This isn't a detailed trip report so much as my observations from spending 3 days at DL/DCA from 9/13-9/15. For reference, this is my 9th time to the parks since 2002 and my son's 4th (he's 22 now). We booked this trip back in the spring and flew from Oregon. About a month after we had booked our park hopper tickets, they announced the dates for OBB. Unfortunately, 2 out of our 3 nights was OBB. This meant that DCA closed at 6PM and since you can only park hop at 1PM, the value of our Park Hopper was diminished significantly. They seriously need to remove the 1PM restriction since you already pay more for the privilege to park hop and limiting it this way doesn't make any business sense to me.
Day one, we started at DL. Day two, at DCA. Day three, DL. We purchased Genie+ each day and paid for Rise on Day one and three.
I flew down for a quick solo trip last July. The parks were cleaner this time around. While it was incredibly busy last year, this year it was off the chart's busy! Disney no longer seems to feel that the guest experience is the thing. The cast members were all great. Anytime a LL attraction went down, that meant that those lines were even longer later on after they opened back up. This is because current LL and previous LL times were honored at the same time. When multiple major attractions would be down at the same time, LL lines could stretch out to an hour (as one cast member told my son). That means that standby lines would be that much longer.
Part of the reason everything was so busy was the OBB. 2 of our 3 days we started at DL, but couldn't park hop until 1PM and then had to be done by 6PM. They open up OBB attendance at 3PM. So from shortly after 3pm until 6pm, it's a wall of people, throughout the park. If Disney wanted to bring value to their park hopper guests (who've already paid more), they would extend the OBB benefits to those that have already paid (or at least allow those guests to participate until 8PM).
While in an extraordinarily long LL line for Guardians, the guy in front of me was complaining to a cast member about the long lines, etc. She empathized with him and said that Disney keeps raising prices but isn't returning the extra investments back into the parks and she's right! She also said that they overbook the parks. She's worked there 5 years and has never seen things this busy. She said that they can limit park attendance to enhance the guest experience but refuse to do so. She didn't say these things as if she had an ax to grind, but more matter of factly.
Little things like the moving cobra and giant boulder at the end of Indy haven't been working for quite some time. It's can't be that hard to fix those two things. It would add so much to that ride for new guests, and previous guests know what they are missing from those two features being allowed to stay broken. They did add bats to the first cavern on Big Thunder, which is a nice touch and an improvement.
I'm not an "evil corporation" guy at all. I'm well aware of what it takes (financial and human capital) to run a park this size. I'd be interested to hear some actual numbers around income per day at DL alone. 50,000 guests a day is likely pretty accurate, if not an underestimation. Probably at least 80% of those purchase Genie+ and a smaller number purchase the paid ILL. Add that to the cost of a daily ticket, and then the purchases of merchandise and food/drink, and Disney's income is massively gigantic on a per day basis. What their costs are on a daily basis that comes out of that? I'm not sure. But surely they could fix the elements of Indy that I listed above. That's a one time fix in the short term and adds so much to that attraction. I realize they are planning for changing out Splash and currently working on Toon Town and the Matterhorn, but the fixes I mentioned are a drop in the bucket, comparatively. And the 1PM Park Hopper restriction absolutely needs to be dropped! That would help even out crowds to a certain extent rather than create bottlenecks every day.
We left DL on our final day around 6:30PM. There was nothing but walls and walls of people in one direction and a sea of people in the other. Splash, Space, Big Thunder, and Haunted Mansion were all down at the same time. Literally everything else in the park was. 35-75 minute wait as those attractions absorbed idle guests. I know these breakdowns are inevitable. But they have a lot of work to do to keep from turning people off of their parks. I also realize there is a massive contingent of cult Disney fanatics that don't care. This is straight talk here. While we had a good time, some of the magic is gone. The value is just not there for us any longer. For those that are local and can go more often, that may not be the case. For those of us that can only make it there every few years? It's become cost-prohibitive and just doesn't have the same value as previous years. This is not to take away from anyone's enjoyment of the brand or the parks. It's more of a "heads-up" to those that are planning on returning. I want to set expectations accordingly so that you can enjoy the parks as much as possible!
Day one, we started at DL. Day two, at DCA. Day three, DL. We purchased Genie+ each day and paid for Rise on Day one and three.
I flew down for a quick solo trip last July. The parks were cleaner this time around. While it was incredibly busy last year, this year it was off the chart's busy! Disney no longer seems to feel that the guest experience is the thing. The cast members were all great. Anytime a LL attraction went down, that meant that those lines were even longer later on after they opened back up. This is because current LL and previous LL times were honored at the same time. When multiple major attractions would be down at the same time, LL lines could stretch out to an hour (as one cast member told my son). That means that standby lines would be that much longer.
Part of the reason everything was so busy was the OBB. 2 of our 3 days we started at DL, but couldn't park hop until 1PM and then had to be done by 6PM. They open up OBB attendance at 3PM. So from shortly after 3pm until 6pm, it's a wall of people, throughout the park. If Disney wanted to bring value to their park hopper guests (who've already paid more), they would extend the OBB benefits to those that have already paid (or at least allow those guests to participate until 8PM).
While in an extraordinarily long LL line for Guardians, the guy in front of me was complaining to a cast member about the long lines, etc. She empathized with him and said that Disney keeps raising prices but isn't returning the extra investments back into the parks and she's right! She also said that they overbook the parks. She's worked there 5 years and has never seen things this busy. She said that they can limit park attendance to enhance the guest experience but refuse to do so. She didn't say these things as if she had an ax to grind, but more matter of factly.
Little things like the moving cobra and giant boulder at the end of Indy haven't been working for quite some time. It's can't be that hard to fix those two things. It would add so much to that ride for new guests, and previous guests know what they are missing from those two features being allowed to stay broken. They did add bats to the first cavern on Big Thunder, which is a nice touch and an improvement.
I'm not an "evil corporation" guy at all. I'm well aware of what it takes (financial and human capital) to run a park this size. I'd be interested to hear some actual numbers around income per day at DL alone. 50,000 guests a day is likely pretty accurate, if not an underestimation. Probably at least 80% of those purchase Genie+ and a smaller number purchase the paid ILL. Add that to the cost of a daily ticket, and then the purchases of merchandise and food/drink, and Disney's income is massively gigantic on a per day basis. What their costs are on a daily basis that comes out of that? I'm not sure. But surely they could fix the elements of Indy that I listed above. That's a one time fix in the short term and adds so much to that attraction. I realize they are planning for changing out Splash and currently working on Toon Town and the Matterhorn, but the fixes I mentioned are a drop in the bucket, comparatively. And the 1PM Park Hopper restriction absolutely needs to be dropped! That would help even out crowds to a certain extent rather than create bottlenecks every day.
We left DL on our final day around 6:30PM. There was nothing but walls and walls of people in one direction and a sea of people in the other. Splash, Space, Big Thunder, and Haunted Mansion were all down at the same time. Literally everything else in the park was. 35-75 minute wait as those attractions absorbed idle guests. I know these breakdowns are inevitable. But they have a lot of work to do to keep from turning people off of their parks. I also realize there is a massive contingent of cult Disney fanatics that don't care. This is straight talk here. While we had a good time, some of the magic is gone. The value is just not there for us any longer. For those that are local and can go more often, that may not be the case. For those of us that can only make it there every few years? It's become cost-prohibitive and just doesn't have the same value as previous years. This is not to take away from anyone's enjoyment of the brand or the parks. It's more of a "heads-up" to those that are planning on returning. I want to set expectations accordingly so that you can enjoy the parks as much as possible!
(We came prepared with sandals and put our shoes/socks in ziplocks and in our backpacks.)
