Amy wrote:I'll be interested to see what you experience when you go acp.
As will I...
I had no complaints about Tokyo DL or TDS. I was amazed at how nice everything there was, and how polite guests were. I was there in 2003 so things might have changed, but everything was orderly, and so tidy.
Yeah, most of what I was referring to were operations things rather than cleanliness, like complaining that the CMs made them take their jacket off before getting into a ride vehicle when it was wet from raining outside so as not to wet the seats for the next guests (which is pretty good common sense, really).
I was surprised there weren't more CMs that spoke English, but my Japanese was sufficient that I never felt like I had a problem communicating. Although I'm sure the conversations would have gone faster if they had simply switched to English as they were likely far more fluent in my language than I was in theirs.
I've always gone on the assumption that any person I speak to in Japan doesn't speak English. After all, the language in Japan is (funnily enough) Japanese. If they do speak some English, thats a bonus, but I certainly don't work on the assumption that they do.
For Hong Kong, I'm taking the same assumption. Although English is the second language in Hong Kong, I'm not going to assume it's going to be ubiquitous.
The only real surprising thing I noticed they allowed there was guests ran to attractions as soon as the gates opened. And yes, I know they do that here in the US parks as well, but CMs do seem to try to discourage people from running here whereas in the Tokyo parks, the CMs almost encouraged people to go a bit faster!
The cast members at opening have signs saying "For safety, please walk". I thought I took a photo of them last time, but the best I could find was
this one, but someone is standing in the way of the sign (CM on the left and you can just about see CMs with signs further back, too). They do try and tell people to walk, but I think they also realise it's pointless trying.
cy1229 wrote:Yeah it's sad when people have a hard time with things being different from one Disney location to another. Just going between DLR and WDW is bad enough.
I don't know about differences in DLR/WDW, since I've not been to DLR, but I don't understand why people go to the other resorts and expect things to be the same as their "home" resort.
This is actually one of the (many) reasons that I don't bother with most Disney "fan" websites/forums/podcasts/whatever (in fact, this is pretty much the only one I bother with, and even this one I don't read /that/ often). I just get tired of reading posts where people have visited another resort to the one they're used to and spend the entire trip report complaining about the things that're different (most often due to cultural differences between where they live and where they visited). I'm sure 99% of them would have had a much better time if they'd done even a minimal amount of research before travelling. But that's another rant altogether
.
Suffice to say I'm at the point now where I don't bother with any Disney related site (other than the official websites for booking/tickets/etc) at all these days and just enjoy visiting the parks for my own reasons, ignoring what everyone else complains about or thinks about the way things are. It works well and leaves me much happier as a result.
As an American tourist, I can promise you that I will at least read ahead to not commit major cultural sins and won't wear a fanny pack.
It does make American tourists easier to spot, though
(And I'm not even going to start on the different
definition of certain words above in the UK...
)