Post #348260 by tiki mick on Fri, Dec 7, 2007 9:24 AM

On 2007-12-04 10:05, Son-of-Kelbo wrote:
The last time Libby and I were there the day ended as a nightmare. The park was WAY oversold, and it was a human logjam everywhere (except for the far reaches of "ghettoized" Tomorrowland -- nice observation, that).

My favorite area in Disneyland has always been New Orleans Square. Expecially around sunset and through twilight, when the Mark Twain would cruise the Rivers with her winsome lights glittering on the water, a sprinkling of lights in the trees, the Haunted Mansion quietly looming in the soft glow beyond Tom Sawyer Island, a little Dixieland drifting in the breeze..., all of it. One of the most charming spots on the planet, ever.

Then they put in "Fantasmic" -- and New Orleans Square became akin to a common street parade, with people putting blankets on the ground in the late afternoon to start "dibbing" spots along the promenade, and by evening the mass of people jamming that once-charming area swelled to a claustrophobic mass of restless bodies. Nobody could move freely. Some folks could barely breath. If you didn't hog a table at one of the restaurants six hours in advance, you couldn't sit down anywhere.

It was awful, awful. We just wanted to get out, but we were herded -- like cattle -- by brusque Cast Members (not their fault; the sheer numbers of streaming bodies must've been ennervating to them), faceless in the dark, except for their swinging flashlights, ordering us to "Keep moving! Keep moving!" Nowhere to stop, roped-off areas themselves clogged with sardined-in Guests... "Keep moving!" -- all the way out of NOS, through Frontierland, through Main Street. Was this Disneyland!? Or "Soylent Green"?

The very heart of my argument. "Nowhere to stop, roped-off areas themselves clogged with sardined-in guests...Keep moving!!"

This is what has bothered me for the last few years, as it got progressivly worse. Keep in mind that what son of kelbo was describing was probably a weekday. I expect this large crowd on summer vacation, on a saturday, but on a frickin TUESDAY night during school, and at 7:30 in the evening? Because I have been there on a time like that, and it was exactly as kelbo said.

You could not walk. You shuffled along slowly, like prisoners on a chain gang, while families with volkswagon sized strollers stopped right in your path so they could feed their screaming children. No wonder the kids are screaming! This can't be fun for them!

It's profit for DL, plain and simple. "Overselling" does not even begin to describe the human herding that occures.

And if you do magically find a day or evening where the guest count is low, guess what? They only open 2 entrance gates, so there is STILL a line stretching across the entrance plaza clear to the "California" letters near CA. You will find only ONE side of Indiana jones working. You will find that they do everything possible to make it ALWAYS look busy and crowded.

For people that are into decor, and foliage/landscaping, and stopping and looking at all the great details that some other people have written about, (and that other amusement parks lack) it is a HUGE letdown.

They want DL to be the same as magic mountain or knotts. They are forgetting what made DL different from Coney Island in the first place. Walt truly was a master of detail, and that vision died with him, big time.