Tour Groups from Brazil Watch....

[Poohbear123]

Friends of mine went to Universal for the week, and besides the rain, they had to put up with the BRAZILIONS! They left a day early, and went to Downtown Disney, and it was sunny and bright....no brazilions!

 

[Dopey's twin Dippy]

we bumped into them on one trip along time ago. i feel so bad for the crap that goes on from all of them. if i was in line at EE waiting for fastpass i would of def. yelled for a cm. and i mean yell........that should def. not of happened or should happen at any time.there should be something done about it. and if that means to have someone by the fast pass machine, well so be it. and i know some one will say, well my family has.... members and i am standing in line to get theirs also. i mean they KNOW the tours do this. i would def. not go at that time any more. its to bad they are allowed to ruin for alot alot of people.

 

[m&m's mom]

I almost witnessed a fight break out around me at the Fastpass kiosk at Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom when some tour group leaders got in control of three of the kiosks. There are only something like seven kiosks for the ride and of the seven, three were being manipulated by these "flag people". When people behind them realized that the people at the front were hitting the kiosks up for like 100 tickets a person and the queue time for the ride started moving, things got edgy. The flag people pretended not to hear the complaints from behind and ignored people as others asked to just "interrupt" their barrage on the machine to simply get the three passes they needed for their family. That was unpleasant! However, imagine how much fun it was later to return to the Fastpass line only to find it clogged like a standby line filled with - you guessed it - the lovely kids from the tour group! Yeah! Woo-hoo!! Let's wait 40 mins. in the Fastpass line because. . . oh!

I read 10 pages to find out if anyone had the smae experience as us.
DH went to get FP's for Soarin. The return time was an hour away. He wook our passes and DD's and I were supposed to meet him outside The Living Seas. He took f o r e v e r... to come back and when he finally did he was MAD! Tyrns out 3 flag people took over every FP kiosk with a stack of passes 3-4 inches thick. It took them over 10 mins just to put the passes in. he said they had a system where someone would put them in and someone else would match the FP w/ the ticket. Of course, no one was around.
Needless to say the retunr time increased an hour and a half after he finally got up there.
We purposely came back much after our return time so we would not encounter them in the ride queue.

 

[autumnpalm]

Uh oh... we are leaving for WDW on the 23rd and returning on the 29th. I had no idea about these tour groups, we've never visited in July before. Now I am nervous!!

I read that the groups are worse towards the beginning of the month, so hopefully they will be not as prominent in the last week of July. With the huge crowds, the heat and now the addition of tour groups, I'm beginning to get a little worried.

 

[Minnie]

And as I mentioned in the Single Rider post, the CMs were not letting them even get into the single rider lines so we avoided that huge headache we encountered last year.

This was NOT the case in DHS at the new TSM single rider line. Thankfully we had FPs that we had collected earlier as the single rider line was rediculously long due to them being allowed into the line

 

[TwiddleDeeTwiddleDum]

I read that the groups are worse towards the beginning of the month

Can anyone comment on if this is for all months? or just July?

We are going the beginning of August. Should I expect to see the flags?

 

[irunnoft]

We purposely came back much after our return time so we would not encounter them in the ride queue.

Ditto. I did the same thing. I've been going to Disney World for practically my entire life. I can always remember it was hot as all get out in the summer. I can always remember how difficult it was to stand in line - especially on rides like Space Mountain when the line can form well outside of the limits of the air-conditioned building. You know, I can deal with that. I could always manage to get by when I was a kid. I know how to "work" the parks in the summer and not make everything miserable for my family. I don't try to push to do it all in a day. We like to get in early and hit some of the bigger attractions in the early parks and then go back to the Lodge and just - relax but the deal with tour groups is that they are, quite literally, a force beyond our control. You can't plan for them. It can sometimes get quite like a mob very quickly with some of the more lax tour guides. For instance, the girl grabbing the light baton out of a cast member's hand in the MK. I've seen "young gentlemen" urinating outside on the bushes - ironically, NEXT to a bathroom in the very secluded restroom right near the Nemo stage show in Animal Kingdom. Guess who else was there? A Disney janitor who did and said nothing. I was in disbelief. It's the kind of "kids will be kids" mindset of overlooking things on the part of some higher-ups in Disney that make me sad, frustrated and angry. I have no doubts that some of the Disney CM's who have to deal face to face with some of these brats would be very direct in their dealings with them; but I think they have been given other orders.

I guess the best advice to anyone traveling during to WDW during July or during anytime when "flag people" may be present is to try to remember how long you've been anticipating this trip. Try to remember how important it is to your kids and spouse. I used some public incidents of poor behavior as teachable moments for my son. I also explained that it's not the people themselves that we don't like - just their behavior and the effect they have on the parks when they travel together in such a mob. Perhaps it's cheaper for Brazilians to travel to WDW due to current economic situations, but all of us hard working stiffs here need to remember how we saved for these vacations and we owe it to our families as well as ourselves to have a Magical Day no matter what the situation is.






And then NEVER go back when the blasted tour groups are there and help drive that point home to the upper echelon in WDW!!!!

 

[irunnoft]

Uh oh... we are leaving for WDW on the 23rd and returning on the 29th. I had no idea about these tour groups, we've never visited in July before. Now I am nervous!!

I read that the groups are worse towards the beginning of the month, so hopefully they will be not as prominent in the last week of July. With the huge crowds, the heat and now the addition of tour groups, I'm beginning to get a little worried.

I can't say for sure whether the tour groups will still be there in such force as they were during July 7th-17th, but I did start asking every intelligent looking cast member at various locations about the dates when the groups magically disappear in the summer. I kept getting August as an answer. I know for a fact that they are at their worst in the beginning of July. I believe the groups continue to visit throughout July and then they immediately slack off greatly due to the fact that school starts back up in Brazil as their winter break comes to an end.

So....my guess would be that you should expect flag people, but hopefully not as many as I just encountered.

I'd still like to know what the consensus is on December/January.

 

[Tam1067]

I did some research to seek Brazilian websites with these tours. It appears that most of the tours end at the end of July or the first few days of August. They typically come for about a week, and the last tours I could find seemed to begin in the last week of July.

We've switched our annual trip from July to August precisely because we are sick of these groups, so I hope that by the time we arrive on August 5, they'll be headed south.

 

[lovetobeamom]

So many of these posts are true. The tour groups are worse every year. We just got back from a 10 day trip and I had to google the topic to see what came up it is amazing to me to see how many topics there are on it. My 5 year old daughter was pushed to the ground leaving EPCOT at night, and I saw another girl get picked up and moved away from her mother by these girls. They are rude and obnoxious. If you are lucky enough to get into a resteraunt when they are in the same location you have to clean the table when they are done as they leave their garbage on the table. The size of the groups are horrid, and it is true they go everywhere at the same time even the bathroom! I had to wait 45 mins so my 5 year old could get into the bathroom. Their chanting in attractions and at night events is bothersome, the noise level had my daughter in tears one day, they were surrounding her and just chanting and screaming. I finally got fed up with all this when they entire group thought they had the right to cut in front of us in line at an attraction, I yelled at the tour leader and she shook her head and told me they needed to stay together. They feel they have an entiltlement to enter a ride with special privelages, and at times are accomodated. They bogggle everything down so quickly, fast pass lines end up being 40 mins, we found our selves running towards rides and attractions if they were headed to the same location. There is so much distain for these groups by other guests, all you have to do is mention them and people are willing to discuss the topic or just give you that knowing smile. I am not sure what can be done but I am sure of one thing beyond posting here people need to start letting Disney know their feelings and experiences with these groups. During my visist I talked to many people who will never go back in the summer months. We were considering buying a time share but will not becaue we would want it for the summer and are considering never going back in the summer. What should have been a magical experience for my children and family was a vacation we couldnt wait to end. If you have an upcoming vacation be ready for the shirts as my family calls them, it is an experience and not a good one.

 

[lovetobeamom]

I did some research to seek Brazilian websites with these tours. It appears that most of the tours end at the end of July or the first few days of August. They typically come for about a week, and the last tours I could find seemed to begin in the last week of July.

We've switched our annual trip from July to August precisely because we are sick of these groups, so I hope that by the time we arrive on August 5, they'll be headed south.

I talked to a CM about these tours when the Brazillains leave other groups arrive, Arrgentinia etc they say you cant avoid them early July to late August.

 

[Grog]

We are planning a trip next year and were planning our park days to be from roughly July 19th to the 25th. I'm thinking we might want to push it back a couple of weeks after reading all this. Normally we would go during the off season, but we are planning to take my SO's DGD (who will be 7 at the time of the trip) for her first ever Disney vacation. It will all depend on when she has to go back to school.

 

[MikeAidanEoinMom]

I couldn't agree more. I hate to make my first posts on the boards in this thread, but this is so relevant to me right now that I have to. My family just got back from WDW. I'm a teacher and I've been supporting my putting my wife through Nursing school as well as my 10 yr. old son. As many of you well know, teachers' salaries are meager at best. We saved literally since last July for the trip we took this July and it was really tainted by these obnoxious Brazilian tour groups. I say Brazilian because that's where they were from. I didn't see one group from anywhere else.

We were at WDW for 10 days/ 10 nights from July 7 - 17th and I can honestly say I've never seen more Braz. tour groups before than I saw on this past trip. Not only that, but they were mostly obnoxious everywhere we went. They were like hordes of locust from which there was no escape. You'd leave the "orange flag people" in Main Street USA only to encounter the "green flag people" in Frontierland. They were all over Downtown Disney as well as Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach. Suffice it to say that this past trip to WDW pretty much was the nail in the coffin for me and taking my family to Disney in the summer. Sad, because that was a family vacation we all looked forward to.

I almost witnessed a fight break out around me at the Fastpass kiosk at Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom when some tour group leaders got in control of three of the kiosks. There are only something like seven kiosks for the ride and of the seven, three were being manipulated by these "flag people". When people behind them realized that the people at the front were hitting the kiosks up for like 100 tickets a person and the queue time for the ride started moving, things got edgy. The flag people pretended not to hear the complaints from behind and ignored people as others asked to just "interrupt" their barrage on the machine to simply get the three passes they needed for their family. That was unpleasant! However, imagine how much fun it was later to return to the Fastpass line only to find it clogged like a standby line filled with - you guessed it - the lovely kids from the tour group! Yeah! Woo-hoo!! Let's wait 40 mins. in the Fastpass line because. . . oh!

This was also the first summer that I remember the extra magic hours in the morning being ruined by these groups. Up until this summer, I have never seen the tour groups in the extra morning hour at any park. I assumed that they must stay off property. Given how rowdy they are in the parks, I could never imagine that Disney would allow such "guests" to stay on property. I guess I have been wrong about this because I saw plenty of groups lining up to get into the early parks every day this summer. I'm not sure where they stay on property, but I certainly feel sorry for the other guests and families who have to endure what they must be like in food courts and pools.

These groups have pretty much ruined it for me. On our last night there, we went to see Wishes in the MK and I saw a nice family of four who were wearing "My 1st Trip to Disney!" buttons on their shirts just get pushed out of a viewing spot on Main Street USA by a tour group. I thought to myself how sad that this was what they would take away from WDW as their "first trip" experience. One of the rowdy girls grabbed a lighted baton from a CM and started waving it around while the CM was politely trying to get it back from her. All the brat did was laugh and pass the baton on down the line further and further away from the CM. It made me furious! We located ourselves away from that group and watched the fireworks as best we could from near the bridge to Adventureland.

One thing I will mention is that not every tour group behaved this way, but in general, when you've got fifty plus people moving en masse in a theme park it's going to be irritating to people. The sheer number of groups that are there in July and how those groups affect things like the Fastpass return times is enough to contend with. Add to the mix, several misbehaving people in some of those groups and you've gone from bad to worse. Yes, the CMs are aware of the situation and yes they, for the most part, are not amused with the antics of the misbehaving ones. I also don't think anybody enjoys being treated like a plebe by these people either. However, something most definitely hard-line needs to happen with these groups in the future. WDW needs to pull back on the reigns and get control over these people because most everybody in the parks feels the chaos that surrounds these people goes pretty much unchecked.


So what are the best months to travel to miss these people? December? If so, when in the month?

Sorry for the rant! I do feel better though! I'd been saving that for ten days as I promised myself that I was not going to growl and grumble through the whole vacation over something that I couldn't do anything about!

OMG we were there almost the EXACT same time we came in on the 6th but left the 17th also. We even watched Wishes on the 16th. The groups were CRAZY .....DH and 2 ds waited on tower of terror for 45 min at least in the FP line....DS 5 is on the AS and smacked a Brazlian girl on the rear don't know why but her friends laughed and it made him try to do it again.

 

[irunnoft]

We even watched Wishes on the 16th.

I don't know from which vantage point you watched it in the MK, but once we got off MS USA and headed to the bridge going into AL, we were pretty much free from the Brazilians. Instead of fighting them to get out of the park, we quickly headed for the Haunted Mansion and walked right on. After that, we caught Small World and then the last show of Philharmagic for the night. It was a pretty good swan song for our last night in WDW, which is always sad.

Sorry to hear about the horrible experiences you guys had - especially your daughter. I don't think some people actually know how intimidating or scary some of these raucous groups can be for the little kids. I'll tell you this much, though, if anyone were to pick my son up and try to move him out of the way or away from myself or my wife, there would be some serious problems! That's out-of-control! That's a concerned parent's worst nightmare - being separated from your child in a place like that! God forbid any child should get lost, but to be manhandled like a piece of luggage??!!!!!! I knock somebody's teeth so far down their throat they'd have to sit on a Mickey Premium Bar to eat it!

 

[irunnoft]

Not that I advocate violence!

 

[irunnoft]

But I do advocate for the Mickey's Premium Bars!

 

[CR Resort Fan 4 Life]

I couldn't agree more. I hate to make my first posts on the boards in this thread, but this is so relevant to me right now that I have to. My family just got back from WDW. I'm a teacher and I've been supporting my putting my wife through Nursing school as well as my 10 yr. old son. As many of you well know, teachers' salaries are meager at best. We saved literally since last July for the trip we took this July and it was really tainted by these obnoxious Brazilian tour groups. I say Brazilian because that's where they were from. I didn't see one group from anywhere else.

We were at WDW for 10 days/ 10 nights from July 7 - 17th and I can honestly say I've never seen more Braz. tour groups before than I saw on this past trip. Not only that, but they were mostly obnoxious everywhere we went. They were like hordes of locust from which there was no escape. You'd leave the "orange flag people" in Main Street USA only to encounter the "green flag people" in Frontierland. They were all over Downtown Disney as well as Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach. Suffice it to say that this past trip to WDW pretty much was the nail in the coffin for me and taking my family to Disney in the summer. Sad, because that was a family vacation we all looked forward to.

I almost witnessed a fight break out around me at the Fastpass kiosk at Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom when some tour group leaders got in control of three of the kiosks. There are only something like seven kiosks for the ride and of the seven, three were being manipulated by these "flag people". When people behind them realized that the people at the front were hitting the kiosks up for like 100 tickets a person and the queue time for the ride started moving, things got edgy. The flag people pretended not to hear the complaints from behind and ignored people as others asked to just "interrupt" their barrage on the machine to simply get the three passes they needed for their family. That was unpleasant! However, imagine how much fun it was later to return to the Fastpass line only to find it clogged like a standby line filled with - you guessed it - the lovely kids from the tour group! Yeah! Woo-hoo!! Let's wait 40 mins. in the Fastpass line because. . . oh!

This was also the first summer that I remember the extra magic hours in the morning being ruined by these groups. Up until this summer, I have never seen the tour groups in the extra morning hour at any park. I assumed that they must stay off property. Given how rowdy they are in the parks, I could never imagine that Disney would allow such "guests" to stay on property. I guess I have been wrong about this because I saw plenty of groups lining up to get into the early parks every day this summer. I'm not sure where they stay on property, but I certainly feel sorry for the other guests and families who have to endure what they must be like in food courts and pools.

These groups have pretty much ruined it for me. On our last night there, we went to see Wishes in the MK and I saw a nice family of four who were wearing "My 1st Trip to Disney!" buttons on their shirts just get pushed out of a viewing spot on Main Street USA by a tour group. I thought to myself how sad that this was what they would take away from WDW as their "first trip" experience. One of the rowdy girls grabbed a lighted baton from a CM and started waving it around while the CM was politely trying to get it back from her. All the brat did was laugh and pass the baton on down the line further and further away from the CM. It made me furious! We located ourselves away from that group and watched the fireworks as best we could from near the bridge to Adventureland.

One thing I will mention is that not every tour group behaved this way, but in general, when you've got fifty plus people moving en masse in a theme park it's going to be irritating to people. The sheer number of groups that are there in July and how those groups affect things like the Fastpass return times is enough to contend with. Add to the mix, several misbehaving people in some of those groups and you've gone from bad to worse. Yes, the CMs are aware of the situation and yes they, for the most part, are not amused with the antics of the misbehaving ones. I also don't think anybody enjoys being treated like a plebe by these people either. However, something most definitely hard-line needs to happen with these groups in the future. WDW needs to pull back on the reigns and get control over these people because most everybody in the parks feels the chaos that surrounds these people goes pretty much unchecked.


So what are the best months to travel to miss these people? December? If so, when in the month?

Sorry for the rant! I do feel better though! I'd been saving that for ten days as I promised myself that I was not going to growl and grumble through the whole vacation over something that I couldn't do anything about!

I am sorry that you and your family went through all that and I can't believe the things you saw these people do.

 

[fall08CP]

I was at Fantasmic last night and it was packed with Brazilians. Now I completely understand being excited as a young teen and enjoying yourself- you're in Disney! But they were loud and rambunctious and really disturbed the peace and ruined the experience for me. I arrived 70 minutes early as the show was expected to be packed. They stormed in around 50 minutes prior and chanted the entire 50 minutes. I didn't think it was a big deal but then they had chanting wars between the different groups- there were at LEAST 1000-1500 of them in the ampitheatre. They continued to chant as the show started and I missed hearing the entire opening scene narration because it was all "BRASIL BRASIL!" I don't dislike them as people, I really do understand the excitement! It's just a bummer thinking of the families who have never been before and won't return anytime sooon and missed a huge part of the show.

 

[irunnoft]

I am sorry that you and your family went through all that I can't believe the things you saw these people do.

Hey HEY! CANADA! This may sound goofy but it's like I suddenly LOVE Canada now! I always walked through Canada in EPCOT, but we've checked out the movie (I love the song and I sing it much to my wife's chagrin!) and thought it was awesome. I also dined at Le Celier for the first time this summer and it was one of the best dining experiences we had in our ten day trip.

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd love the REAL Canada, too. I heard those neighbors to the North are pretty decent people, too! I know it's OT, but here's the top 7 things I thank Canada for (picture Stacy from your Disney TV channel!) : 1)Hockey 2) The Great One 3) Penalty Boxes 4) Second City TV 5) Rush 6) Triumph 7) FLAPJACKS!

 

[irunnoft]

there were at LEAST 1000-1500 of them in the ampitheatre. They continued to chant as the show started and I missed hearing the entire opening scene narration because it was all "BRASIL BRASIL!" I don't dislike them as people. . .

Been there and done that. That's the chant that I really hate the most! It just rubs my stars and stripes all kinds of wrong ways!