Sometimes its not even the guests' own fault...

[Ottar]

Occasionally, all hell breaks loose at a resort and its not even a guest or a CM that is at fault. Chances are then its the fault of a travel agency or a guide company.
An example is when a company (and I make no pretense about being PC here, but I've only seen this with eastern or southern european companies) has promised things that Disney cannot meet or given guests incorrect information about stuff. Want a few examples? I know you do. :wink:

A southern european company once had arranged for flights and hotel rooms for a group of about 50 guests, but had not arranged for any transportation between the airport and the park. Them not having reserved a local guide thus resulted in te group first spending a few HOURS in the airport while at first strolling through it at random without knowing where to go and what to do and then trying to contact the travel agency. The agency, in turn, phoned Disney and had the audacity to complain to Disney about how difficult it was to get to the park! In all the confusion, however, they neglected to mention this was regarding a group that wa salready in place! Thus, the puzzled Disney employee gave them the standard answer about there being regular buses from the airport to the park. :roll:
SO, the whole group of 50 people mobbed the shuttle service and they all had to pay the quite large sum perperson for the bus ride. They were NOT happy, and even less so when they discovered that the travel agency had booked their guided tour of the park for the LAST day of their four-day stay there... Can you say "DOH!"...? The DLP staff rectified all of this of course, but as usual got no gratitude from the guests, who could not see the difference between Disney and the two-bit travel agent they had bought their trip from... :cry:

Another travel agency had simply told their travellers that Mickey would meet them at the airport (they denied this even though the guests all said the same thing) and that there would be characters present at every breakfast (character breakfast every day at the cheapest hotel in the resort?). Nice going. To top it off, they had given out "vouchers" for "character photographs" to families with children. Turns out, those vouchers were for some other Disney resort that the agency had arranged a trip to two years earlier.

My favourite agency, however, has to be the one whose guide apparently had to keep up a lot of false facades in front of his group of travellers. He was constantly trying to persuade the FastPass attendants to let his "VIP" group enter the attractions through the fastpass entrance without fastpasses, and according to my Finnish friend who worked at the three-star hotel where they were staying the guide kep asking for free stuff and special treatment at the hotel since the agency had told the guests that they were booked in the best hotel in the resort!
Way to go - I hope the guests didn't ask any embarassing questions when they passed under the Disneyland Hotel on their way into the park every morning... Having worked at a travel agency myself, I can totally relate to this poor guide's troubles - the whole travel business is a web of constant tries to tell your customers semi-truths and renaming rooms to suites etc...

[CBeilby]

This reminds me of something that Mark Evanier (a screenwriter and animation historian, as well as one of the creators of Groo the Wanderer, for you comic book types) once posted on his site. For copyright reasons, I obviously won't be reposting the whole story here, but here's a link...

http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL248.htm

Let's just say that some travel agencies can make even passholes seem smart...

[lady ulrike]

All I can say is wow. I mean it was kind of funny until I got to the phone call he made. She outright and knowingly lies several times.

[GMC]

wow that makes me sad, i think that we should call and complain about some people that took that tour and yelled at us because they didn't get to do everything, and then yell at them for being lying assholes. jerks, companies like that cause little kittens to die, and i hope i get an e-mail from "mike" about it. they're going to purgatory, hell is too good for them.

[BRWombat]

Amazing. Funny and tragic at the same time. Almost makes me sympathetic for the guests who then get irate and take out their frustrations at the park.

Hey, I said "almost." But on reflection, not really. You'd have to be some kind of gullible to fall for that -- like the story said, how long does it take to do the math?

[Dack48]

All I have to say about that link is....wow. Just...wow. I cannot believe that someone would even BOOK one of those tours, or be suckered into getting one.

As for travel agents setting false promises, this may not be from DLP but at Innoventions, we used to have the Xerox stop, where you got your picture taken and printed on super-high-glossy Xerox paper. The Brazilian Tour Troup Companies, knowing this, promised every tour group a group photo AND individual photos. So whenever Innoventions heard the chanting girls coming our way, we knew what was going to happen....thats right, the complimentary photos came from Xerox's pavilion. When they told the Brazilians that they could only be in ONE picture, not a group and then individuals, they got pissed at US because their travel agency promised them that they could do this.

I am wondering, is this the same travel agency that tells them that they can chant as loud as they want, or to cut lines, or to 'relieve theirselves' in the middle of our merchandise locations?

[RebuildtheKingdom]

I read something in his article that has me wondering. Is this true, or another urban legend:

Now, in fairness, not all the waits are that long.*And one of the deep, dank secrets of Disneyland is that when they post a 60 minute estimate for a queue, the actual wait-time is usually less.*They deliberately exaggerate because, first of all, they want to discourage you from hitting the most popular attractions at peak hours.*Second of all, they don't want you complaining if something breaks down and it takes longer than expected for you to reach the boarding area.

[Stduck]

I read something in his article that has me wondering. Is this true, or another urban legend:

Now, in fairness, not all the waits are that long.*And one of the deep, dank secrets of Disneyland is that when they post a 60 minute estimate for a queue, the actual wait-time is usually less.*They deliberately exaggerate because, first of all, they want to discourage you from hitting the most popular attractions at peak hours.*Second of all, they don't want you complaining if something breaks down and it takes longer than expected for you to reach the boarding area.
Yes and no.

[GMC]

yeah when i post 80 on my sign it's because it's going to be about 80 minutes, when i post 5 it's because it's going to be about five. That kinda bugged me, because I DO want people to come to my attraction, always, but i also want them to know how long i think it'll take them, which might not always be the most accurate, but at least they have a ball park idea.

[Stduck]

yeah when i post 80 on my sign it's because it's going to be about 80 minutes, when i post 5 it's because it's going to be about five. That kinda bugged me, because I DO want people to come to my attraction, always, but i also want them to know how long i think it'll take them, which might not always be the most accurate, but at least they have a ball park idea.
Sometimes we over post the wait just so we can get our out front traffic under control. (People go away we have it under control and we bump the wait down). Other times we over post because we are 105 (reduced capacity) where we have the full queue inside the gate is usally 30 minutes sans fastpass, but last year feb through april we didn't have the use of ER2 so we put what normally would have been a 30 minute wait running 2 ERs we posted at 45 because we were missing ER2.

[lady ulrike]

We also sometimes over estimate the wait time because we know we're about to get a huge line, like the parade's about to end or something and it might be too chaotic to change it at that time.

[Ottar]

This summer, working at BTM, I really got to see quite a few different views on how to handle the electronic waiting time sign.
Typically, people looked for the queu to reach certain points where you knew that the wait would be about half an hour, fourty minutes, one hour etc.
A few of my collegues liked to keep to these "rules" but added fime minutes extra all the time just "to be safe". Others would deliberately underestimate the low waiting times to fill up the ride in off hours and then exhaggerate the waiting time on peak hours to keep people away. Can't say I saw it work, really.

Another few didnt like working the computer controlling the sign, so they just let whatever the sign said remain ther eno matter what, hoping the next "bump" would do the job for them.
I liked to put in very odd numbers, like "24" or 37" minutes, so that people looking at it would think the computer somwhow actually estimated the waiting time. That way they wouldn't ask me wether or not the sign was accurate - they'd assume it updated on its own. :D
I got caught doing this once and tried to explain it, but my superior failed to see the finer points in my story. Maybe it was just my french. I had to stick to zeroes and fives from then on.

[aliceindisguse]

Then there are the joys of not having the wait time posted out front of your attraction, So some one will ask you as you're walking past checking queues, or while you're actually :eek: attempting to do your job, and then of course you get the wonderful people who don't believe you so they ask the people in line how long they've waited and they of course say that they've waited for about 45mins, in your 15min line....yes of course I lied to you, I wanted to trick you into wasting your time....then when they get to the front they are amazed at how fast the time flew it seemed like 15 mins to them....hmmmmm let me think about that one.....

[Ottar]

Yes - that really is a notion that I don't understand. People assume that just because they cannot SEE any lines that there are none and they take offense to it saying stuff like "You just don't want us to go on the ride...!"...
I mean :confused: :confused: :confused: ??

[LittleDollClaudia]

Have to tell you though it is kind of cute that Tower at DCA is always 13 minutes of wait time.

[smart1hermione]

Have to tell you though it is kind of cute that Tower at DCA is always 13 minutes of wait time.

Yeah, I've noticed that too! I think when the wait is under 20 minutes, ToT and HM can have a little fun with their wait times.

[Theme Park Where]

Like others said, we always boosted our wait time at RnRC a bit when we were running at slower capacity (fewer limos on the line, someone needing some extra time to get settled into the limo, minor technical problems, etc.) or just before a rush. We usually kept them about 5 minutes over actual wait time as a rule too, because guests are less likely to complain about a wait being shorter than posted than they are about it being even one minute longer. At Muppets, we kept a 15 minute wait time at a minimum unless we were truly at a walk-on (meaning the doors were open, and people were walking right in without slowing down). This was because many SGs didn't count the preshow as part of the attraction and we actually got complaints when we posted a 0 minute wait and they weren't going right into the theatre. That tended to happen when they had to wait any time outside the attraction. There was less of a chance they would complain when they walked right in, especially when it was 100 degrees outside!

[smart1hermione]

I've also noticed that Pirates is often a walk-on but they always post 5 minutes, probably because it takes that long to walk though the line!

[Big Wallaby]

One day this week I saw Safari posting a five, and I never knew before it could do that. In the past it always said 20, and just recently they had adjusted it so it could occasionally say 10.

[kurtisnelson]

One day this week I saw Safari posting a five, and I never knew before it could do that. In the past it always said 20, and just recently they had adjusted it so it could occasionally say 10.

On empty days, I still get an FP for safari to shorten my walk.

[Amphigorey]

Like others said, we always boosted our wait time at RnRC a bit when we were running at slower capacity (fewer limos on the line, someone needing some extra time to get settled into the limo, minor technical problems, etc.) or just before a rush. We usually kept them about 5 minutes over actual wait time as a rule too, because guests are less likely to complain about a wait being shorter than posted than they are about it being even one minute longer.

You are totally right about that. It's a psychological effect; if the wait is 15 minutes and a guest is told 20, the guest will be happy because it was shorter than expected. However, if the guest is told 10, they will be unhappy because it was longer, even though 15 minutes is still a short wait. Better to err on the side of "happy guest" than "unhappy guest."


At Muppets, we kept a 15 minute wait time at a minimum unless we were truly at a walk-on (meaning the doors were open, and people were walking right in without slowing down). This was because many SGs didn't count the preshow as part of the attraction and we actually got complaints when we posted a 0 minute wait and they weren't going right into the theatre. That tended to happen when they had to wait any time outside the attraction.

That's kind of sad, because the preshow is great! I've been known to deliberately wait for the preshow when I take new people to see Muppets, because so much of it is brilliant.

[Theme Park Where]

Rat, schmatt, besides, what do they know? They're tourists! :gonzo:

[BRWombat]

Rat, schmatt, besides, what do they know? They're tourists! :gonzo:I have Donald Duck right over here...

[JugglingFreak]

http://www.geocities.com/farriske/samflag.jpg

A salute to all nations but mostly America....

(I know it's not in the pre-show, but Sam rocks...)

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

ladies and Gentleman...Mr. Mickey Mouse!!!!!

hehehe

[Theme Park Where]

And now the 3 Ds, Dorothy, Dinah, and Debbie. Uh, Debbie was sick, so the union sent Max!

[ktulu]

http://www.geocities.com/farriske/samflag.jpg

A salute to all nations but mostly America....

(I know it's not in the pre-show, but Sam rocks...)

"It's a glorious three-hour finale!"

[Theme Park Where]

You've got a minute and a half! :kermit:

[joanna71985]

Rat, schmatt, besides, what do they know? They're tourists! :gonzo:

http://www.geocities.com/farriske/samflag.jpg

A salute to all nations but mostly America....

(I know it's not in the pre-show, but Sam rocks...)

ladies and Gentleman...Mr. Mickey Mouse!!!!!

hehehe

And now the 3 Ds, Dorothy, Dinah, and Debbie. Uh, Debbie was sick, so the union sent Max!

"It's a glorious three-hour finale!"

You've got a minute and a half! :kermit:

I love those lines! I also love "Ladies and Gentlemen, please move all the way down to the end of the row. Stopping in the middle is distinctly unpatriotic".:D:

[Syndrome]

And now the 3 Ds, Dorothy, Dinah, and Debbie. Uh, Debbie was sick, so the union sent Max!
Aha, so that's how the got the idea for the fifth Muse in the old DCL Herc show.