Opening Day Review: A Big Mess

One thing they could do (although not immediately) would be to move the toll booths a little further out on the causeway. Toll booths are going to be a bottleneck no matter what, but if they used the first "island" off the peninsula, they could widen out the booth footprint and add more entrance lanes. I'm envisioning something similar to Kings Island's new entrance. This would enable them to have lanes for passes and pre-bought parking scanners, and those paying cash or credit could use other lanes. It would also allow for separating the traffic flow between the main lot and the resorts/Soak City lots a little more efficiently.

Shades said:

Where do you all find these people?

Well, the trash can at Starbucks in Breakers, of course :)

But seriously, I had just waited 15 minutes for a drip coffee because they were handling it wrong - every Starbucks I've ever been to, the person running the register turns around and fills your coffee, on Saturday morning, they were putting names on the cups and adding them to the others so we had to wait in with the mocha-frappa-choco-chip line - but again, their first morning open and all that. I was putting cream and sugar into my girlfriend's coffee and this woman steps up and dumps half of her cup into the trash can with a disgusted look on her face.

I simply said to her "I guess if we had to wait 15 minutes for it, it's better that it's full" in a manner trying to pass it off as a "it sucks, but no huge deal" and she just went to town. "Oh, I'm emailing the CEO on Monday morning about this whole weekend, it's a disaster, they have no right to treat us season pass holders like this!"

I just smiled and said "eh, it's not so bad. We have all summer here, it's opening weekend" - which set her off even more. She huffed and said "There should never be THAT many people in the park for our special event, and if there are that many season pass holders, they should hold a LOTTERY (she said it with such emphasis and anger) so that they keep the crowds down". I'm not kidding here, her fists were clenched and she pointed her finger into an imaginary table when she was emphasizing the LOT-TER-REY part.

I repeated myself and said "Maybe I'm biased because I rode Valravn a few times already, but I think it's awesome to see people iso excited about it, but we have all summer with our passes"

She got visibly upset and said "that's not true" and her daughter mumbled something about moving away for school.

I shrugged and said "maybe opening weekend wasn't the best choice for your one and only visit" and walked away so I don't know how she acted after that

Those were always my favorites, the ones who threatened to send an email to the CEO, that they would have their lawyer get involved with this, that they were a stockholder and deserved to be treated better.

One reason I avoid the Friday preview night is that 3 hours is just not enough for me to justify driving from Cleveland. Also I figured it would be a clusterf**k of people. None of us know the season pass base for the park but we can all assume its in the tens of thousands, factor in the relative close drive for KI and MiA pass holders as well and you could easily have 30,000+ people jamming into the park for a short 3 hour event. I'm not sure what people who had a horrible time due to crowds were thinking... other then the horrible state of entitlement humans have these days.

On Sunday I encountered a person at the parking toll booth who was refusing to pay. Not sure what his beef was but he was holding up his lane for over 5 minutes as he debated with the toll booth worker and then a supervisor that finally came over.

I couldn't hear what was being said but it was infuriating that this jerk was holding up a line of cars behind him and the CP employee wasn't smart enough or empowered enough to get the line moving.

In general I have little patience for people that stop and ask questions about the park to the toll both workers. Pay your $15 or $18 and get moving. You can ask questions at the front gate. I see it all the time. I'm not sure if the workers are given any training on how to politely tell these cars to save their questions for guest services or the ticket windows at the gate; but if they spend an extra 30 or 60 seconds answering questions to every 3rd or 4th car it really slows down the traffic lanes.

I do know that KI has added fast past lanes for season pass holders this year. Would love to see CP do that but don't know if it's possible with the current traffic lanes.

I was under the impression that they only had a few lanes open Friday evening which is where the complaints were coming from. If they had all of the lanes open what else does anyone expect they can do?

There was a decent backup when we got to the booths at about 8:30 Sunday morning. They only had 2 lanes open at that time though. I think a lot of the "issues" people had this weekend are related to new staff not being fully up and running yet, and also I'm not sure the park is up to full staffing levels yet. With just Friday-Sunday operation, there may have been a lot of staff that don't move in and/or start until this week. I'm just basing this on seeing some college students working in a similar way that they do for Halloweekends.

I went to out local post office about a week before Christmas this year. Let me just say, WORST POST OFFICE EXPERIENCE EVAH!!!!!!

There was no place to park, but that's just the beginning. I actually had to wait at least 15 minutes just to get in the parking lot. And what do I see? A huge line of people that stretched way outside the door. WTF? I could see in the window and the only registers that were open were the two registers that they had staffed by the same two people who always work. Once I got inside, I find out they are out of the RED Santa stamps that I wanted; all they had left were the stupid brown Christmas Tree stickers and I know that they had them becuase I was there last week and I saw them and I asked the guy but hedidnt even know what I was talking about and then when I got the Tree stamps one of them didnt even stick to the box that I got (which wasnt even the box that I wanted because they ran out of those too) and it was so HOT doesnt the Post Office have a/c yes its cold outside but clearly they should knwo when we're all bunched up in there that its going to get HOT so just turn it on but of course there was no one at the Post Office who even knew how to work the a/c when I got up there.

I mean, if I was working at the post office at some point I would have just said "OK, it's all free just drop your packages here and I will mail them out". It would be a critical decision to make, for sure, but I would at least have the decency to admit that my post office WAS NOT PREPARED FOR FRICKIN CHRISTMAS.

At some point I finally said ENOUGH and canceled my mail.

Post of the year!

e x i t english said:

Shades said:

Where do you all find these people?

Well, the trash can at Starbucks in Breakers, of course :)

But seriously, I had just waited 15 minutes for a drip coffee because they were handling it wrong - every Starbucks I've ever been to, the person running the register turns around and fills your coffee, on Saturday morning, they were putting names on the cups and adding them to the others so we had to wait in with the mocha-frappa-choco-chip line - but again, their first morning open and all that. I was putting cream and sugar into my girlfriend's coffee and this woman steps up and dumps half of her cup into the trash can with a disgusted look on her face.

I simply said to her "I guess if we had to wait 15 minutes for it, it's better that it's full" in a manner trying to pass it off as a "it sucks, but no huge deal" and she just went to town. "Oh, I'm emailing the CEO on Monday morning about this whole weekend, it's a disaster, they have no right to treat us season pass holders like this!"

I just smiled and said "eh, it's not so bad. We have all summer here, it's opening weekend" - which set her off even more. She huffed and said "There should never be THAT many people in the park for our special event, and if there are that many season pass holders, they should hold a LOTTERY (she said it with such emphasis and anger) so that they keep the crowds down". I'm not kidding here, her fists were clenched and she pointed her finger into an imaginary table when she was emphasizing the LOT-TER-REY part.

I repeated myself and said "Maybe I'm biased because I rode Valravn a few times already, but I think it's awesome to see people iso excited about it, but we have all summer with our passes"

She got visibly upset and said "that's not true" and her daughter mumbled something about moving away for school.

I shrugged and said "maybe opening weekend wasn't the best choice for your one and only visit" and walked away so I don't know how she acted after that

People like her make me hate people. Those are the ones that can't enjoy ANYTHING without finding something wrong with it.

She reminded me of the "God Warrior" lady from Trading Spouses that was the talk of the town a few years ago. She wasn't really yelling, but she had that stern tone in her voice and was using a lot of angry inflection.

All this means is CP did a great job promoting the new ride. Yes it was busy, yes the lines were long for Valravn, but I don't recall any opening day when there were not long lines at the new ride. I got to ride Valravn Friday night, got in line at 10:45 after I rode everything else. Wait was still about 1.5 hours, but CP's practice of not closing lines an hour before official closing is great. By the way, this wasn't even opening weekend officially , the park opened a week early so that we could ride.

So I guess there will be a new topic posted next week "Official Opening Day Review:Not as Big of a Mess"

bgiese said:

...the CP employee wasn't smart enough or empowered enough to get the line moving.

Without knowing the issue in question, I'm not sure it's appropriate to suggest the employee wasn't smart enough or empowered enough.

At the box office I work in, we often deal with guests who did an online search for Blue Man, then clicked on the first link. They either don't bother to read the site they're clicking on or they're somehow under the impression that Blue Man's website would be ticketliquidators.com (a ticket scalper site), and they have a complaint about the cost of their tickets (the actual purchase price is printed on the ticket).

There's precisely nothing we can do for them. It's not a question of smartness or empowerment. They bought tickets through a third party. We can't refund their money, we can't move their seats. But we have to try and explain all that to them, and that holds up our lines.

CP Maverick said:

Parking costs exactly the same regardless of which road you take.

Rhyme trumps facts :-)

I will say that the idea of letting cars in for free when traffic backs up really bad isn't that crazy of an idea. Disney already does this at Hollywood Studios with the side entrance to the parking lot. When traffic backs up onto Buena Vista Drive they just start letting cars in to clear the roadway out.

99er said:
I will say that the idea of letting cars in for free when traffic backs up really bad isn't that crazy of an idea. Disney already does this at Hollywood Studios with the side entrance to the parking lot. When traffic backs up onto Buena Vista Drive they just start letting cars in to clear the roadway out.

And a wise business decision it is. :: Dumps gasoline over self ::

When I worked at a WDW park back in the day, we would do this on days like New Years Eve and other major days to alleviate congestion. Managers would come out, tell us to do it, and then tell us to stop. But would they ever be there to talk with the first car that we were charging after sending them through without stopping for 10-15 minutes? Nope. And for that reason and those reactions we used to get alone, I never cared for the practice.

Jeff said:

Touché

Guess it's better than this:

▶ 0:50

Apart from my opinion that parking should be included in the price of admission...

I think one of the biggest problems with the parking tollbooth is that the parking fee is treated like some kind of state secret. Like the park is so embarrassed to charge for parking that they don't tell you what it is until you get to the tollbooth. Making sure you have an opportunity to scrape enough coins out of the ashtray to pay for parking BEFORE you get to the tollbooth would tend to speed things along.

And what's this about $18 parking? I thought it was $15. But if it is $18...that's asinine. No, actually, it's asiten (inflation, you know). An $18 parking fee means almost every vehicle coming through the tollbooth will need to deal with inconvenient cash amounts. It's not quite as bad as $13, but still a pain in the neck for everybody. Keeping the parking rate at $15/$25 should result in better throughput than $18/$25 and as a bonus they might not run out of $1's as often.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.