I have been reading a lot of Disney related things… this evening came across a hilarious blog post at Huffington Post, “Taking your Children to Disney for Vacation Part 1” and the sequel,
“Vacation: When Things Go Wrong Part 2”.
Don’t worry, it all ends well.
Something in her second part got me to thinking… how often do rides malfunction at Disney? When The Little Mermaid was newly opened was about the time that we were invited by family to attend the MNSSHP and we got stuck on this ride. After burning about 20 mins, maybe more, just sitting there… they escorted us off and stuck fast passes in our hands to make up for it.
All in all, it wasn’t too horrible. No doubt, we could have accomplished more had the whole break down never happened. We also never saw the whole ride, really looking forward to make up for that this year when we go.
Those of you who have been to Disney multiple times, especially those of you with AP… how common would you say this occurrence is? We can use a scale of 1-5 if that helps… 1 being “it hardly ever happens and is a dumb stroke of bad luck when it does” to 5 being, “expect it! possibly multiple times in a day”.
Once you’ve given your feedback on that… what does a TP committed individual do when a broken down ride delay threatens to derail their whole agenda?
Is it best to step of the disaster and hit the “optimize” button (aka, “save us”) or do you look into the upcoming steps and cross something off that is of less importance to make up for lost time?
Or maybe both.
Are there certain rides in the park that seem more apt to bite the dust throughout the day?
My MK tour plan leaves us (as you may have seen me already mention in all my other yadda yadda) no time in between most attractions. Though, I have it set to “relaxed” walking and I anticipate that, at least, for the first half of the day we will be going at an impressive clip. (so help me god!!) I kid, I kid. I won’t be a maniac about the schedule… well…
no, I won’t, I really won’t.
I have to say, we rarely a ride break down with us on it at DLR. (We haven’t done WDW yet.) We have been in line a few times when it happened and we frequently get FPs to make up for it. Especially when we are close to getting on the ride and it is a popular one or we used our FP to get on the ride.
We don’t use a tour plan, so we move on to our next plan of action. Sometimes we use the FP for a ride that we really wanted to go on or we hold on to it until later when the ride is back up.
There are certain rides that go down more frequently than others. That is what you will want to ask about. At DLR it is the Indiana Jones ride, as well as Alice in Wonderland are frequently down, but we have learned to anticipate that and plan accordingly. I would be interested to hear about which rides at WDW frequently are problematic.
YES!! I was thinking this very thing. Surely there are specific rides that are more prone to breakdowns and delays.
As I mentioned, the one time I was there The Little Mermaid bit the dust…(never opened back the rest of the night) and perhaps coincidentally I have a friend who went in the last couple of years and said her family was stuck on the Mermaid ride as well…
I won’t be surprised to hear Ariel is temperamental.
I hope others reply and include specific rides that they feel have a history of breaking down more so than others.
I was just thinking about this . . . specifically thinking about Frozen Ever After because it seems to be having regular breakdowns. Would love to hear the regulars’ perspective.
Frozen MUST not eat it while we are there!! It MUST NOT.
Sad thing is… I was only able to get FP for Frozen and the 7DMT for late, after 7pm. I wonder if having those later in the day increases the likelihood they could be down?
I think 7DMT is a much better attraction at night- lucky you!
For years I thought some dark rides were always breaking down. Then I learned that some rides (PoC, HM, UtS, need to stop at times for wheelchair loading. I love Under the Sea- and I always hope it will stop in my favorite places!
The bit of Under the Sea we were able to see… was AMAZING. It was the first time I had been to DW since I was a kid… and I remember being so amazed by how much the animatronics look EXACTLY like they stepped right out of the movie screens! I simply can’t wait.
You know, now that I am thinking about it… I haven’t ever been on the Winnie the Pooh ride… and we went to get in line that night of the Halloween Party, but it (and Pan) were shut down because the Pooh ride had caught on fire. Assuming a small incidental fire, but there was smoke none the less.
Never have been on Pan either.
I would give it a numerical rating of 3 using your scale. I don’t think I ever been there for a 4-5 day trip when at least something went down for technical reasons.
When FEA first opened, there were a LOT of breakdowns.I was of the impression that it’s gotten much better - but I’ll admit that i haven’t been following it lately. TT is notorious for late openings due to technical problems. Based on my personal experiences, Splash seems to be one of the more common ones to have issues. In DHS, it’s not uncommon for one of the ToT shafts to be down, and recently I’ve been reading about some issues on TSMM.
But what if you get stuck on a ride that broke down and it takes a chunk right outta your tourplan…
Do you go on following your plan… do you optimize at that point for a new arrangement… or do you just skip something coming up in steps that you view as less important? Hypothetically speaking.
I think the odds of you getting stuck on a ride pretty slim. So slim that I wouldn’t even plan on it. It is more likely that a meal being delayed could throw your plan off more than a ride braking down.
We usually experience at least one delay (whether it’s down temporarily or we have to be escorted off) per trip.
Like Tink said, Haunted Mansion and those continuous loader rides almost ALWAYS have delays due to those needing extra loading time but that’s nothing major.
Oddly enough though, during our last trip at Disneyland, we got escorted off of no less than three attractions haha. I really felt like we had brought a rain cloud with us that trip. But at WDW, we’ve never really had any issues. Probably just the luck of the draw.
I’d also give the likelihood a 3 out of 5. Magic Kingdom seems the most prone (must have the most attractions). I personally go to WDW once a year, for the last 8 years (and several times prior to that going back to the 1990’s).
We were stuck on Pirates for nearly 1 hour a few years back. Had to get towed backwards out of that one. All I could think was “what if this was the last ride of the trip and I needed to get back for the Magical Express”. I’ll never ride anything that can strand me on the last day. That was a good lesson to learn.
People mover seems to break down regularly when I’m there.
As far as recovering from the delay, in the case of the Pirates incident, losing an hour was pretty bad. If it’s just 10 - 15 minutes, that can be absorbed pretty easily.
I usually go for a weeks time and average only 1 break down the entire time I’m there. In all the years I’ve been to WDW I’ve never gotten stuck while on a ride. My last trip we went for our FP time on Toy Story Mania only to find out that it was shut down. It is nice that they give you a FP to come back later at any time for that ride or an equivalent level ride. If you can’t ride Little Mermaid at MK they’re not going to let you use that new FP for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I usually just move on to the next item on our to do list and plan to use the new FP at the end of our night.
