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View Full Version : Powder scare closes Disneyland Esplanade and Main entrance



Tony
02-22-2009, 12:34 PM
The Disneyland esplanade, ticket booths, and park entrance was closed this morning between approximately 9am and 10am, due to a suspicious powder found on a number of ticket booth windows. Anaheim Police and Fire responded, and guests were held outside the bag check area. Guests already inside the park were generally unaware of the situation. The entrance reopened after the powder was determined to be a fine grained sand.

torquedork
02-22-2009, 05:09 PM
I should had gone this morning, I missed all the fun. (lol)

currence
02-22-2009, 08:09 PM
We were there this morning and I wondered what was going on - I was guessing bomb threat but powdery substance actually makes more sense given what I observed.

I don't know when guests were held outside bag check, we went through at maybe 8:40 and were allowed in.

I wish I had taken a picture but basically both sets of ticket booths were roped off with yellow tape. There were people just inside the tape (mostly/all Disney security) what seemed like every few feet to direct traffic around (keep people away from) the ticket booths. The only sales line we could see open was the group ticket sales by Disneyland, which had a long line, but not crazy. We didn't go over by DCA, so I don't know if the guest relations over there was also open for general sales.

We saw one group of cast members that I was guessing were the ones who work the ticket booths standing together inside the roped off area. There was a lot of security, including one of Disney's security dogs, plus a decent amount of what I was guessing was Anaheim Police and/or Fire. We didn't have time to pay too much attention as the lines to get into Disneyland were practically non-existent.

When we hopped parks at around 9:50am all the ticket booths were open and there was no sign that anything strange had taken place.

dlfansx4
02-22-2009, 08:42 PM
Wow, so that is what that was. We got there about quarter to 8 and they were directing everyone away from the ticket booths but no tape was up yet. They were just starting to close it off. There was a circle of CMs and security keeping people away from the ticket booths.

We just walked around and went into the park at 8:00 totally unaware of anything.

AVP
02-22-2009, 09:17 PM
I got to the Resort shortly before 9:30 a.m., and waited at the Mickey & Friends structure for a friend for who was on his way to the Resort. Just before 10:00 a.m. I heard one of the tram CMs tell their load of passengers that the main entrance had just re-opened, and warned everyone to expect a wait to get through bag check. The CM said that they had been told there was "some sort of spill" in the Esplanade.

By the time my friend got there I had spoken with several CMs and had learned that the bag check tents had been closed for about an hour, starting shortly before 9:00 a.m., and that nobody had been allowed into the Esplanade while the Anaheim PD, Anaheim Fire and Disneyland Security responded to the situation. I asked and learned that the Monorail was open, so we decided to walk from M&F to Downtown Disney and board the Monorail there.

We certainly weren't the only people to have the same idea, but when we got to the Monorail we saw that large crowds of people were leaving the station. It turned out that the Monorail had just broken down, had to return to the roundhouse, and another Monorail was being brought out. So we walked to the Esplanade, and by the time we got there all four bag check tents were open, and we made it through pretty quickly.

AVP

pbmouseman
02-23-2009, 05:55 AM
I had no idea. I thought the parking situation was horrible at Mickey & Friends, but things seemed normal at the park after we got there.

AVP
02-23-2009, 06:27 AM
I had no idea. I thought the parking situation was horrible at Mickey & Friends, but things seemed normal at the park after we got there.It took me 22 minutes to park from the moment I got off the 5 to the moment I pulled into a parking spot. It took my friend, who got off the freeway 20 minutes after I did, over 40 minutes to get into a spot. He noted that it seemed to take a long time for the parking ticket to print out after they scanned his AP, and wondered if they were having network problems.

I think they had just resumed tram service when I arrived, after some unknown period of time during which they wen't running the trams at all and were encouraging people to walk. By the time my friend parked and we walked through Downtown Disney, the only evidence that something had happened was all the trash on the ground outside the bag check booths. It just had the look of an area that had been occupied by a large, standing crowd, and they hadn't yet gotten the sweepers in there to clean up the drink containers and food wrappers. There was a fairly long line at City Hall, and the lines to get into DCA looked bigger than is usual for that time on a Sunday morning, but there was a surprising lack of visible security by the time we hit the Esplanade.

AVP

ryanvalle
02-23-2009, 06:48 AM
I got there at 4 and missed all the action :(

mikotorocks714
02-23-2009, 03:14 PM
Ha, ha LMAO! I work Esplanade 3rd shift and good thing I left early that day, as I would've been one of my fellow CM's in the "contaminated" holding area.

Really, when I was working in the early AM in the Esplanade area and saw that stuff on the ticket booth windows I didn't really think anything of it, as I thought it was sugar. So I just figured whoever was cleaning ticket booths that day was just going to clean it and then it would just be done with. However, when I show up to work the next day I had found out just how big it had turned out to be! Heck, a fellow CM of mine then told me that he had tasted it and that it was sugar.

Soggydoughnuts
02-23-2009, 06:38 PM
I was here on this day, and I was next in line to take the trams to the esplanade when a cast member, not the ones who stand by the sidewalk of the tram walked up and said that "The Disneyland parks have been closed. Downtown Disney is open.The trams will not be running until the park re-opens, if it does." Obviously this caused quite the drama and people started freaking out. The CM had no information, or if he did he definitely didn't tell us anything. We were told we had to walk.

So we run off to the esplanade getting there in the early groups lining up at bag checks where they had it all blocked off. People were pretty agitated over the whole situation. Most CM's outside didn't know much but we did get told by one that they hadn't been blocked off like this before since 9/11 which of course scared everyone.

We later were told that there was a "substance" and the park will re-open within the hour, and sure enough it did. We weren't given any other information than that.

I did however take a few pictures with my camera of the crowds, and two of what was going on inside before being told to not take pictures by a random cast member. I had no zoom unfortunately and they aren't very good but hey it's something.

My only question is. Why were the trams stopped? We were still forced to walk to the same spot where the trams would have taken us.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f129/Soggydoughnuts/Dinsey/Picture025.jpg
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f129/Soggydoughnuts/Dinsey/Picture026.jpg
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f129/Soggydoughnuts/Dinsey/Picture029.jpg
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f129/Soggydoughnuts/Dinsey/Picture036.jpg
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f129/Soggydoughnuts/Dinsey/Picture039.jpg

The second picture of the inside was right when they started removing the yellow tape, and the pictures of the crowd were early into the wait. The line got much longer stretching down the downtown disney street to about the magic shop cart from what I could see.

-Donuts

dlfansx4
02-23-2009, 08:36 PM
Wow again... ;-) Thanks for posting the pictures. We were inside the park and had no clue what was going on outside.
We thought maybe the crowds were just really light because of the threat of rain. Little did we know, we were in lock down ;-)

Also, at one point we saw monorail red just sitting stopped on the track in between Matterhorn and Small World. We were wondering what was going on with that too.

All kinds of things going on around us and we were just obliviously enjoying riding the rides without any wait time, LOL.

Autopia Guy
02-23-2009, 09:38 PM
My only question is. Why were the trams stopped? We were still forced to walk to the same spot where the trams would have taken us.

Basic Crowd Control. If you know you have a limited area in which you are going to be letting people into for an amount of time, cut off the biggest source of people and have them trickle there on their own time, not a set schedule. Also makes it so lines normally form in the right direction and right area for reentry when they did finally open. At least that is how I see it.

spookykitten
02-26-2009, 01:37 PM
Wow. Now I'm glad we didn't go until around 3pm on Sunday

FolsomFan
02-27-2009, 09:19 AM
We got there a little before 5PM and had no idea any of this had happened.

anniedg
02-27-2009, 01:07 PM
Wow again... ;-) Thanks for posting the pictures. We were inside the park and had no clue what was going on outside.
We thought maybe the crowds were just really light because of the threat of rain. Little did we know, we were in lock down ;-)




Us too! We were really enjoying the light crowds. Had never been in Feb. before and kept thinking, could this really be normal?! Guess not :p
Now I know why it got soooo much more crowded later on!