Disney may have the right to do whatever, but I also have the right to tell thousands of people on a message board that they ripped me off for EMM.
People should also be aware that Disney isn’t maintaining the rides at MK and that it may influence their visit. If enough people complain, maybe something will be done.
Maybe my post was misinterpreted. I agree I would be upset. I hope they make it right.
What about those Guest Relations tents throughout the park now instead of going to the front? Not sure if they are on the map now
I completely agree with this, but I’d seriously think about adding a #3- vow not to come back to WDW. It would make me feel better at the time, at least!
It’s a lot of time and money to risk the same thing happening again. Most likely it’s due to just terrible luck, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking there is a new issue here- the rides are offline less, operate more and have less time for maintenance due to all the extra paid events that are happening these days.
Maybe this the way it is going to be more often than not from now on. Add the massive crowds that are going to be there from the end of August to infinity, and it may be that Disney has pushed the envelope further than the machinery (and the people) can handle. I guess we’ll see. But the OP has had a terrible experience, and I wouldn’t blame her one bit for never going back again.
Have you tried the WDW Twitter account? We had a bad experience with an ADR, my husband tweeted them, and after a bit of back and forth they gave our whole party 3 anytime fast passes.
Agreed.
So sorry for your situation.
We had a similar experience during our trip last year around Memorial day. Our plan was to RD each park to hit the headliners and save the FP+ for repeat rides later in the day. At MK, on two separate mornings, Space Mountain was down in the AM. 7DMT went down twice during the trip. At AK, EE was down when the park opened twice as well.
What was really frustrating is that the cast members don’t let you know, so we waited like fools near the entrance to Tomorrowland to hit Space Mountain first when the ride was clearly not operating. They even fast walked us there only to be told by the ride operators that the ride was going to have a delayed opening.
The exact same thing happened at AK for EE. We waited 30 minutes for the RD at the Asia entrance and fast walked there to be told that the ride was not operating. It totally messes up you plan.
I probably don’t have a representative sample but this particular part of the OP has happened quite frequently on my visits. I’ve been to WDW several times in such months as February, June, July, and September and each time, at least one day (if not every day) is plagued by afternoon thunderstorms, which basically make the parks unnavigable - and even if you could get around, all the outdoor rides are closed. Thankfully, the Florida weather changes quickly so the rain rarely lasts more than 2-3 hours. Too bad in your case it lasted 5 hours!
In all of my years going to Disneyland (which is much closer to where I live), I have only experienced a similar weather phenomenon once. Usually the rain in Anaheim is much lighter and less disruptive (and less frequent).
I was going to say the same thing. But make it number 4
Number 3 for me is send DH to Guest Services and come back with some major compensation. I can count on one hand with fingers left the number of times I’ve had to elevate my complaint to the level where I demanded something. But this most definitely be would be one of them.
Yes, that’s a very good idea, too. I’m pretty good at getting things out of the airlines when they mess up. Hopefully my tactics would work on Disney- I’d sure give it a shot!
I’m a bit late to the party, but apparently they had technical difficulties due to a lightning strike. They should absolutely still have made it right, but at least it explains all the downtime. We watched the storm from Chef Mickey’s and it was pretty impressive.
We were there around the same time as OP and experienced similar issues with ride closures & rain. We were in MK last Sunday when the big storm came through (lasted about 4 hours) and just about everything went down, including indoor rides. We huddled under a covered porch in Frontierland for awhile, and I just sat on my phone trying to grab FP’s for downed rides and waiting for them to turn to anytime FP’s. We modified our dinner reservations to an earlier time and decided to come back to MK later in the evening instead of returning to our hotel. We had several anytime FP’s that we used that evening and then went to GS and asked if they could help us carry over the ones we couldn’t use before park close. GS was very helpful and definitely went out of their way to make it better for us. I think sometimes as frustrating as things can be, taking a step back and resetting expectations is key to keeping the Magic alive! I am sure CM’s and GS were inundated with frustrated, angry guests because of the ride closures and weather issues. I actually felt sorry for them in many ways.
I am sorry the OP had such a sad experience but hopefully, things turned around and only got better with each day!
Excellent advice, which could be applied to almost any vacation.
We were there that day too and it really was unlike anything I have ever seen. The rain I understand, there is nothing you can do about that and it is Florida. But, to have all of the indoor rides down as much as they were was frustrating. We are fortunate that we have been many times and will go back but I can only imagine the disappointment for a first timer. Unfortunately, we experienced this level of rides being down in the other parks as well. There wasn’t one day that we were able to use all of our originally scheduled FP. And in MK, once things did start back up, the FP lines were so long. We altered our plans and enjoyed the parks in a different way but I can understand your disappointment. We had to make our own magic that day, that’s for sure. I am hoping this isn’t a sign of increasingly lax attitude towards maintenance.
Just seeing this now, but we had an issue with 7DMT on our EMM day a couple of weeks ago as well. I’ve done EMM 4 times now, this being the first time with the additional rides. We took some time to get some castle pictures on the way in, so we were a little slower getting there. Our plan was to head to Little Mermaid first anyways to let the crowds on 7DMT go down. As we walked by, we noticed the massive line in front of 7DMT and I originally told DS that those were the breakfast folks, but then I noticed the EMM bands. Walking by, the said it was down. We walked back from the Little Mermaid to Pooh which was not walk in as in our previous experience, most likely because 7DMT was down, so we waited about 10 minutes there. At that point, 7DMT was finally up, but because the line was so long, they had us walk through the full stand by queue instead of the FPP queue as was my previous experience. Wait was around 20-25 minutes. When we got off, we contemplated getting back in line for another ride, but the line was still just as long and we would have been behind the rope drop crowd for goal of Space at rope drop. So we bailed for the tea cups. We only accomplished 4 rides. In my past EMMs, we used the FPP line for everything and once you got off, they had a short cut back if you wanted for another quick ride and 7DMT line got shorter and shorter as the morning went on.
We hit Space and Buzz before breakfast so that worked perfectly. But we were incredibly disappointed in the EMM. As opposed to the next day at HS TSL EMM which was amazing - SDD x4, ASS x1, TSMM x2. Given this experience, we probably won’t do MK EMM for a good long while.