I just returned from a five day trip to Disney World. I won’t beat around the bush - it was the worst vacation of my life, due in part to the stomach flu that afflicted more than half our group, and in part due to the significant changes made to the way the entire resort operates. My last trip to Disney was in 2012, and I honestly feel like more changed between 2014 and 2012 than between 2012 and 1997 (which was the last time I was there as a kid). If you ask me, Mickey and crew have screwed things up in ways I never thought possible, and they have their work cut out for them if they want to remedy the situation (and honestly, I’m not sure they’d even care to at this point).
The first (and most troubling) problem that comes to mind is the new disability program. Basically, the program was changed last year due to the actions of terrible people. Now, people with disabilities no longer get immediate access to rides. Instead, they are given a time to come back later in the day. It is essentially the same as the park’s standard Fastpass system, without any limit on the number of “passes” you can use during the day.
To someone without experience with a physically disabled person, this might sound just fine. And I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that way. It certainly sounds nice on paper, and if you are in Disney’s PR department, that’s the most important battle to win if you want to look good in the public opinion. In reality, however, this system is barely any better than having nothing at all. You can only reserve a spot on one ride at a time, and depending on the popularity of the ride, your return time could be anywhere from minutes to hours later in the day. In the meantime, you will have to find something else to do. If you’re lucky, you can find another ride to get on immediately, but more the more likely scenario is that you are still going to wait in line, only at some other attraction. The only other option is to just walk around the park. Neither scenario is particularly conducive for a physically handicapped individual, especially not in the hot and humid climate of central Florida. All the new system really does is ensure that a disabled person can get on the rides they want to (and are physically able to) ride. It doesn’t save them from waiting in line, which is the root problem that some families will now face.
I’ll say it again - I get that it isn’t easy to understand life with a disabled person if you haven’t experienced it yourself. But having had some of that experience, I’d like to share my perspective - the point of letting a disabled person (especially a disabled kid) skip the line is not so that they can have more fun than you, even if that is the reason why people tried to exploit the original program.. Rather, the point is that taking them to the park at all can be a challenge, and keeping them off of lines makes it easier for their families to tend to their needs. That this fact seems to have been completely ignored leads me to believe that the people in charge either didn’t think things through, or simply didn’t care. And really, it doesn’t matter what the truth is, because the perception they give off is that of a company which treats some of its guests - the ones with no way to fight back - like second class citizens.
On the other hand, I will say that handicap access to parts of the park is getting a lot better. Lines have been widened on multiple rides, and there are ramps everywhere. That said, there are still more improvements to be made. For example, the scanners that read your park pass are placed too high if you are in a wheelchair.
I mentioned the Fastpass system earlier. This was the program which allowed guests of any type to reserve a spot on a ride for later in the day. You could only get one pass at a time, but once the pass was used, you could get another, and another, until the end of the day. The passes were also made of paper, meaning they could be traded between guests - or simply given away if a group found they could no longer use theirs. All in all, the system worked.
The new Fastpass system, Fastpass+, throws that all out the door. You still use it to reserve a spot on a ride, but now it is all done digitally, so there’s no more trading to be done. What’s more, you can now only use three Fastpasses in a single day, in a single park, and you can only use a Fastpass on one “premium ride” in each park. The new system also allows people staying at a Disney hotel to reserve rides days in advance, leading to a minor (but still existent) caes of “haves and have nots”, in which people who can’t afford to stay on the premises have to wait until the day they arrive to use their Fastpasses, and by then, the popular attractions could very well have given all of theirs away.
I have been trying to determine the rationale for this change in the system - especially considering that it has absolutely nothing to do with the change in the disability policy. The only concrete argument I encountered is that this system will force people to spread out among all the attractions in each park, rather than just focus on the most popular rides. But in practice, it just seems to force everyone to wait more and ride less. I can almost understand the stipulations about premium rides, but limiting the number of passes - as well as where they can be used - is very limiting to groups who plan on park hopping (and who plan on staying out from opening to close). The system also forces you to try and plan your day at the park in advance, without giving you much in the way of wiggle room. This ignores the fact that rides will break down, kids will meltdown, and schedules don’t match up. I’ve never stepped into a Disney park with anything close to an itinerary, and I can’t imagine it would be any fun to do so. Despite all of Disney’s positive spin, I don’t think this program is being well received.
Fastpass+ is just one part of a larger plan to “go digital” all over the park. One of its counterparts is the “My Disney Experience” phone and tablet app. The app is supposed to make it easier to manage your trip, but instead it will be the bane of your existence.
The fundamental problem with the MDE app is that it tries to be both a park management service and a mini Disney social network. In order to use it to do anything useful - such as manage fastpasses or other reservations - each person in your group needs to have an account, and you all have to be “friends” within the app, and the person who booked your trip has to give you the proper permissions. This is way more work than needs to be done, and assumes far too much about how tech-savvy everyone in your party will be.
The app (as well as other aspects of the park) have this nasty habit of trying to work within the scope of everyone in your hotel room, rather than within the scope of your entire group, or you as an individual person. This is both confusing and occasionally restricting, and I feel like it assumes that most guests will be traveling as a small, atomic family with a single head of household. If you have a group spanning multiple rooms, and containing multiple adults, making any sort of plans within the park requires a learning curve which is unneeded and unwanted in the middle of vacation.
The bottom line? Everyone’s Disney experience would likely be improved by making a few changes to a database schema.
While at the parks, we saw numerous examples of miscommunication. Whenever we had an issue (and there were many), we got different answers from different employees. This caused us to waste quite a bit of time trying to get a straight answer instead of, you know, enjoying ourselves. My guess is that Disney wanted to make all these massive changes, but didn’t want to invest in training. Our loss I guess.
On that note, there were other minor changes which suggest a greater focus on nickel and diming guests. The free drinks available to resort hotel guests now have RFID chips in them, which force you to wait a certain number of minutes to refill your cup. We also discovered that one of the cute character greets at a particular restaurant had been removed, seemingly in an attempt to add more tables. Employees also made it clear that no breaks were to be given to anyone for any reason. If a sick child causes a party of six to get through no more than the appetizer portion of your meal, you can expect to get the bill regardless. The rules are the rules after all, especially when those rules are in place to make more money.
Look, I understand that this is a business. But on my honeymoon, I felt like the entire Disney World operation worked hard to think of everything possible to make the experience special. Now, it feels like some of the magic is being taken away in order to get the cash flowing more easily. That takes away a lot of the appeal of going in the first place, and makes it clear that customer loyalty is of no importance.
My hope is that the company takes a good hard look at all the complaints (of which I am seeing more and more), and decides that it isn’t worth it to continue treating guests like this. But it is far more likely that things will instead get worse over time. I will be keeping a close eye on any changes which come down the pipeline, but right now I’m not holding my breath. And as a life long Disney fan, that is a very tough pill to swallow.