nighttowll
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2013
Oh my gosh!!!! If you are thinking of going to see the Jellystone lights, just say no. I now feel I understand what it’s like to wait standby to ride FOP! But at least with FOP, you get a warning and can leave if you change your mind. I really feel there should have been a wait time posted.
The traffic was backed up all the way onto 40. The other direction through town was worse.
When we finally made it to the entrance, you could see you needed to go left to pay, but they were sending traffic to the right. I thought ok, we are just going to loop around a little parking lot or something. Nope. You can’t see to the right because of the trees, but once I turned I was able to see I was in this long line of cars that stretched out as far as I could see. It appeared to turn and loop back at the very end. Wrong. Once, you got all the way to the end, you turned again onto an even longer section of road, again hidden by trees. This pattern continued for almost 3 hours. To clarify, that was a 3 hour wait once there, 3 hours waiting to pay to go through the 30 minute light show.
The worse part was, there was no way to get out of line. Once you got in line, you were stuck. I would have left if I could have.
They had two lanes of cars on what should have been a one lane gravel road. The cars in the lane beside me were so close. I was worried we were going to scrape or hit mirrors. The car in front of me kept having to drive with half their wheels off the road. Luckily, I have a smaller car and was able to stay on the road, but there were a few places were the side of the road really dropped off into like a 3 foot ditch. This made me so nervous since it was hard to keep both wheels on the road and not hit the car beside you.
It never occurred to me it would be like this. We’ve gone almost every year when it was at the campground and never waited once. We were always in and out in about 30 minutes.
There was just no magic in it this year for us. I won’t be back. We just didn’t enjoy it like we used to.
The lights were more spread out, not as close together as they were in the small campground space, and it just didn’t have the same effect.
Also, I felt like we were being rushed through. There were workers directing traffic waving lighted battens at you to keep cars moving or get them going faster, and with so many cars waiting to go through behind us, it felt wrong to linger at all. I understand the need for this, but it took something away. We never had to rush at the old campground. We were free to stop, park the car for a bit, really take in our favorite parts, and it didn’t impact anyone else because there wasn’t a line behind us. If someone did come along, you just scooted our of the way and let them past.
The other thing I missed was having the parking area for Santa’s village overlooking the lights. We’d always stop, get hot chocolate and snacks, and just enjoy the show from the parking lot a little longer after we drove through. Due to the new set up, that is no longer possible.
Anyone else miss the old lights?
The traffic was backed up all the way onto 40. The other direction through town was worse.
When we finally made it to the entrance, you could see you needed to go left to pay, but they were sending traffic to the right. I thought ok, we are just going to loop around a little parking lot or something. Nope. You can’t see to the right because of the trees, but once I turned I was able to see I was in this long line of cars that stretched out as far as I could see. It appeared to turn and loop back at the very end. Wrong. Once, you got all the way to the end, you turned again onto an even longer section of road, again hidden by trees. This pattern continued for almost 3 hours. To clarify, that was a 3 hour wait once there, 3 hours waiting to pay to go through the 30 minute light show.
The worse part was, there was no way to get out of line. Once you got in line, you were stuck. I would have left if I could have.
They had two lanes of cars on what should have been a one lane gravel road. The cars in the lane beside me were so close. I was worried we were going to scrape or hit mirrors. The car in front of me kept having to drive with half their wheels off the road. Luckily, I have a smaller car and was able to stay on the road, but there were a few places were the side of the road really dropped off into like a 3 foot ditch. This made me so nervous since it was hard to keep both wheels on the road and not hit the car beside you.
It never occurred to me it would be like this. We’ve gone almost every year when it was at the campground and never waited once. We were always in and out in about 30 minutes.
There was just no magic in it this year for us. I won’t be back. We just didn’t enjoy it like we used to.
The lights were more spread out, not as close together as they were in the small campground space, and it just didn’t have the same effect.
Also, I felt like we were being rushed through. There were workers directing traffic waving lighted battens at you to keep cars moving or get them going faster, and with so many cars waiting to go through behind us, it felt wrong to linger at all. I understand the need for this, but it took something away. We never had to rush at the old campground. We were free to stop, park the car for a bit, really take in our favorite parts, and it didn’t impact anyone else because there wasn’t a line behind us. If someone did come along, you just scooted our of the way and let them past.
The other thing I missed was having the parking area for Santa’s village overlooking the lights. We’d always stop, get hot chocolate and snacks, and just enjoy the show from the parking lot a little longer after we drove through. Due to the new set up, that is no longer possible.
Anyone else miss the old lights?
I hope today was a better day for you.
