm all for added security if it doesn't detract from the overall happy feel of my favorite place. That might not be a popular view for the doomsday preppers but I go to WDW to escape the real world and it was originally designed for just that - an escape. So I would prefer that they keep the security somewhat under the radar so I can still experience my happy place without feeling like the gestapo is around. I guess I am hoping for a balance between security and "the show". But don't ask me how - I'm sure there are smarter people than me to figure that out :)

I'm with you in wanting them to find a way to do this in as unobtrusive a way as possible - and perhaps moving the checkpoints to before you get near the gates is one way to do this

I will say that nothing would ruin the feeling of a "happy place" more than an actual active shooter inside the parks so I think there is a trade off for more security
 
In any event, I'm all for added security if it doesn't detract from the overall happy feel of my favorite place.
I guess that's where I'm having trouble with these new suggestions.

We often will ride the monorail loop to visit the 3 hotels. I really don't like the thought of having to go through security including metal detectors when we go from the Poly to the Contemporary, again when we go from the Contemporary to the Grand Floridian, and again when we go from the GF back to the Poly. That seems overly obtrusive and a real pain in the butt.
 
I guess that's where I'm having trouble with these new suggestions.

We often will ride the monorail loop to visit the 3 hotels. I really don't like the thought of having to go through security including metal detectors when we go from the Poly to the Contemporary, again when we go from the Contemporary to the Grand Floridian, and again when we go from the GF back to the Poly. That seems overly obtrusive and a real pain in the butt.
For sure. For MK, the only thing that makes sense and seems most efficient is just in front of MK where the bag checks are.
 
They could redesign the area where you get off of the monorail to make room for security check points. That way there would be three (one for bus and foot traffic, one for TTC boats, one for monorail) and open up the area in front of the train station. That way we security or the illusion of it, plus the majesty of walking into the Magic Kingdom the way Walt envisioned it to be.
 
I guess that's where I'm having trouble with these new suggestions.

We often will ride the monorail loop to visit the 3 hotels. I really don't like the thought of having to go through security including metal detectors when we go from the Poly to the Contemporary, again when we go from the Contemporary to the Grand Floridian, and again when we go from the GF back to the Poly. That seems overly obtrusive and a real pain in the butt.

They kind of do that at Disneyland - I know we were going to Downtown Disney and had to go through security to get into the esplanade to go across to get to Downtown Disney and then we had to go through it again to get back - so not going to any park and had to go through it twice

No idea how/if they could do it but would be interesting if you could be screened when you came onto property and then if you were staying onsite you never would have to again during your stay. Like in NYC at some parking garages they go through your car and trunk and look under the car with mirrors, etc. before you are able to park in the garage
 
They kind of do that at Disneyland - I know we were going to Downtown Disney and had to go through security to get into the esplanade to go across to get to Downtown Disney and then we had to go through it again to get back - so not going to any park and had to go through it twice

No idea how/if they could do it but would be interesting if you could be screened when you came onto property and then if you were staying onsite you never would have to again during your stay. Like in NYC at some parking garages they go through your car and trunk and look under the car with mirrors, etc. before you are able to park in the garage
Surely many guests would have problems with WDW security searching their cars when entering property. I have no experience with this in NYC but this seems really invasive.
 
I have no experience with this in NYC but this seems really invasive.
I only encountered it in the months after 9-11. I haven't seen it happen since then. At that time, they were searching every car coming into the Port Authority but NYC was a bizarre place then. It was a very surreal atmosphere, really hard to explain, but the entire city just wasn't itself. Our first time in the city after 9-11 was in mid October and then again around Thanksgiving, which was the first time we visited Ground Zero, which was still burning at the time. I've never been in a war zone but I imagine it looks something like what we experienced on that visit.
 
I guess that's where I'm having trouble with these new suggestions.

We often will ride the monorail loop to visit the 3 hotels. I really don't like the thought of having to go through security including metal detectors when we go from the Poly to the Contemporary, again when we go from the Contemporary to the Grand Floridian, and again when we go from the GF back to the Poly. That seems overly obtrusive and a real pain in the butt.

everyone off the bus, it's the border crossing check point. it's a very interesting situation for disney with more property than most towns to secure..
 
I guess that's where I'm having trouble with these new suggestions.

We often will ride the monorail loop to visit the 3 hotels. I really don't like the thought of having to go through security including metal detectors when we go from the Poly to the Contemporary, again when we go from the Contemporary to the Grand Floridian, and again when we go from the GF back to the Poly. That seems overly obtrusive and a real pain in the butt.

This is the problem with the "spread out" Magic Kingdom checkpoints. I would say there is a good percentage of guests riding the monorail with no intention of going to Magic Kingdom, who will now have to pass through these security points. If you are a family staying at the Polynesian and want to go to the Contemporary for a reservation and then just return back to the Polynesian, you will now have to go through two different security screenings. When you have children and strollers that have to be searched, these screenings are not so much fun. Not to mention the people yelling to hold the monorail as they are getting screened!

I don't see any real way that makes sense logistically other than doing it at the park.
 
I only encountered it in the months after 9-11. I haven't seen it happen since then. At that time, they were searching every car coming into the Port Authority but NYC was a bizarre place then. It was a very surreal atmosphere, really hard to explain, but the entire city just wasn't itself. Our first time in the city after 9-11 was in mid October and then again around Thanksgiving, which was the first time we visited Ground Zero, which was still burning at the time. I've never been in a war zone but I imagine it looks something like what we experienced on that visit.

I still see it - typically more downtown and near famous sites - so near Wall St or near the Empire State building, etc.
 
I guess that's where I'm having trouble with these new suggestions.

We often will ride the monorail loop to visit the 3 hotels. I really don't like the thought of having to go through security including metal detectors when we go from the Poly to the Contemporary, again when we go from the Contemporary to the Grand Floridian, and again when we go from the GF back to the Poly. That seems overly obtrusive and a real pain in the butt.
You have to go through them no matter where you go on universal property, and Craig was right, while the security was kinda rude and more interested in chatting to one another (I chatted and cracked a few very appropriate, corny jokes and they wanted none of it) it was very efficient and then we could waltz off to wherever we liked in city walk or the parks and get straight to it
 
I have been to Universal and found their system to be very efficient. I have actually had a few friendly security guard. We took my Dad over their for dinner and the security guard joked with him. He had spare change in his pocket he had to take out. The security guard joked that he was paying for dinner. So it depends on the person

As for Disney I think that the random was going to get them in trouble at some point. Better to check everybody just to be fair
 
This is the problem with the "spread out" Magic Kingdom checkpoints. I would say there is a good percentage of guests riding the monorail with no intention of going to Magic Kingdom, who will now have to pass through these security points. If you are a family staying at the Polynesian and want to go to the Contemporary for a reservation and then just return back to the Polynesian, you will now have to go through two different security screenings. When you have children and strollers that have to be searched, these screenings are not so much fun. Not to mention the people yelling to hold the monorail as they are getting screened!

I don't see any real way that makes sense logistically other than doing it at the park.
I understand that sounds like a big inconvenience. However, how many people would this be on a given day compared to the total number of people who are entering the MK? It's got to be a tiny fraction compared to the MK attendance. No policy is going to be perfect for everyone. On a daily basis, this would be beneficial to tons more people than the few it inconveniences.
 
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it's a very interesting situation for disney with more property than most towns to secure..
There is a point where it becomes ridiculous, though. If Disney wants to cut down the crowds, turning the entire property into a police state may just accomplish that.
 














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