Flights of Passage and Disney Officially Suck

[mousehockey37]

is this true?

Sounds like a bus driver said it, but who knows at this point.

 

[DisneyOma]

On Saturday we went to the MK which was our final day. I'm completely discussed with Pandora, AK and Disney.

Discussed with whom? CMs? Guest Services? Did they respond?

I agree with this. Disney should offer FP's or something when people take precious time (hours!) out of their park schedules waiting for an attraction that ultimately shuts down. There should be something offered for the time and aggravation. I'm surprised they didn't automatically do this for your group since they seem to do this a lot!

Precious time? If your time is precious, don't choose to wait in the standby queue for the most popular attraction at WDW right now. I'm wondering why the OP didn't have a FP for it to begin with?

I was at AK on Friday too and FoP came back up around 3:00 pm, not 8:00 pm. We had an FP+ for 12:00-1:00 and went back later in the evening to use it.

I will say though that I was not impressed with how the cast members handled FoP being out of commission. This attraction builds to 2+ hours first thing in the morning, people had been waiting for hours before it went down, and some had formed a line outside of the stand-by entrance in anticipation of it going live again. While a plethora of managers were milling about, one cast member, in particular, did nothing but scream at the people who had formed their own queue, "This is not a line! You need to move! Now!" I was pretty shocked because she was screaming it at those people. That left a sour taste in my mouth.

Try a breath mint? I'm betting the CM was instructed to get the crowd moving, (WDW does not want a crowd forming at a closed attraction - too dangerous) tried to do it in a polite way, was ignored, and was left with nothing else to work with besides her voice. Shame on the managers for milling about, doing nothing.

 

[mousehockey37]

Just think, in a couple of years, it won't be Avatarland that people are complaining about. Can you imagine the nightmare that's going to exist when all the Star Wars people go through this in DHS? Thankfully real lightsabers don't exist, lol.

 

[mousehockey37]

Try a breath mint? I'm betting the CM was instructed to get the crowd moving, (WDW does not want a crowd forming at a closed attraction - too dangerous) tried to do it in a polite way, was ignored, and was left with nothing else to work with besides her voice. Shame on the managers for milling about, doing nothing.

We had a somewhat similar instance in DHS at TSMM. The afternoon storm hit and it was absolutely monsooning. Well, people were staying in the hallway from where you get off the ride to where you exit to back outside. Well, CM's kept telling people to leave, eventually the management had to come out to start getting people moving. Wasn't fun, but it happens. At some point, they have to cross over and not be nice anymore.

 

[barbliny]

That does stink!! We were at Disney this past week. My daughters were saying on Friday that when they were in the pool they heard a young girl say 'It's a shame that that new Pandora land caught on fire'. I guess there was a little bit of truth to it with the fire alarms!! I did notice that FoP constantly was vacillating between long waits and 'temporarily closed' on Friday and other days.

We were lucky to have a fastpass for it one night and then we were there bright and early on Saturday for 7:00 am EMH and rode it - we were in the queue less than 20 minutes.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

If it truly was a fire alarm they needed to get you out as quick as possible. Maybe they could have been more courteous but not time to deal with guest recovery

Oh, and there are 4 theaters to Flight of Passage so not sure what that's CM was talking about

 

[kmb584]

Try a breath mint? I'm betting the CM was instructed to get the crowd moving, (WDW does not want a crowd forming at a closed attraction - too dangerous) tried to do it in a polite way, was ignored, and was left with nothing else to work with besides her voice. Shame on the managers for milling about, doing nothing.

Ya know, I did have a couple of tins of those wintergreen mints that they sell ... I should have popped a few in!

I do agree that the line that was formed could be seen as a safety hazard, but the delivery of telling the people that just seemed off. We were in Pandora, playing with the idea of waiting for Na'vi River Journey (had already been on twice, but it became a non-issue as it went down with FoP) and right next to FoP a couple of minutes after it went down. I didn't hear anyone calmly tell them that they couldn't queue on their own. It went from nothing to screaming in two minutes flat. At that same time, there were 4 managers standing diagonally across from the entrance, 3 suits working their way down the path, and 2 more at the entrance. Not a one made a peep.

 

[HopperFan]

I was told by a cast member in the park that the attraction has 3 theaters like Soarin. One of the theaters from the very beginning hasn't worked properly, because it over heats and keeps setting off alarms. I was told that it is a multiple million dollar problem that they're going to close the entire attraction down for several months to fix. They're having problems with a 2nd theater, but it still continues to work most of the time. The 3rd Theater is working fine. The attraction stayed down until 8PM, as we were leaving the park and heading to dinner. On Saturday we went to the MK which was our final day. I'm completely discussed with Pandora, AK and Disney.

Not negating your experience, that stinks and I do think they should have handled it better with a few FP+ even if they weren't for FoP for the lost time. Yes they are having a few issues, yes they need to make some adjustments ............

BUT to play devils advocate .................. there are FOUR theaters, so if the CM had that very commonly known info wrong, I wouldn't believe anything else they said. Major bus driver answer.

 

[mousehockey37]

Not negating your experience, that stinks and I do think they should have handled it better with a few FP+ even if they weren't for FoP for the lost time. Yes they are having a few issues, yes they need to make some adjustments ............

BUT to play devils advocate .................. there are FOUR theaters, so if the CM had that very commonly known info wrong, I wouldn't believe anything else they said. Major bus driver answer.

When Anna and Elsa had their M&G and the lines were super long, didn't they cut the line off at some point? You had FP's and then standby, but I could've sworn I remember seeing stuff on here and elsewhere that they actually cut the line off at a certain point. Sounds like they need to do that with FoP until they get everything under control.

 

[AMusicLifeForMe]

There are 4 theaters...not 3.

Also, if one theater goes down, they are able to operate the other theaters to my knowledge. Sorry you had a bad experience OP.

 

[Alpineslide]

I'd like to see something more about them shutting FOP down for months. Sounds like someone in the information chain is over exaggerating on that statement.

On a side note my family and I were there opening week. We rode FOP three times and it got better every time. I tried to sneak out of our room late our last night at WDW after my family was asleep to go ride it a fourth time, but my wife caught me

 

[HopperFan]

When Anna and Elsa had their M&G and the lines were super long, didn't they cut the line off at some point? You had FP's and then standby, but I could've sworn I remember seeing stuff on here and elsewhere that they actually cut the line off at a certain point. Sounds like they need to do that with FoP until they get everything under control.

I was never near the sisters back in the day so I don't know how it worked out. But I do agree that they need to have a round table and figure out how they will go forward with this ... what needs to be fixed, how to handle the SB line (with no bathrooms, like who builds a queue that long and doesn't see the potential for subway scents down the road), how can they roll theaters while they adjust stuff .......... how can we keep guests happy.

Sometimes the excitement of the creation means rose colored glasses of the actual outcome.

I'd like to see something more about them shutting FOP down for months. Sounds like someone in the information chain is over exaggerating on that statement.

On a side note my family and I were there opening week. We rode FOP three times and it got better every time. I tried to sneak out of our room late our last night at WDW after my family was asleep to go ride it a fourth time, but my wife caught me

The CM who said that, also said there were 3 theaters like Soarin'....

Never say never, but after the ROL result and all the hype ...... I would be shocked if they close it down and look bad. If it needs fixing I bet we see one floor or theater close at a time. That is reasonable and not obvious.

 

[Hardy]

We are here now and I've ridden flight of passage 4 times now I think. We were evacuated one time, and they immediately scanned our bands and added fop fastpasses, and another pass for any other ride (we used it for the river ride). We also have only waited about an hour-90 minutes. We have always managed this around 9 pm. It may help that it's been pretty stormy and that likely clears people out some by nighttime. The Line shows at least 120 eventually rising to 240 minutes first thing in the morning and on, in the afternoon I have seen it as low as 55 minutes. I have heard the fire alarm thing but haven't seen it personally, the ride has been down though and also sometimes some seats are not working.

The ride is great, many of the cms are awesome and enjoy talking about pandora, the land is beautiful, and yes the ride is working out kinks but is absolutely worth the time and effort to get on it!

 

[jdisnut]

is this true?

Over the past few days, the attraction has been working much better. It's not unusual for new rides to have technical problems shortly after they open. Even Frozen Ever After had issues at first, and that's a simple dark ride. There's no evidence that Flight of Passage is going to require a massive shutdown. We just have to be patient while the engineers work out the kinks.

 

[Polybound]

Even better they could've had CMs stationed at the exits handing them out automatically

It is my understanding that they do give out FP's to those who make it past the stand-by/FP Merge area. We were at that spot waiting to go next after the FP group went.

 

[bryanb]

This is obviously disappointing to have arrived so early, waited for so long, only to have it all go so wrong!

My uncle worked at the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland in the 1990s. It was brand new ambitious technology at the time, and even after months of testing 24 hours a day, and they were finally ready to open, they were still learning. The ride would go down constantly. You can engineer the heck out of something, but until you run these pieces of heavy machinery for 18+ hour days non-stop in real world conditions, you keep learning that there's more to do. There were rumors that serious improvements were needed and the ride would be shut down for months -- luckily those weren't true. I hope these rumors aren't true here. I'm sure engineers are working long shifts after hours and doing more testing.

Regarding a fire alarm, the first priority is to evacuate. The four keys of Disney service are safety, courtesy, show and efficiency... and ALWAYS in that order. You're not allowed to sacrifice the "show" just to make things more efficient. By that same token, you're not allowed to sacrifice courtesy unless it's a safety situation. I'm not saying things get handled perfectly every time, but if it's a fire alarm or a crowd situation, Cast Members will absolutely be instructed to stop being nice if a safety issue is forming. This also means that FP are probably not going to be the first thing the lead manager is worried about.

Unfortunately, all this is probably of little solace as it sounds like the OP's trip was basically ruined by this situation. Hopefully with the passage of time, they will consider giving the attraction and WDW another chance.

 

[rteetz]

is this true?

I highly doubt it.

 

[Polybound]

I was at AK on Friday too and FoP came back up around 3:00 pm, not 8:00 pm. We had an FP+ for 12:00-1:00 and went back later in the evening to use it.

I will say though that I was not impressed with how the cast members handled FoP being out of commission. This attraction builds to 2+ hours first thing in the morning, people had been waiting for hours before it went down, and some had formed a line outside of the stand-by entrance in anticipation of it going live again. While a plethora of managers were milling about, one cast member, in particular, did nothing but scream at the people who had formed their own queue, "This is not a line! You need to move! Now!" I was pretty shocked because she was screaming it at those people. That left a sour taste in my mouth.

That's right, We left around 3 and headed to EPCOT. Getting days mixed up.

 

[LongLiveRafiki]

When Anna and Elsa had their M&G and the lines were super long, didn't they cut the line off at some point? You had FP's and then standby, but I could've sworn I remember seeing stuff on here and elsewhere that they actually cut the line off at a certain point. Sounds like they need to do that with FoP until they get everything under control.

I have no idea about the A&E meet & greet, but back in '09, we were in HS and saw TSMM. We were looking for the entrance when a CM approached us. We asked where the queue was and said we had never been on before. She escorted us into the fastpass lane (this was back in the day of paper fastpasses and we did not have one, nor did we know at the time that it was the fastpass lane.) After we rode, we went to get in line again and a different CM asked for our fastpass. After explaining to us that was the fastpass line (and us realizing we were given pixie dust previously), she said that they were not accepting anymore standby riders due to the size of the line and they were only accepting fastpasses (which were also no longer available). I'm surprised they don't cut off any line once it reaches a certain point.

 

[CAS239]

is this true?

Highly unlikely.

The person might have heard a cm say it. But it's no better info than some of the info the bus drivers have