How much scaling back is disney doing?

Iamthecaptain · Post by **Iamthecaptain** » Nov Mon 03, 2008 7:41 pm

So I was up for the weekend doing mickey's not so scary halloween on friday night and food and wine saturday with a group of friends. Besides the almost non-existent lines for rides and light traffic in the parks, we noticed quite a few areas scaling back. For MNSSH, we understood as a special event they would keep the staff down and could expect some waits. Surprisingly though, besides lack of food venues being open, it was not to bad. We were a little sad in the candy being handed out. Yes, even in our late 20's and early thirties, we still would like a little better quality candy.

However, the next day at epcot it was very noticeable. The entrance alone seemed rather played down to previous years. We also noticed fewer people working the stands. Mexico, where we always get margaritas, only had two people working the line, compared to last year having five. They also seemed to have much less food on hand at the stands. Two different areas we had to wait for more food to be brought out. The lines for rides were great though since it seemed like a very very small crowd. The most noticeable thing to all of us though was the scaled down illuminations. There was a definite smaller amount of fireworks being used. Also the finale was not as spectacular with the resounding loud bursts at the end.

Soooo, my question is how many have noticed recent scaling back in the last 6-12 months? Also, what if any affect will this have on visits for the coming year or so regarding length of closures and refurbishments and less guest services?

Future Guy · Post by **Future Guy** » Nov Mon 03, 2008 10:54 pm

Well, I understand that they're cutting back the operating hours of some attractions. The Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor doesn't open until 10am, I believe. As is being discussed in another thread, they're also cutting back on the character dining. I know the Garden Grill is going to stop serving lunch, and it wouldn't surprise me if all the restaurants cut back on portion sizes.

Of course, if the bad economic conditions continue, I wonder if Disney will be forced to *gasp* lower their prices?

yodiwan1 · Post by **yodiwan1** » Nov Mon 03, 2008 11:40 pm

this all sounds wierd to me. I was up two weekends ago, and I disagree about a few things. One. Trick or Treating was amazing! Between my fiance and I we got over 10 lbs and it was all high quality. Hershy products, snickers, clark bar, oh henry, laffy taffy, tootsie rolls, nerds, what exactly were you expecting? truffles and candy apples? I saw Hallo-wishes and the fireworks were crazy! 2) i do agree about food being scare at MNSSHP, but during the FaW festival there are always lines and at times shortages depending on the popularity of the stand. I saw many peope working thei butts of in 80 degree heat, (no idea how hot it was in the booth itself), and even though I had some 10 min waits here and there the food was always ready pretty quick, and this was whn the park was PACKED. From experience workign there, Halloween time was typically slow at the parks since families usually actually have stuff to do at home.

Iamthecaptain · Post by **Iamthecaptain** » Nov Tue 04, 2008 8:55 am

Initially the hotel when we were having lunch they brought candy like that around so we were expecting just your basic mini snickers, hersheys, mr. goodbar etc. While volume was good, the quality was not. We were getting items that looked like they came from the dollar store. Out of the entire bag, i counted 2 snickers, 2 nestle crunches, one butterfinger, and three hershey bars. The rest was pretty much generic brand stuff, which still tasty, I was not expecting. The hallo-wishes fireworks were very good, it was the illuminations ones though that were noticeably scaled back.

As for the people working hard, I never said they were not, I was just saying how they had fewer workers at the stands. Yes I expect lines at the food places, I'm not naive, however, they did have less people working in those stands and I felt bad that they were having to work that much harder. And I know shortages will happen, but I guess I should have elaborated more in that it was the wait time for the new food. I honestly expected them to be a little more on top of that. For example, I was getting a beer in germany, and was waiting 10 minutes for them to get the tap flowing, and this was from a normal year round stand. Sounds like you just had them when they were better organized and prepared.

DIAC1987 · Post by **DIAC1987** » Nov Tue 04, 2008 2:23 pm

Regarding Food and Wine, its been an utter disaster behind the scenes, as we had no idea (I mention "we" because I work for Epcot) that it would STILL be so busy this year, with the current economic situation and all. We totally underestimated the success of Food and Wine this year. As for Illuminations, sometimes its hit and miss...its been a bit windy lately so perhaps because of the wind, they had to scale back on the amount of fireworks.

meticulus9 · Post by **meticulus9** » Nov Tue 04, 2008 3:48 pm

wdw has been scaling back live entertainment since the downturn

spodie · Post by **spodie** » Nov Tue 04, 2008 9:12 pm

Maybe some of this is caused by the time of year we're in? Late October seems like a time of the year where most parks cut back on their numbers of staff working just because the volume of people is way less than in the summer.

yodiwan1 · Post by **yodiwan1** » Nov Tue 04, 2008 11:06 pm

I even heard peopel talking in line about how many people were in those tiny booths. And as far as the candy goes, you just had bad luck. I literally jsut went back to our stash and over 75% of the 8 lbs we have left were all major brands. We actually were going to sue it for the trick o treaters, bt we had none come so it's all for our family! My father in law has had 15 packs of sour patch kids already!

spodie · Post by **spodie** » Nov Wed 05, 2008 9:37 am

yodiwan1 wrote:And as far as the candy goes, you just had bad luck. I literally jsut went back to our stash and over 75% of the 8 lbs we have left were all major brands.

Maybe they ran out of all the good candy before this weekend, because he mentioned that he was there last Friday. I wonder why they would give out such bad candy on Halloween though...

DisBeamer · Post by **DisBeamer** » Nov Wed 05, 2008 7:51 pm

I agree with Yodi (though I think I was there just before him?); we got really good candy from Trick or Treating in the MK. This was mid-October. Maybe they really did run out? My husband and I got about 10 lbs of candy too, and we got oodles of little Snickers/Oh Henrys/Crunch bars/etc. It does seem kind of lame they'd allow themselves to run out for actually Halloween night, though.

Food and Wine we found very quiet during the week but Saturday afternoon was INSANE. I don't mind crowds, but we actually got to the point where I said "I want to leave; I can't take it here anymore." I don't think I've ever said that in a Disney park, even in the middle of summer. The lines were long, but I found they moved along pretty quickly. The food quality on the weekend I found a lot lower than when we went Thursday afternoon, but given the quantities being prepared I wasn't surprised by that. I didn't see them run out of anything, but then I wouldn't have been surprised if they did given the absolute mob of people there. (Did I mention it was insane?

)

As for Illuminations, I didn't notice any difference to it than usual (other than the changed up preshow music, which I don't like as much). Maybe they were having trouble that night too? Not sure.

Sorry you seem to have had an off trip, captain.

Edit to add: To answer the actual question, though, one place I did notice them scaling back a lot was in the number of buses running at any given time. We had some pretty long waits. I can't really blame them for it, but it's one area where I found myself thinking they were doing some cost cutting.

packwingfn · Post by **packwingfn** » Nov Thu 06, 2008 11:28 pm

You really hit or miss with the busses. They may have been cutting back due to the cost of gas but that has been going down recently.

And yes F&W is much busier on the weekends because a lot of locals come to EPCOT, add that to the tourists who come because F&W is pretty amazing.

And DisBeamer, when you said changed preshow music, I think that music has been the same for a few years now, It's not as good as the first one but I've grown a liking to it....what I didnt like was the new pre show warning voice which doesnt sound good compared to the original lady who did it previously.

DisBeamer · Post by **DisBeamer** » Nov Fri 07, 2008 12:22 am

packwingfn wrote:And DisBeamer, when you said changed preshow music, I think that music has been the same for a few years now, It's not as good as the first one but I've grown a liking to it....what I didnt like was the new pre show warning voice which doesnt sound good compared to the original lady who did it previously.

Yeah, I believe it changed in 2006. I didn't get to hear it last year because it was Christmas season so they had Christmas music on before RoE, and I hadn't been before that since 2004. It was just the first time for me to hear it in the park. It's not bad; just not as good as before. I agree about the voice, too (and I know - I'm grouchy about changing my RoE

).

Donalds1Fan · Post by **Donalds1Fan** » Nov Thu 13, 2008 8:39 pm

As far as Disney scaling back things goes, has anyone heard if they're really only going to have 3 or so shows of Fantasmic! per week, even when the busy seasons hit? I know I had been looking at the WDW calendar into April, and I don't recall it being shown more than a handful of times per week.

I can see them cutting back, but that much? I can already imagine the nightmare it'll be to get into a show now.

grumpyutboi · Post by **grumpyutboi** » Nov Thu 13, 2008 9:28 pm

I know that this is bad to say but I enjoy the parks being slower, that is why we like to go at this time of the year, no waiting in line for rides and even though the parks close early by the time we are done riding all the rides and running around we are exhausted. This is our first year at WDW and we have been worried about the crowds, we used to live out west and went to Disneyland 3 times a year, we have not been to a Disney resort in 2 years and we are just beside ourselves.

Donalds1Fan · Post by **Donalds1Fan** » Nov Thu 13, 2008 9:41 pm

grumpyutboi wrote:I know that this is bad to say but I enjoy the parks being slower, that is why we like to go at this time of the year, no waiting in line for rides and even though the parks close early by the time we are done riding all the rides and running around we are exhausted. This is our first year at WDW and we have been worried about the crowds, we used to live out west and went to Disneyland 3 times a year, we have not been to a Disney resort in 2 years and we are just beside ourselves.

I like going in the slow season myself, also. We went in mid-May this year, and it was fabulous. The longest line we waited in was a 35 minute line for Splash Mountain. Almost everything else we did had maybe a 5-20 minute wait, tops. Soarin' had about a 60 minute wait the whole time we were there, and Toy Story Mania (which wasn't officially open yet) had lines of up to almost an hour. We got FPs for Soarin', and just happened to get to TSM when it opened for a preview, so no real line to speak of for us. Other than those rides, nothing was overly crowded.