All of the Disney promotions on ticket prices to keep attendance up is not only crowding the parks but bringing a different crowd dynamics into the park.
We went twice over two months.
In our May trip, we drove there and parked at the main parking structure. When we arrived at the park tram, the security was power tripping over where each person would line up. Forget questioning the necessity of his role as people would naturally line up in the shortest queue, but he was more inefficient demanding people queue in the lines he told them to go to. There were clear space in the lines behind him and his point of view but won’t get into that. What got me was how rude he was and wouldn’t let anyone line up in the line they chose. I think they need to train their cast members a bit better on remembering where they are.
In our June trip, we decided to stay two nights at Disney Grand California, so we can take advantage of early entry. We left 20 min before rope drop and was greeted by a queue as long as the Peter Pan line to get through security. Clearly most of these people were not staying at grand California but found the loophole on a shorter security line. Unfortunately it sucked all of the time we had and we went in along with the rope drop people. All in, wouldn’t stay at Disney hotels again for early entry if you need to leave the parks before 6:30am to use it…
But that wasn’t the “happiest” experience I had at Disneyland that day. No I’m not talking about the genie LL that causes my whole family to chaotically dart across the park after each ride, when in the pre-Genie past we had some sort of geographic order on how we visited the parks. Great if you’re counting steps. Not so great when those steps are done by little legs (children).
The “happiest” time came at night as the parks got more crowded. I was leading my family through a crowd and I bumped into an “angry dad” in opposite traffic. Before I said excuse me and move to the side, he takes his hand and tries to push through on my chest like he’s opening a door. Shocked and confused, before I can respond, I see this “angry dad” angle his elbow and elbow me in my stomach. I said excuse me!?, and he brushes me off by then moving to the side and huffing away without any apology. Yeah, is this still the Happiest Place!?