Popular Ride Closures at Rope Drop

[jeffg4]

Yup, sounds like us! Maybe if they had time to let people know while standing in line to get into the park (announcement or something) that certain rides were having technical difficulties, we would've had a little time to rethink what we wanted to do. They may not know that far in advance, though.

Would it be so hard to make a park announcement when attractions are down or back up? There must be a good reason why they don't do it. Probably for crowd control. Or now that Disney appears to be going completely cyber, how about a text when a ride is down or back up? That might even be easier than making an announcement.

 

[Praying Colonel]

The second time this happened was at HS. Our plan was to go to RNR first, then do Tower of Terror. When we got to the intersection between the two attractions, they had a line of cast members blocking it and said RNR was closed and they didn't know when it would open. They were pushing everyone to Tower of Terror. We rode TOT hoping RNR would open soon but it didn't. We decided to do a 2nd ride on TOT instead but since RNR was closed and more people were now in line for TOT, the wait was longer than anticipated. RNR didn't open up until later in the morning but it had thrown our timing a little off for the day. My son did ride it later using the single rider line.

I've had it happen the other way: ToT was closed at opening, so everybody wanting to do ToT diverted to the RnRC standby line, which was lined up all the way out to Sunset Boulevard. When your plan is to do those 2 attractions first, you have some serious on-the-fly improvising you have to do.

I've also been on a vacation where we were 1-for-6 doing Winnie the Pooh. First 5 times we showed up, it was down. Finally got to do it the last time. You just have to grin and move on.

 

[WiscMomof2]

Would it be so hard to make a park announcement when attractions are down or back up? There must be a good reason why they don't do it. Probably for crowd control. Or now that Disney appears to be going completely cyber, how about a text when a ride is down or back up? That might even be easier than making an announcement.

If the ride is down and you have a FP for it, you get an email. Otherwise, when you click on wait times on the MDE app, it will indicate if a ride is open or closed. That's how we found out 7DMT and Space went back up when we were there last week.

 

[mocame]

If the ride is down and you have a FP for it, you get an email. Otherwise, when you click on wait times on the MDE app, it will indicate if a ride is open or closed. That's how we found out 7DMT and Space went back up when we were there last week.

Yes, that would work but we rope dropped them. After rope drop, we kept track of the closures on the apps and kept trying to get FPs for the rides for later in the day.

 

[samsteele]

Our trip last year POTC was down the ENTIRE DAY....my first Disney trip since I was a kid and I missed out on my favorite ride. I was so bummed!

POTC was down so often at rope drop last Fall (late Oct) that I only managed to ride it once with a FP during a week and a half trip. It's chronic closure has made me completely re-think my MK rope drop strategy.

 

[Robo]

In November we spent 45 mins of our "Extra Magic Hour" waiting for Expedition Everest to open

Of course we could have gotten out of line, but we had already power walked all the way back there... so we just waited...

Yup.
I've experienced an "opening delay" at EE on several mornings at DAK.

 

[Shanti]

Would it be so hard to make a park announcement when attractions are down or back up? There must be a good reason why they don't do it. Probably for crowd control. Or now that Disney appears to be going completely cyber, how about a text when a ride is down or back up? That might even be easier than making an announcement.

A text is okay, but I would hate for open-air audio announcements to be instituted at MK, as if it were a baseball stadium. Talk about ruining the magic...

 

[pa. dad]

I've thought the same thing. I know they check all the rides and get them working properly for OUR safety but geez, they have hours to check them to get them operating by park open!

OP, what a bummer especially when you put forth the effort to get there early and use a good touring strategy. Did you talk to guest services at all to express your frustration?

I did not. I have not really received a lot of satisfaction in my limited dealings with guest services over the years. My son got stuck on one of the rides once as it wouldn't open after the ride ended.(It might have been stitch) Maybe 20-30 minutes- they bring a mechanic guy to fix it and get him out. he had no freebies for us and by the time i took 15 minutes to hike to guest services, waited in line over there and hiked back, I figured the time invested in getting a fast pass or 2 would have been more than the time it saved. When I have complained to Gs. mostly they have just made excuses so I rarely bother with that.

 

[soniam]

It's been many years since a lot of these rides had much extended maintenance. Except Buzz, which I thought was just paint, I don't think any of these have been down for a long refurb in a very long time. Rides need this kind of maintenance and will break down if they don't get it. TT is supposedly fragile though.