Home

[captain rocket]

I was at DLRP last Sunday (07th) and as I knew Pirates was closing that night for refurb I made straight to the ride to enjoy it whilst I could.
The queue was horrendous,right out to the entrance, and it took about 35 minutes to get to the top of the queue immediately above the loading area (where you are streamed into lines) At this stage there was an announcement in French followed by loud groans from the crowds which turned out to be that the ride had broken down temporarily and should start again soon. The message,and others in English,German,Spanish were repeated regularly over a period of about 30 minutes.
To leave would have meant walking back through the crowd which was pretty dense and people began chanting and complaining. Throughout all of this the female operator in the control area above the ride could be seen laughing and joking with other members of staff which did not help the mood! Eventually a French parent pushed through to the loading area and started shouting at the top of his voice, I could'nt understand what he said,but I could guess that he was'nt happy! After about 15 minutes The drawbridge that you pass by as you start the ride was lowered and we were able to leave via this exit.
I have never seen this drawbridge used before, in fact, I thought it was just a prop. Another stressful situation made worse by the Disney stafff and it just makes you despair that customer service will never come anwhere near American standards at DLRP!

[HildeKitten]

It's too bad that someone had to loudly make their annoyance clear before DLP staff realised that they needed to provide a proper exit.
Customer service can indeed be sadly lacking in DLP

[Scissorsboi]

I disagree, I work at a theme park myself, and ride systems have complex procedures to follow during a shut down. I'm sure if it was as simple as evacuating the queue then DLP would have done it immediately - a guest pushing through and shouting does not help the situation, and whilst it did get the drawbridge lowered and the queue evacuated from the building, it may have hindered the ride from re-opening as soon as it could have done. How did he know that the engineering team weren't just about to hand the ride back over the operating team, but due to his actions and the bridge being lowered the ride would have had to remain shut down until the queue was completely evacuated.

It's not always as simple as thinking about 'the customer is always right' approach to customer service, many decisions have to be weighed up, if it's more logical to keep people in the queueline informed and advise them that they can leave if they want to (which I'm sure they did, even though you say it was difficult to leave, that option was there if you really wanted to), or if it'd be better to close the attraction totally, causing the people who have queued for a long time to be denied their ride. As a guest you may always think that you should get on the rides, and if it shuts down then it should be fixed quickly, but there's usually all manner of other decisions to be made before that! People often talk ill of ride teams, but every day they have to make tough choices, and naturally not every guest will agree with them.

[captain rocket]

Interesting to hear your comments and whilst I agree that safety is paramount I am surprised that you seem to have a negative attitude to the customer, implying that the customer is not always right, well Disney is a customer focussed operation and the cusomer IS always right!! They don't have to be there!
The point of my post was that the staff did not keep people informed as to what was happening,in fact they virtually disapeared fom sight,just replaying a message in several languages that there was a "temporary" problem for over 30 minutes. People feeling trapped and unable to leave can cause them, and especially their children, stress and Disney should have procedures in place to help people to leave if they want to given that a wait of 30 minutes could not be described as temporary.
I have no idea if you are familiar with this ride, but I cannot accept that raising or lowering the drawbridge could cause anyhting above a 2/3 minute delay if the ride had reopened. I do not believe it opened again that evening anyway.
This post was not an attack on the disney cast memebers, but the fact that there did not appear to be any procedures for dealing with this situation. As I said in my original post, I would be amazed if the situation would have been handled in the same way in Florida or California

[bigrossco]

that is a great shame to here this, from the past when i went to DLP I was in que for RNRRC and while in que it broke down at the launch pad

More or less when this happend people were given the option to exit or stay in que for the ride it did take a short time to be fixed but did get fixed and at the time cast members allowed people to exit if they wished

[captain rocket]

This is the point I was making,No option was offered to help people leave and this, coupled with no running information, casused peoples stress levels to rise! To keep everyone informed is not difficult,although I accept that evacuation is. But after the ride has been stopped for 30 minutes this could not be considered "temporary" and Disney should be able to manage the situation better than they did on this ocassion.

[bigrossco]

I would agree with this, I found the cast members to be fine when I was at RNRRC even though I was not on the ride, they still were looking as if they were geytting the issue fixed rather than having a laugh around and at times did give us a few updates as well such a shame they did not do this with you and agree for Disney you think they would do alot better

[Scissorsboi]

Interesting to hear your comments and whilst I agree that safety is paramount I am surprised that you seem to have a negative attitude to the customer, implying that the customer is not always right, well Disney is a customer focussed operation and the cusomer IS always right!! They don't have to be there!

I don't mean it to sound like I have a negative attitude to customers, however Disney or not, the customer is not always right. And I think that the example made that the gentleman started chanting is key here, imagine if you are a member of the ride team trying to get the ride back in operation as soon as possible, and all of a sudden you've got people being demanding and chanting, then that'll be a massive demotivation for them. I say this after working at a theme park for 5 years and having to cope with things such as park evacuations and emergency situations, whilst it is important to please a customer they are not always right due to not knowing all of the facts - a key example being when the park I work at had to evacuate all  guests due to loss of clean/drinking water, and for H&S regulations all of the public toilets were locked, a guest asked me where his daughter could go to use the toilet, and I explained that unfortunately due to an external problem we currently had no water and therefore had no working toilet facilities. He then shouted at me for a few minutes (which is never motivating, especially when the situation is totally out of your hands and there are over 10,000 people you are trying to safely manage at the same time) before proceeding to let his daughter go to the toilet in a flowerbed.

In a theme park situation, despite what is expected from the industry, the customer cannot always be right, the attractions are designed to look fun, but really many of them are high risk environments (fall into the Pirates trough and you risk being hit by a boat, being drowned, getting caught in a conveyor etc). This means that without the rides staff being totally aware and focused on their procedures at all times there is a risk of serious injury. You only need to look at the reasons behind most theme park related accidents to see that they are usually caused by guests taking park procedures into their own hands, and having run-ins with rides and their machinery. Don't get me wrong, I take the approach that 'the customer is always right' in my job, however when safety of the guest, and of others/myself come into it, I have to follow a set procedure, which may often cause upset to the guest, but at the end of the day is there to save injury or greater upset of everyone involved.

The point of my post was that the staff did not keep people informed as to what was happening,in fact they virtually disapeared fom sight,just replaying a message in several languages that there was a "temporary" problem for over 30 minutes. People feeling trapped and unable to leave can cause them, and especially their children, stress and Disney should have procedures in place to help people to leave if they want to given that a wait of 30 minutes could not be described as temporary.

I have no idea if you are familiar with this ride, but I cannot accept that raising or lowering the drawbridge could cause anyhting above a 2/3 minute delay if the ride had reopened. I do not believe it opened again that evening anyway.

This post was not an attack on the disney cast memebers, but the fact that there did not appear to be any procedures for dealing with this situation. As I said in my original post, I would be amazed if the situation would have been handled in the same way in Florida or California

I'm not saying that the ride team were totally in the right, obviously their communication caused issues which made guests uncomfortable, but aside from saying there is a temporary delay there isn't much more to do. Most guests would be confused/scared/question the rides safety if they were informed of the real reason (say an issue with pumps, or the lift system), and it could potentially escalate higher should panic be caused with details such as this - especially in a queue so dark and winding as Pirates, I'm sure it's something they'd try to avoid when possible. Disney's ride procedure was, I would assume, to inform guests that they were "welcome to leave the queue and visit other attractions" or something along those lines, in the recorded messages? As I said before, if people wanted to leave there is nothing stopping them from, I'm sure if you wanted to leave and found your way blocked, if you asked people nicely to move then you'd be able to leave easily.

I am familiar with the ride, and have to admit that before you said it was lowerable, I assumed the drawbridge was simply an added piece of theming. Imagine the drawbridge is down and people are being evacuated over it, and then the ride was handed back from engineering and re-opened, all of the guests who had left would then be dissapointed and annoyed that they'd been removed from the ride which they had queued for, only to see other guests from behind them in the queue being loaded and enjoying their ride. It's a double edged sword, and a tricky one to judge.

I realise it wasn't an attack on the cast members, it's a very tough job to work at a park, there's very little in the way of praise from guests as people just expect you to do the job you do there, do anything above and beyond your job role, and it becomes something you are "expected" to do anyway. I'm just trying to show that, from my knowledge of the cast members side, if a guest was to kick up a scene like that, then I wouldn't appreciate it and it'd have a negative impact on my working day. It's effectively being told how to do your job, by someone who doesn't know how your job works. I'm sure Disney did have a procedure for this, and I'm sure that what you experienced was that set procedure, maybe this shows that the park needs to look at the procedure again and make changes, did you let the park know of this experience on your visit?

[satine15]

I totally get your opinion scissorsboi, when somebody would yell at me, I wouldn´t be happy either and I can agree it won´t help the cast members motivation, but sometimes you just wish for someone standing in front of the line and tell you personally that it may dure a little longer instead of the same message being replied over and over again.
I´ve had some situations before in theme parks, where I couldnt understand the cast members. I was at Heide Park Soltau in Germany, where a new coaster was opened. In the queue you have to go through a rondell, so only the people which can go in the rollercoaster are allowed to get to the ground. A women was first in line and she had to put away her bag first and when she wanted to go to the first waggon, there was someone already standing there. They came into a fight and some bad insultings where made in suddenly they were in the middle of a fist fight.
There was a lot of blood and I think the men had his jawbone broken, but nobody from the crew did something about it. Two of my friends went in between them and the cast members mummbled something about not being allowed to touch visitors, but I think this couldnt be right!!!!
When I was on crush´s coaster, our waggon suddenly stopped right after the dark drop and all the sound was gone and those light blubbles where gone to, we were in total darkness and there wasn´t even a computer voice telling us what happened and we really were scared because you cant see if another waggon is right behind you or if the breaks are broken or something. A cast member came in with a flashlamp, but he didnt say a word, and I think he could at least have said SOMETHING....
So, what I wanted to say  :lol: is, that I really get what you are saying, but sometimes even the "normal" procedure isnt good for the safety of the visitors...^^

[Scissorsboi]

Well if the same situation happened on another ride then it definately sounds like it comes down to DLP having to review how the communicate ride shutdowns to guests, I can only assume that they avoid telling people to keep the impression that at Disneyland nothing can go wrong alive? When really it's just giving the impression that at Disneyland things go wrong but they ignore them!

As for the experience you had at Heide Park that is terrible, however I fear the staff would be right, in todays compensation culture if you get involved there's a risk that they can use that and sue the company. It's a sad time!

[Owain]

Sorry for the bad experience you had on POTC captain rocket.

Maybe a reason they did not announce the problem was because of communication, from ride mechanics too the operators and to the guests in line. Remember there could have been at least 20 different languages in that queue and to explain a problem to just the languages the operators were fluent in would be unfair in my opinion.

[Alpop]

As a business owner and employer, I run a relaxed policy on job roles as we are a small company  (bare with me).

When you scale this up to Disney's size everyone has a role and is backed up with a union. Maintenance crew can't be front of house and likewise the other way around. If an employee stepped out of his employed role, the chances are that Disney would have no responsibility for their safety. Imagine a cast member that loads passengers on a ride spots what could have cause the ride to break down, jumps on the tracks and loses their legs. That would be serious compensation if they had been fully trained and were employed to do that.

For example breaking up a fight is possibly security's job. So if a cast member broke up a fight and receive a broken jaw, they may have not been trained in breaking up fights.

I know this is going on a little, but sometimes I believe more is achieved with flexibility and being a smaller business. Unfortunately Disney have to follow rules.

[Nicholas-c]

At least you weren't stuck on the ride :lol: Me and peep have been stuck on it for 45+ mins before... Didn't help that he had to go catch the eurostar

[never2old]

At least you weren't stuck on the ride :lol: Me and peep have been stuck on it for 45+ mins before... Didn't help that he had to go catch the eurostar

Whoa, 45 minutes stuck in the ride? Were you in a good bit at least?

And did you make your train??

[Riebi]

I´m sorry for your experience!

But:

Another stressful situation made worse by the Disney stafff and it just makes you despair that customer service will never come anwhere near American standards at DLRP!

I haven´t found that at Anaheim. There were the same as in Paris: Good, nice and wonderful CM and not so nice ones. And the esp. the crowd control was not very nice over there at california. It was hell.

US is not the happy holy land of nice disney experiences. Sorry  if I now destroyed a dream  :lol: