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I read that as "we saw how much money can be made in this partnership...oh, and I guess it was cool they kept the integrity of the brand as much as possible."

Time (well, almost time) for EDC now! Cool how Vegas is becoming a festival destination. Rock in Rio, EDC, Life is Beautiful.

what i can believe is, we don't have enough employees to be fast enough to make it worth running three trains. ie: 3 attendants per side vs. 1 or 2. yesterday they had 2 on each side, and two board operators. one doing all the dispatching and the other helping check the seat sensors. the rest were just standing behind the board like you see in the pic i posted. That's probably the training. I'm assuming nothing has changed since I left over 10 years ago and that they were shadowing the "panel" position as part of their training.

Whether it's a manufacturer or Six Flags mandate, it does actually make sense. More team members allow for faster dispatches and more pairs of eyes to monitor things as things get busier in the station.

This early in the rides life it's possible the way SFMM operates. Sad but true. Usually with 3 trains an additional operator or two is required. The way their training is set up is that anyone can become an "attendant" in a matter of minutes, but to be fully certified for certain positions it's a longer training process. Given that so much of their workforce are kids in high school, they probably haven't had a chance to train as many operators as they would like to.

A very minor revelation...but Wolfgang Puck announced plans to include a "Wolfgang Puck's Bar & Grill" at the resort.

^Those were my thoughts exactly. It was so creepy with all the closed pavilions and empty amusement park.

Disneyland was built to 1955 standards. Before anyone knew how huge the theme park industry would become. WDW had the benefit of building for the future and is able to manage crowds much better since by then Disney knew what they had. No way to make a direct comparison, though I've said before that I think WDW is a much better venue for the event just based on the capacity and proximity of so many resort hotels. But anyways...back to Disneyland. My completely uneducated guess would be that they didn't do a good job getting a centralized message/plan across to all the different departments involved. Once their initial plan fell apart, it seemed like each group started doing things without any rhyme or reason (at least that's how my view from the internet looked) to try and control just their area without realizing the larger impact on the whole event. But I really know nothing about how DLR operates, so I could be completely off on that as well.

I can't imagine them closing GhostRider for Haunt.

^One of my co-workers was stuck waiting in the bag check line for 3 hours before he could even make it to DCA. I think they under estimated how many people were there for just Disneyland and couldn't figure out the best way to get people into DCA. I have faith Disney will learn from these mistakes, but I have to admit that I was definitely surprised they let their guard down so much and didn't anticipate the madness.

I would hope you are wrong about that. That's the Eisner way of operating parks.

I would guess it's the enable for the microphone. Operators don't have any manual control.

Financially, I am sure it was a huge success. That was never in doubt. However, as Robb said---Disneyland very obviously wasn't at capacity after the fireworks show. Operationally they dropped the ball BIG TIME. You can't dispute that. I would bet that next years event will see a drop in attendance, as the combination of no new entertainment debuts & the pissed off people will have an impact. They'll still make money regardless, but there's no question in mind that some damage was done.

I don't think that's practical since everyone would just register right away and fill up all the slots and horde them.

^You should have read some of the responses on twitter to the @DisneylandToday tweets...it was definitely more than enthusiasts complaining. We just try to dissect it more.

Assuming the incident reported is true, that is likely the case---per the state law, they have to keep it offline until it's confirmed what happened with the guest. Anything beyond "normal first aid" has to be reported to the state and the state has to give the OK. Anyways...saw a report today of a 3hr posted wait time and no single rider open. Ouch. don't they have 4 trains with the expressed purposed of the 4th to be subbed on when needed if one train goes down? TC is being really well recived, but it's clear SFMM still has a lot of kinks to work out. Though they did a good job with line management it seems for it's official opening day. The 4th train hasn't been delivered yet.

What I really don't understand is how they didn't expect this? They know the 24hr events are popular. I'm sure they also have historical data on how ride/show openings impact AP revisits. They probably also have historical data on the attendance jump that occurred for the 50th anniversary. I'm really surprised they didn't have better plans in place. Granted I only had peoples tweets to go by, but my impression is that once their plan fell apart...they had no backup plans in place and were improvising to try and get by. Disneyland was not really designed with the current business model in mind. It needs a MAJOR overhaul to be able to contend with the crowds that annual pass program have added. I hope Disney is looking over every single inch of the park to figure out how to increase capacity and efficiency. They can look up the road to Universal to see how they have essentially re-made the park in the last 5 years as they prepare for Potter. Disney needs that kind of overhaul. The other part of the problem is that the park that was designed to accommodate these crowds still can't seem to completely resonate with guests: despite the major overhaul, it seems like there are still lots of people would rather wait to get into Disneyland vs. visiting the open DCA. I i also assume what gets announced at D23 this year will be phase 1 in solving their dilemma..

Assuming the incident reported is true, that is likely the case---per the state law, they have to keep it offline until it's confirmed what happened with the guest. Anything beyond "normal first aid" has to be reported to the state and the state has to give the OK. Anyways...saw a report today of a 3hr posted wait time and no single rider open. Ouch.

After reading through twitter, it sounds like Disneyland dropped the ball with the event this year. From what I gather, parking was maxed out, Disneyland filled up and hasn't reopened for all those who are waiting it out on the esplanade, and the message has been mixed depending on what CM you talked to. The webcam/social media turned out to bite them in the ass, since everyone can see Disneyland park isn't too busy anymore...which is probably why they decided to open up the park again. Only to guests who are in DCA. Except those who came on one-day/pass blackout tickets were told park hoppers wouldn't be sold, so they're stuck in DCA. Park didn't reopen until 2:55AM. Why in the world people would wait around that long I have no idea... Sadly, Disney is really in a no-win situation. Disneyland is not designed for the crowd. The 24hr event definitely seems better suited for WDW, but I'm sure the money is too good for them to not keep doing these events...

They absolutely gave everyone a heads up. They sent an email to the passholders announcing the preview. Granted not everyone got the email but those who did not get the email likely heard about the Gold Passholder runs from an enthusiast site or other media source. If you are an enthusiast you should know that a brand new ride is going to have some hiccups. The fact that it stayed open and operating nearly the entire time with only brief moments of downtime is amazing. Not even Disney or Universal can do that. Hell I was opening crew of a MAJOR attraction at Disney and during the first few months we would be lucky to have the damn thing operate for longer than 15 minutes without going 101. SFMM is actually doing a really great job. If you don't like it that's on you. Preview is different that a soft open/technical rehearsal. I got that e-mail. There was no warnings that this was a technical rehearsal. This was an e-mail blast to paying customers to come ride. If it was the film shoot or media day, I could give the park a free pass since those were days truly before it opened. I also waited a half hour for them to open the queue on Thursday without a single ride employee walking the line trying to inform us of what was going on. That's my point. I get downtime is going to happen, especially with a new ride from a relatively new ride manufacturer---the reason SFMM is still SFMM is because they don't care and just think of the inconvenience as no big deal. It wouldn't have bothered me in any way shape or form if you couldn't see all the ride ops just standing around waiting for the techs to fix whatever they were working on. Those are ride ops and supervisors that could have (and IMO should have) been out engaging us waiting. Had they done that, I would have been very impressed. The ride is a world class ride. The crew was definitely doing their best to hustle. It's just a shame they are missing that last little piece of how to properly handle downtime.

They paid non union actors $400? Not a bad day for those actors...

That is so ridiculous it could only happen at SFMM.

Just from watching videos, I am intrigued by the fireworks more than anything. The Main Street projection mapping doesn't look like it fit the criteria I mentioned earlier about how I want to see something cool happen on the streets. It looks more like they just used the surfaces to project images. However, it does look like they used the castle and matterhorn to achieve the cool part. In addition to the great pyro. Paint the Night really looks like the parade I've seen at EDC the last two years with Disney characters instead of wacky costumes/floats. That's not a bad thing by any means, but it just doesn't have the WOW factor to it since I feel like I've seen it before. Though I admit I am not much of a parade person to begin with. It still looks like a nice evolution of the MSEP and Disneyland was overdue for a new parade, so in that regard it is mission accomplished for the park. World of Color is still just a repetitive clip show to me. It fills the void of DCA needing a night time show, and it was overdue for an overhaul. I'll definitely check out these offerings in person as soon as I can since at the very least I know I will geek out about the technical aspects behind the shows.

It didn't really seem like they were looking close enough to identify a number?