Kitchen Sink Part 1: The Rotten Morning
Warning: Non-Magical Stuff Ahead
On Tuesday, we hit rope drop at the Studios. Not surprising, our goal was Toy Story Mania. Yep, with 95% of the other people there...
Our tactic for the big attractions is that I hoof it to the Fastpass, grab 4, and then we all enter the stand-by line
together. That's the rule. It's against Disney policy for someone to force their way through the line to join their party. That's a form of line jumping.
Back to the stampede... I'm hoofing it, the curb is to my right, a lady with the stroller is to my left. See where this is going? For some reason, she veers to the right, I try to avoid, but she catches my left foot between the stroller front wheels and the curb. I went flying... landing on my right elbow and rolling to a stop right in front of tip board. The CM there checked on my well being, but I was a bit shaken up. The woman who knocked me down? Nowhere in sight. My elbow is still swelled and achy today, but I'll live. I was more embarrassed than anything else.
Obviously, this was not Disney's fault in any way, but my mood was set.
Then I head to the Fastpass line... obviously behind "schedule." I later found out that the Fastpass line should've been 15 minutes long; the ride would've been 20. Hrm. Should've been. At least 2 of the Fastpass machines broke down, including the one I was in. Communication from the CM's was bad. We didn't know if we should get out of our line or wait; we should've bailed to another line. The folks in front of me were told that they couldn't get Fastpasses for some reason I didn't hear, and the woman stormed off to Guest Relations instructing her husband to "not move." Eventually, the CM was able to get him to stand to the side, but the machine didn't work for me either. They tried to fix the machine multiple times... the CM finally took my park tickets to another machine to get my FP. It was 9:30.
While I was waiting in the FP line from heck, my wife was standing around the stand-by line waiting for me so that we could enter the line
together. While waiting, my wife saw the CM at the stand-by line unhook the ropes to let people from the fast pass line "join their parties" who were already in line. This form of line jumping has been a huge pet peeve of mine for years... but this was the first time I've ever heard of CM's actually helping the process.
For the first time in my 10 trips, I visited Guest Relations. I completely realize that their goal is to make the complaint go away, but I needed to voice it. We didn't want anything other than to be heard, but the CM - very, very nice and agreed with everything we said even pointing out to us that we were describing "line jumping" - gave us fast passes to Tower of Terror and promised to call the TSM CM's.
On Thursday, we were back at Studios at rope drop to do TSM. We simply walked to the stand-by line for a 15 minute wait. The CM managing the line was saying to keep your party together, but we noticed ~10 parties waiting in line for their fastpass member to join them and also noticed several people forcing their way through the line (although we didn't notice any CM assistance).
IMO, the CM's just turn a blind eye to this as it happens in nearly every attraction with FP at rope drop. We noticed it particularly in Soarin' as well. Perhaps we shouldn't follow the rule either.
Sorry for the bummer; things will improve from here, I promise.
