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mckygirl99
12-09-2005, 09:05 PM
Tonight was the first time I was truly upset with DL. We were leaving on Main St. at about 8:30. All of the sudden, traffic on the street stopped and we were pinned to a wall for a half hour. Mind you, I had a 5 and 6 year old with me. None of the CMs knew what was happening and we were advised to head for the stores and leave that way. When people started moving to the exits and other people started moving down Main Street. The next thing I knew we were pushed and knocked around. My daughter was already crying b/c she had to use the restroom and I kept telling her we would go soon. Then she was terrfied b/c people were pushing her around and I am trying to block the kids and keep them from being pushed around. Both kids were cyring by this point but my daughter was screaming. Finally a CM came & I told her we had to get out of there and get her to the restroom. The workers at Carnation Cafe wouldn't help- us get through so we finally went through the watch store. That was when I saw several security people and a stretcher. I don't know if that was why the traffic stopped or if someone was injured in the crowd. The CM was carrying my daughter, screaming at people to get out of the way, which scared my daughter even more but I am glad she got us out of there.

I am so upset b/c they let people push others and still never opened up another outlet until an hour later. Communication was terrible and were told by a CM later that it was due to everyone leaving after the parade and people coming in for fireworks. Whatever happened, my daughter is terrified to go back to DL. This makes me mad b/c we go there weekly and this has never happened before.

BE FORWARNED!!! THIS COULD HAPPEN AGAIN AND WILL PROBABLY GET WORSE THE CLOSER IT GETS TO CHRISTMAS!! I am calling right now to complain. I was going to do it at City Hall tonight but it was so full with people already screaming that I decided to wait until I got home.

Anyone have any advice on who I should go to?? This is truly the first time I have ever had a serious complaint about our park experiences. It will be awhile before I return!

Andrew
12-09-2005, 09:16 PM
This sounds a lot like what happened the last summer of the MSEP and the following summer, with Light Magic. Poor crowd control, apparently no thought to where people would be heading before, during and after the shows.

The best advice is to not bother trying to enter or leave the park for 30-45 minutes after a nighttime parade, fireworks or Fantasmic. Try to stay away from Main Street during that time.

By all means write to City Hall and make sure to tell them everything you wrote here--including the name of the helpful CM if you got it.

potterphreak
12-09-2005, 09:46 PM
I agree-I was there December 5th and it was CRAZY trying to leave!! Worse thing-it was one of the CM Family Nights or whatever they are called so they couldn't open all of the outlets, just had this mass of people inching their way to the exit. Was sad and pitiful. With all that "Imagineering" going on, you would think they would devise a quick and safe exit plan. It took an hour for me and my daughter to make it from the hub to the letter C in front of DCA and then another 45 minutes to go from the C through Downtown Disney to the DL Hotel. And it's not like we could have waited in the park for crowds to lighten-CMs were barking for us to leave. Really helped us to lose the magic quickly.

DCACM
12-09-2005, 09:50 PM
I hope the guest taken out on a stretcher will be ok.

mckygirl99
12-09-2005, 09:56 PM
What was worse was we weren't moving and no one seemed to know anything. I could if we were moving even a little but it was people coming and people going and pushing each other in the process. Is this part of the whole thing about not enough CMs to support the park? I don't want to ever see that terrified look in my daughter face again, especially when I was just as scared. People thought it would be OK to just push through. Do they know how many kids are out there that would have gotten hurt? It was truly a delicate situation that could have gotten out of control quickly.

Andrew, I took your advice and sent them an email and included the CM who helped us, an African-AMerican girl named Delores. My daughter said thank you and gave her a big hug!

K & S
12-09-2005, 10:17 PM
What was worse was we weren't moving and no one seemed to know anything. I could if we were moving even a little but it was people coming and people going and pushing each other in the process. Is this part of the whole thing about not enough CMs to support the park? I don't want to ever see that terrified look in my daughter face again, especially when I was just as scared. People thought it would be OK to just push through. Do they know how many kids are out there that would have gotten hurt? It was truly a delicate situation that could have gotten out of control quickly.

Andrew, I took your advice and sent them an email and included the CM who helped us, an African-AMerican girl named Delores. My daughter said thank you and gave her a big hug!

I know that the CMs are doing the best they can. The problem is the schedule. Between 9:00 and 9:30 there are too many things causing Main Street to become a traffic nightmare.

DCA closes at 9 and everyone heads for DL, add to that the people who are arriving just for the fireworks, plus Fantasmic ends and those people head for Main Street. Then there are the people trying to leave the park after the last parade. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

I'm sorry you and your girls had such an unhappy experience.

K

I Heart Disneyland!
12-09-2005, 10:52 PM
That is horrible! I'm so sorry you and your children had to deal with such chaos. I find that the problem is often a lack of communication from CMs. If they'd just tell us the scoop....we could relax. What a trauma for your poor little ones. :(

TP2000
12-10-2005, 02:13 AM
This is not the CM's fault, and throwing more hourly CM's out on to Main Street won't help. This is not the fault of the busboy at Carnation Cafe, nor is it the fault of the pimple faced kid from Jungle Cruise working crowd control on Main Street. It's not even the fault of the lower and middle managers working in the Park on a Friday night in their cheeseball "Business Casual" outfits and radios in their ears. None of those people have any decision making power on any type of large scale; they are all just worker bees out in the hive. Besides, there's already dozens of CM's out there from the Castle to the Emporium every night, and another dozen kids yelling "Stay To Your Right Please!" isn't the answer.

The answer to this ongoing problem is for the DLR's executive team to get the Entertainment Department under control and start thinking in cold hard facts rather than the happy-shiny-dreamy-artsy-fartsy world they live in. The DLR has created an entire entertainment and resort operational strategy that breeds the gridlock and panic I saw myself on Friday night (and many other nights in the past few months). Remember the dazzle-eyed presentation Steve Davison gave at the NFFC thing about what the new fireworks would be like? No where in Steve's charming little presentation did he mention the maddening crowds he would create by purposely designing a show that can only be fully appreciated by being in front of the Castle. That was really irresponsible of Mr. Davison, but yet he was given the capital and executive support to go forward with that flawed fireworks strategy.

The DLR executives and Entertainment Department have both made some dreadful decisions recently that directly cause these crowd control problems. They close DCA up tight at 9:00pm, and keep Disneyland open until Midnight, which only funnels thousands more people into Disneyland for the last parade and fireworks; thousands of people that could be kept in DCA instead. They put the DEP on "hiatus" for months, while it sits in the float warehouse gathering dust instead of performing out in DCA where it should be used to keep even more people from flooding over to Disneyland once the sun goes down. The DLR executives have for years put off creating a unique and crowd-worthy nighttime entertainment offering for DCA, and instead they continue to force everyone in to Disneyland after dark for any type of entertainment. They don't even have dancing in DCA, and yet there are two dancefloors with live bands in Disneyland on a Saturday night! They schedule the fireworks to begin after Fantasmic! instead of the other way around, funneling more people out of Adventureland and on to Main Street at the last minute. And when the fireworks do end, there are still thousands of people pouring out of Adventureland from the 9:00pm Fantasmic! crashing into the thousands of other people still crammed in to the Hub and Main Street.

There are other scheduling and logistical mistakes like that, but I think you get the point. With better planning, and an Entertainment Department that was forced to live in the real world and clean up their messes, Disneyland wouldn't be put through this type of mess weekend after weekend.

But I think the most important thing is to stop blaming the hourly CM's working out in the park for stuff like this. And the suggestion that the CM's somehow "communicate" with the gridlocked crowds seems unrealistic. Those CM's working crowd control don't have telepathy, and even the ones who have radios in their ears aren't neccesarily tuned in to some old woman having a heart attack 50 yards down the street at the watch shop. They can't "communicate" much to a gridlocked crowd, other than that it is busy and "Stay To Your Right Please!".

I'll say it again.... These types of horrible overcrowding issues are the direct result of some really bad scheduling and logistical decisions on the part of the Resort's executive team. Those decisions have directly created an environment where paying customers don't have much of a choice but to all cram into the same space at the same time if they want to try and receive the products they've paid for with their park admission. And let's be honest and realize that those senior executives are all at home having a glass of wine around 9:00pm every weekend when Disneyland turns into a madhouse. It's time all of us, myself included, stopped blaming the CM's working inside the Park for messes like this.

sixwoofys
12-10-2005, 02:57 AM
We were packed on Main Street once before like sardines. We couldn't move for 2 hours. (I think it was the first year they made snow). The Orange County Register headline was "Disney's new sardine ride". It was miserable and frankly - kind of scary. There were somany people armpit to armpit and you couldn't move. It looked like a sea of people. My father in law got a refund on his ticket and vowed "never again". (Meaning Disneyland). It is kind of sad because my kids love the park but he won't go back. Thank God no one panicked in the crowd or anything. Whoever organizes that Fantasmic, Fireworks and Snow schedule should have their head examined. They should just stop making that stupid snow anyway. Everyone (even my kids) have figured out that it's not real snow anyway. Just some kind of soapy crap that looks wierd and out of place in Southern California. It causes everyone on Main Street to just "Stop" and do nothing, which makes it very difficult for people trying just to get out of the stupid mess.

BQ2
12-10-2005, 05:59 AM
Yikes we leave in 3 days :eek:

TowerofTerror
12-10-2005, 08:29 AM
I say I'm sorry but that how the crowd is all the time down main street when the parade is done and the fireworks show is after it. I'm shocked they didn't open up back stage behind the store. Well I'M sure they open it up after the fireworks were over.:fez:

geoffa
12-10-2005, 09:12 AM
[QUOTE=mckygirl99]Tonight was the first time I was truly upset with DL. We were leaving on Main St. at about 8:30. All of the sudden etc...

In 1995 we were visiting Disneyland for the very first time. (We'd done WDW on several previous occassions but wanted to visit the original). DCA was still the car parking area! It turned out to be something called "Residents' Day". For us it was a nightmare. All day long, if we weren't being jostled we were in lines for hours and I do mean HOURS, just to ride something. We stood in line for over an hour and a half for the then "Pochahontas" show only for it to be cancelled five minutes before its start time. Trash cans were overflowing, food areas were littered with trash. The only saving grace was Fantasmic but we watched that from miles back. When I visit bars or retaurants in the USA I see signs stating the maximum number of people who can be in the place at any one time. Does this apply to DL? It seems to me that they just let people flood in. They take your money but don't care if you ride or not. Solutions would be as previously suggested above. DCA is under-used and needs night entertainment to water down the crowds throughout the resort. There surely has to be a SAFE maximum capacity for the DL park?
I work in public transport in the UK and we have crowd control training particularly in fire and terrorist situations but, at the end of the day, you can shout instructions all you want. Selfish people will ignore you and put themselves and others at risk - its human nature. TO control crowds we close gates and stop more people entering until it is safe to do so.The CM did as much as she could and perhaps shouting at people to move was the only resort left to her - at least she got you and your kids away from an horrendous situation. Disney should exercise more responsibilty.
Our experience put us off visiting again for many years. Our complaint to Guest Services got us a full refund but it couldn't make up for the lost magic.:crying:

mckygirl99
12-10-2005, 11:28 AM
This is not the CM's fault, and throwing more hourly CM's out on to Main Street won't help.


I am not blaming the Cms for what happened and I don't think that anyone else is. We know that it is the management that is responsible for what happened. I felt sorry for the CMs b/c they were being yelled at left and right and they themselves did not have any clue as to what was happening. I thank CM Delores for helping us out. This is why I didn't complain to anyone at the park but rather in writing, explaining the situation. No one should have to work under those conditions. One CM was trying to climb a wall to try to see what was happening and they were truly sympathetic to the park guests.

SCUBAbe
12-10-2005, 01:51 PM
imo..they just have to many night time shows. They pull huge crowds in and then they have limited space to leave in. DL is a small park with small pathways...it cannot handle the types of crowds all these night time shows are comanding. I make sure I'm out of the park well before these shows start now. Night time used to be my favorite time in the park, but now it's just a nightmarsih experience I try to avoid.

as far as the amount of people they allow in the park, well I've heard several numbers, the highest being 85000. Which IMO is about 20000 to many. We went one year on 12/27. That was a huge nightmare. It took us over 1 1/2 hours to walk from POTC to ISASWH and that had a huge wait. We just waited because it was far better to be waiting in a line than to be trying to walk around. We were there from opening to closing and got on 4 rides. When we got our food there were no tables to eat at. People were sitting all over the walkways and grassy areas with their food on their laps. It was horrible.

disneyperson
12-10-2005, 02:08 PM
We have yet to attempt to watch the fireworks from a prime spot. I don't mind crowds, but I can't take that packed in like cattle feeling. I love the park at night, but we stay far,far away from the center of the park until the fireworks are well over. Before that, we can be found making multiple HM and POTC runs.
I may never see the new fireworks in their full glory. Oh well.

disney_leonard
12-10-2005, 02:37 PM
I was there Thursday and the crowds were very light during the day. They had a private party showing of Fantasmic scheduled after fireworks which were at 7:45. The park closed to regular guests at 8:00. By 7:30 the hub and Main Street was wall to wall people. After the fireworks and snow it was a nightmare leaving. All I could do was imagine what it would be like on a BUSY day. Well, this thread explains what it is like and it will only get worse. They will have to open up the backstage emergency exit routes to avoid repeating this and getting people hurt. I agree that they should keep DCA open until at least 10:00 and run the Electric Parade and have entertainment scheduled to keep a good number of guests on that side. The way it is DCA guests have no choice- it's either go home or go to Disneyland at 9:00.

DianeM
12-10-2005, 02:39 PM
I'm in the same boat. I don't handle crowds well. The last time I saw fantasmic, I got so freaked out by the crowds getting there that I ended up sobbing in my husband's arms through the show. The last time we went to DL, the crowds on friday night were so thick we just went back to the hotel and skpped both the fireworks and fantasmic. I just know that the fireworks crowds would end up freaking me out. I think that next time I go to DL I'm going to totally skip the fireworks, and maybe try for waterside seating for fantasmic, so that I can enjoy the show. I feel a bit bad about missing the fireworks, but that's just the way it is. When it comes right down to it, it's just a show, after all.



I may never see the new fireworks in their full glory. Oh well.

TP2000
12-10-2005, 02:41 PM
I am not blaming the Cms for what happened and I don't think that anyone else is. We know that it is the management that is responsible for what happened. I felt sorry for the CMs b/c they were being yelled at left and right and they themselves did not have any clue as to what was happening. I thank CM Delores for helping us out. This is why I didn't complain to anyone at the park but rather in writing, explaining the situation. No one should have to work under those conditions. One CM was trying to climb a wall to try to see what was happening and they were truly sympathetic to the park guests.

Okay, good to know! Thanks for the clarification. When I first breezed through your first post I got the impression you thought the CM's should be doing more to help you. And then there was a subsequent post that mentioned more crowd control CM's would help.

I really think it's time we put the blame for these types of weekly occurances on the executive management that have the authority to change show times and reign in the Entertainment Department who creates these Hub-centric shows in the first place.

DianeM
12-10-2005, 02:42 PM
If they really get smart, they'll keep DCA open and run EP twice, once, early, toward the gates, and once just before closing away from the gates. That would draw enough people away from DL to ease the crowds a bit. People who are standing in crowds are not spending money, and even if they go into the stores, overcrowding the stores has to increase breakage and shoplifting.


They will have to open up the backstage emergency exit routes to avoid repeating this and getting people hurt. I agree that they should keep DCA open until at least 10:00 and run the Electric Parade and have entertainment scheduled to keep a good number of guests on that side. They way it is DCA guests have no choice- it's either go home or go to Disneyland.

ILovePoker
12-10-2005, 03:20 PM
I was beginning to feel sorry for you until the part about someone being carried off in a stretcher came along. It's very possible that the Cast Members wanted to steer the crowds away from the scene for everyone's safety.

The workers at Carnation Cafe did not help because they have work to do there and CANNOT leave their post.

Next time, hold your childrens hands and don't let go.

All I can say is that this experience you had is a learning experience for future trips and that the other thousands trying to leave the park felt the exact same way as you!

MrsG
12-10-2005, 04:01 PM
The DLR executives and Entertainment Department have both made some dreadful decisions recently that directly cause these crowd control problems. They close DCA up tight at 9:00pm, and keep Disneyland open until Midnight, which only funnels thousands more people into Disneyland for the last parade and fireworks; thousands of people that could be kept in DCA instead. They put the DEP on "hiatus" for months, while it sits in the float warehouse gathering dust instead of performing out in DCA where it should be used to keep even more people from flooding over to Disneyland once the sun goes down. The DLR executives have for years put off creating a unique and crowd-worthy nighttime entertainment offering for DCA, and instead they continue to force everyone in to Disneyland after dark for any type of entertainment. They don't even have dancing in DCA, and yet there are two dancefloors with live bands in Disneyland on a Saturday night! They schedule the fireworks to begin after Fantasmic! instead of the other way around, funneling more people out of Adventureland and on to Main Street at the last minute. And when the fireworks do end, there are still thousands of people pouring out of Adventureland from the 9:00pm Fantasmic! crashing into the thousands of other people still crammed in to the Hub and Main Street.

Excellent post TP! My thoughts exactly. Too damn many shows in a short period of time and everyone trying to see each one. A huge problem!!

ToursbabeC3po
12-10-2005, 04:10 PM
It does not help that they are short thousands of cast members right now and guest control gets hit hardest when they are short handed. Attractions get scheduled first then Guest control shifts are filled.
If they wanted to divert the guest backstage the would not be able to do it due to lack of staffing. I know they are short because all of my friends are working 7 days a week.

disneygirl76
12-10-2005, 06:00 PM
Mckygirl99, I am so sorry you and your children had to go through that. As I read your story it reminded me of when my BF and parents went for New Years 2 years ago. Up until then I would never imagine myself EVER being angry with DL. We couldn't handle the crowd and tried to leave at 8 and like you were pinned to a wall trying to get out of Main Street. It was horrible! People were pushing and screaming, I watched one woman crumple to the floor. That was so scary! Since then I have swore off DL on New Years and all major holidays. When I got home, I wrote DL a very long letter of what I saw that night and how I thought it was DANGEROUS to have so many people not to mention children packed in like that. I got a very nice letter back from them and an offer to refund my tickets. That was nice, and I appreciated that. Hopefully you will not have to go through something like that again.

mckygirl99
12-10-2005, 06:05 PM
I was beginning to feel sorry for you until the part about someone being carried off in a stretcher came along. It's very possible that the Cast Members wanted to steer the crowds away from the scene for everyone's safety.

The workers at Carnation Cafe did not help because they have work to do there and CANNOT leave their post.

Next time, hold your childrens hands and don't let go.

All I can say is that this experience you had is a learning experience for future trips and that the other thousands trying to leave the park felt the exact same way as you!

I guess you had to be there. The someone in the stretcher was pulled from the crowd. Try being pushed and squeezed holding the hands of 2 little ones hearing people say "let's just push!" I am not a person who visits DL once or twice a year but rather I go almost weekly and I have never, ever seen anything like this.

We did not ask them to leave their posts. The CM assisting me asked them to help us over the fence (yeah, it was that bad!)

I'll bet your opinion would different if you experienced it

mckygirl99
12-10-2005, 06:08 PM
If they wanted to divert the guest backstage the would not be able to do it due to lack of staffing. I know they are short because all of my friends are working 7 days a week.

They did eventually. I saw people coming from backstage between the Emporium and the Fire Station, once we made it through the Emporium.