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Apologies in advance - this is likely to ramble a bit before I get to the "sucky" part.
Andara and I live about 12 miles away from Disneyland, and we both have Season Passes. In order to get the most out of them, I like to go to the park after work on weeknights, especially Friday night when the park is open later. Andara sometimes joins me on these evening journeys, but more often doesn't. This past Friday, I was on my own. My big interest, aside from the few thrill rides that Disney has, is pin trading.
Andara and I got off work at the usual time. We stopped at home, and I gathered my pin-trading gear, then headed back out. I made one detour to get a new chair, then headed directly to Disneyland. As soon as I got within 3 miles of the park, traffic stopped. Thousands of people are heading to Disney for their special Trick-or-Treating at California Adventures, as well as for all of the special events going on in Disneyland itself. It actually took several passes around the park before I found a way in to park (I was heading for the Downtown Disney parking lots - park for free for 3 hours there!), and it was a little bit harrowing. At one point, I got to be a Sucky Driver myself, as I misread someone else's cues, and ended up cutting him off to get to where I needed to be. I'm sure that, to him, I looked like I was Oblivious and Single-Minded, but that wasn't the case, honest! =^_^=
I got myself parked, got some food in the Downtown Disney area, and entered the park. It was packed. As busy as I've ever seen it. I ended up taking short-cuts through dining areas on several occasions, because the "street" traffic was barely moving. Despite that, though, the energy in the air was very much up, and the castmembers all seemed to be in good moods, even going so far as to chat at length with me when their jobs weren't demanding their immediate attention. The only ride I had any real interest in riding this day was Space Mountain, and the line was 1.5 hours long, so I gave that a pass. I spent the entire evening wandering around, trading pins with castmembers and other guests. All in all, it was a fun, productive night.
So on my way out, I decided to stop at Customer Service at the City Hall building for two reasons: Trade pins (there's always at least one person there with a pin lanyard), and see about some discount tickets for Andara's Mom-and-Aunt, who are going to be visiting later this week. The night has gone so well so far... so, of course, that's when I got to observe The Suck, Industrial Strength.
The CSRs at Disneyland are very good about customer management, by the way. They keep their voices low, calm, and steady. This serves two purposes: It helps manage the customer in front of them, and it also helps keep other customers in line from getting too much of an idea of how much they're caving to the unreasonable customers' demands.
Disneyland is TOO CROWDED!
At Counter #2 is a lady who is going on at length about how the park was too crowded. She literally goes on and on, ranting at length. At one point, she declared that the park should have just stopped letting people in. I overheard her clearly say that she was, "bumped and jostled for nine and a half hours," and I'm pretty sure that she claimed that because of the long lines, she didn't get to go on anything. Since the longest line in the park was Space Mountain, at 80 minutes from the gate. Most of the mild rides seemed to run 30-45 minutes, and the popular rides ran an hour or so. Nine and a half hours is enough time to hit the rides you really want to ride, and even have lunch in the middle. I heard the CSR offer to give her instant-pass tickets for her next day's visit (like Fastpass, but they skip the ENTIRE line, not just 3/4 of it), but that wasn't good enough.
But, as sucky as that customer was, she paled in comparison to the lady at Counter #1.
Disneyland should be financially supporting my children!
This woman had two young girls in tow with her. As she ranted and raved at the poor CSR behind the counter, I managed to piece together these facts about their trip.
She had some holiday package deal that included $40 in Disney Bucks. That was simply inadequate for her, so as soon as they arrived, she marched to CustomerService, raved about how that wasn't sufficient to feed three people for a day at Disneyland, and ended up being given another $40 in Disney Bucks. Now, at the end of the day, she has come back because she took her girls on Splash Mountain after the sun had set, and her girls got soaked. Nobody told her that it was going to get them wet, much less soaked! Nobody told her it was going to be this cold in California! Disneyland should give her more Disney Bucks so that she can get them sweaters, so that they won't catch diseases! And apparently, they were caving, at least partly, because she said something along the lines of, "Well, that's fine for one of my girls, but what about the other one?"
Seriously, Disney is not that expensive. I'm a big guy, 6'2" and over 250 pounds, and I can eat comfortably for $10 a meal at Disneyland. I have no doubt that this woman can manage to feed herself and both daughters for around $20 per meal.
Sadly, I didn't get to hear the full resolution for either of these cases; they were both still going when I left 20 minutes later, after having waited in line, waved several people ahead of me because the CSR with the lanyard was busy with a difficult case (didn't seem to be sucky, just difficult), got my answer (No discounts right now, sorry) and traded a pin. And they were both trying to get more concessions out of the CSRs.
Andara and I live about 12 miles away from Disneyland, and we both have Season Passes. In order to get the most out of them, I like to go to the park after work on weeknights, especially Friday night when the park is open later. Andara sometimes joins me on these evening journeys, but more often doesn't. This past Friday, I was on my own. My big interest, aside from the few thrill rides that Disney has, is pin trading.
Andara and I got off work at the usual time. We stopped at home, and I gathered my pin-trading gear, then headed back out. I made one detour to get a new chair, then headed directly to Disneyland. As soon as I got within 3 miles of the park, traffic stopped. Thousands of people are heading to Disney for their special Trick-or-Treating at California Adventures, as well as for all of the special events going on in Disneyland itself. It actually took several passes around the park before I found a way in to park (I was heading for the Downtown Disney parking lots - park for free for 3 hours there!), and it was a little bit harrowing. At one point, I got to be a Sucky Driver myself, as I misread someone else's cues, and ended up cutting him off to get to where I needed to be. I'm sure that, to him, I looked like I was Oblivious and Single-Minded, but that wasn't the case, honest! =^_^=
I got myself parked, got some food in the Downtown Disney area, and entered the park. It was packed. As busy as I've ever seen it. I ended up taking short-cuts through dining areas on several occasions, because the "street" traffic was barely moving. Despite that, though, the energy in the air was very much up, and the castmembers all seemed to be in good moods, even going so far as to chat at length with me when their jobs weren't demanding their immediate attention. The only ride I had any real interest in riding this day was Space Mountain, and the line was 1.5 hours long, so I gave that a pass. I spent the entire evening wandering around, trading pins with castmembers and other guests. All in all, it was a fun, productive night.
So on my way out, I decided to stop at Customer Service at the City Hall building for two reasons: Trade pins (there's always at least one person there with a pin lanyard), and see about some discount tickets for Andara's Mom-and-Aunt, who are going to be visiting later this week. The night has gone so well so far... so, of course, that's when I got to observe The Suck, Industrial Strength.
The CSRs at Disneyland are very good about customer management, by the way. They keep their voices low, calm, and steady. This serves two purposes: It helps manage the customer in front of them, and it also helps keep other customers in line from getting too much of an idea of how much they're caving to the unreasonable customers' demands.
Disneyland is TOO CROWDED!
At Counter #2 is a lady who is going on at length about how the park was too crowded. She literally goes on and on, ranting at length. At one point, she declared that the park should have just stopped letting people in. I overheard her clearly say that she was, "bumped and jostled for nine and a half hours," and I'm pretty sure that she claimed that because of the long lines, she didn't get to go on anything. Since the longest line in the park was Space Mountain, at 80 minutes from the gate. Most of the mild rides seemed to run 30-45 minutes, and the popular rides ran an hour or so. Nine and a half hours is enough time to hit the rides you really want to ride, and even have lunch in the middle. I heard the CSR offer to give her instant-pass tickets for her next day's visit (like Fastpass, but they skip the ENTIRE line, not just 3/4 of it), but that wasn't good enough.
But, as sucky as that customer was, she paled in comparison to the lady at Counter #1.
Disneyland should be financially supporting my children!
This woman had two young girls in tow with her. As she ranted and raved at the poor CSR behind the counter, I managed to piece together these facts about their trip.
She had some holiday package deal that included $40 in Disney Bucks. That was simply inadequate for her, so as soon as they arrived, she marched to CustomerService, raved about how that wasn't sufficient to feed three people for a day at Disneyland, and ended up being given another $40 in Disney Bucks. Now, at the end of the day, she has come back because she took her girls on Splash Mountain after the sun had set, and her girls got soaked. Nobody told her that it was going to get them wet, much less soaked! Nobody told her it was going to be this cold in California! Disneyland should give her more Disney Bucks so that she can get them sweaters, so that they won't catch diseases! And apparently, they were caving, at least partly, because she said something along the lines of, "Well, that's fine for one of my girls, but what about the other one?"
Seriously, Disney is not that expensive. I'm a big guy, 6'2" and over 250 pounds, and I can eat comfortably for $10 a meal at Disneyland. I have no doubt that this woman can manage to feed herself and both daughters for around $20 per meal.
Sadly, I didn't get to hear the full resolution for either of these cases; they were both still going when I left 20 minutes later, after having waited in line, waved several people ahead of me because the CSR with the lanyard was busy with a difficult case (didn't seem to be sucky, just difficult), got my answer (No discounts right now, sorry) and traded a pin. And they were both trying to get more concessions out of the CSRs.
Hope it's not too crowded...
She's lucky they have FastPasses now. Remember how it was without them?
Doesn't make for good memories.
Must.....read......
Care to share? By PM, if nothing else?
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