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[upinthesky]

Just returned from another fabulous visit. Notable points about this trip:

Stayed in the Disneyland Hotel for the first time. The hotel was fabulous but I felt lacked character compared to the other hotels. It is also very expensive. A can of Coke from the minibar was €6. Whilst it was great being next to the park gate (especially given the cold weather) we missed the daily walk through Disney Village which sort of builds you up to the magic of the parks.

Saturday and Sunday (7/8) were about the busiest days I've seen in six trips. Some of the bigger rides had queues of one hour upwards. Ratatouille was two hours. Someone reading this might be able to enlighten me on why it was so busy. I imagine it must be French school holidays.

Big Thunder Mountain broke down twice during our visit, the first time for a couple of hours on Friday and the second time the whole of Saturday afternoon and evening were lost. This is becoming a regular occurrence with BTM. We are lucky in that we visit the park a lot so we don't miss out but you would have been extremely disappointed if you had been on a day trip on Saturday, given Space Mountain is also closed.

We ate in the Silver Spur Steakhouse for the first time. The outside of the building is being renovated but inside is business as usual. The 8oz Steak I had was delicious and cooked to perfection.

As usual the staff in the hotel and the cast members in the parks were wonderful.

[Davy]

French school holidays.
Their holiday system is stacked throughout Feb, so some school will have one week off, some schools the next, and so forth.

Sounds like we'll be doing Fastpass for Ratatouille then.

Thanks for the report!

[upinthesky]

Yes definitely Davy. Next time we'll be making more of an effort to be early birds and get to the park gates at before opening time. Get a fast pass for Ratatouille, head straight to Crush's Coaster then use your daily fast pass on the Rock n Rollercoaster. Doing it like that ticks off three of the four thrill rides within probably an hour of being in the park, but it does require an early start.

[shaz076]

We were there last week too from Tuesday to Saturday. We were so glad to have done all the rides a few times before saturday (queues werent bad during the week) as we only  managed to get on 4 rides on Saturday because the waiting times were soo long. Crushes coaster broke down on Wednesday while my family and friends were on it. I was waiting outside panicking a bit as there was no information coming from it. They eventually came out after about 20 mins and my son and husband were next to get on the ride when it stopped so they didnt come out for bout 30 mins. My friend said it was very frightening as it was soo dark and no one was coming near them to give them info eventually they were let off and brought thru an emergency exit. they got a free pass for next day to get on it with no wait. BTM was broke down two days we tried to get on it and ratatouille broke down twice while we were in the queue Indiana jones was broke down one of the days and toy story parachute ride also broke down on friday. I never experienced so many broken down in all my 7 visits there :/ We stayed at Davy Crockett ranch for the first time and it was great. Will go back there again. We tried to get reservations for cafe mickey but it was booked out both times we tried to reserve it so next time i think we will be booking  before we go.

[upinthesky]

There were definitely more breakdowns than any previous trip and I would say you have without doubt confirmed that shaz076. What you have described there is unprecedented. Interesting what you say about frightened passengers too. The feedback from the guests involved in the BTM accident a few years ago was that they feared another train crashing into the back of them. The rides are designed so that cannot happen but you would have thought (based on past experience) the cast would make it a priority to provide reassurance to people stuck on a ride.

I'm interested in the technical side of roller coasters and I would be interested to find out what happened to BTM on Saturday, if anyone knows. What I saw was a train stopped at the bottom of the hill (near the photo point) and some engineers standing on the track looking like they had a problem they couldn't easily fix.

[jeakat24]

We were there Monday to Friday last week (2nd-6th) and there were so many ride breakdowns.


On Monday, I think, Ratatouille was down for a bit. And i think Crush was too. On Tuesday BTM was down. I have no idea how long for, we were just passing and I could see the security lights on. Wednesday, Ratatouille was down again but this worked in our favour as the queue was short when it reopened. The Parachute drop was also closed, and some poor. People were stuck about three foot off the ground.

On Thursday BTM broke again, with my in laws on it! They almost missed my daughters birthday lunch at cafe Mickey! Then in the studios in the afternoon we wanted to go on the Parachute drop; it was closed again. Ratatouille was also closed.

And on Friday BTM was down again.

That's just the ones I remember, and obviously there were bound to be ones that I missed because I was in different areas of the parks. I've never seen anything like it to be honest and it was very much felt given the amount of rides that were closed for the season/refurbishment.

[littlebitofpixiedust]

There was a lot of breakdowns over my trip also BTM was broken down for at least a couple of hours one train was stuck on the top of the lift hill think this was the Monday?
On the wednesday ratatouille also broke down whilst the que was at 100 minutes I bet those people were frustrated....
And crush was temporarily down also but they got it back quite quickly.
I broke down on rock and roller coaster some years back, quite high and obviously very dark! Heard another train coming and also was very scared!  after around 5 minutes a cast member did come and explained everything but people were trying to get out and some were crying it was quite a scary thing!
I've also broke down on TOT but that was just funny, actually broke down before even going up although I think the cast members enjoyed scaring us and kept laughing. We were in pitch black for about 10 minutes and could hear them laughing....

[vals]

We were there 6th to 13th and were shocked at the amount of ride breakdowns.
One day ratouille, tram tours,and flying carpets all at the same time.
as for thunder mountain, we decided not to go on it-last year we saw it breakdown a lot and one time it was dark and it took ages to get everyone off.As it still keeps breaking down we decided it wasn't worth the risk, especially as one of our party was going to wait for us.
Ratouille-we opted for the single rider queue, excellent,and still they put 2 of us together.the second time as we were told which rat to go on someone called out to me to swap-so they were put together too. Felt a bit bad knowing how long some people waited.
Breakdowns in the week  -phantom manor, thunder mountain,indiana jones,pirates,peter pan, its a small world,Buzz, and orbitron,as well the space mountain closed for upgrade and the river boat. We had a fab time and were there long enough for breakdowns not to spoil the holiday, though I wish there were more signs for queue and ride closure to save walking all the way there for nothing -we averaged 10 miles walking a day and were well shattered.

[stifle]

Wow that sounds like an awful lot of breakdowns Crush's Coaster capacity is already very low to begin with as only 12 guests can ride at a time (6 vehicles each with 4 guests, with 3 loading and unloading at any point in time).