Disney Park Faces Overwhelming Nighttime Crowds, Raising Safety Concerns
The crowds at one Disney theme park are getting out of control, as per recent guests.
Every wizened Disney Parks fan knows that if you’re going to find crowds anywhere in a Disney theme park, it’s on Main Street, U.S.A.
To be more specific, it’s on Main Street, U.S.A. in the runup to a nighttime spectacular. From Disneyland Park to Shanghai Disneyland, every Disney castle park across the globe hosts its own nightly fireworks shows (albeit Tokyo Disney Resort’s is currently on hiatus for the summer), with some guests establishing their spot for the show hours in advance.
This can lead to some pretty stressful situations (hands up, who else has been shoved aside by an overzealous family on Main Street before?) However, for the most part, cast members are on top of the situation to keep crowds safe and (to an extent) organized.
But that’s not always the case. One parkgoer recently took to Reddit to share their frustrations about the situation at Disneyland Paris – namely, the lack of organization of the crowds that gather prior to its nighttime spectaculars.
I was trying to get from Discoveryland to Frontierland and had to pass through the square of course. There is no pathway anymore, there used to be roped off pathways where people could walk but ever since the inception of the reserved viewing area they are gone.
This is a huge inconvenience for any guests that don’t care about the show and want to use the rest of the park. I also feel like it would be impossible to move if you were in any sort of wheeled device (wheelchair, etc), and it is a safety hazard. There were people sitting on the curb cuts everywhere, surely those should be clear!
They’re not the only who feels this way. Other guests chipped in with their own experiences, with one Reddit user – who uses a wheelchair – adding that cast members need to prioritize helping guests.
“Guest flow could do with being more helpful,” they wrote. “After the night show I asked a group standing around chatting for help getting across the crowd to get to first aid (they weren’t roping or doing anything) and they just directed me. Thinking they hadn’t heard me I asked the next set who were standing around, they said they couldn’t help! I just wanted some help cutting across the waves of exiting people to get to first aid (hardly like I was going shopping!)”
As is often the case in dense crowds, the situation on Main Street pre-fireworks can occasionally turn aggressive. One Disneyland Paris guest detailed experiencing this for themselves, writing: “Two ladies got into a screaming match and one of the husbands sat with his legs stretched out like god’s gift to Disney. I tripped over one foot and he got mad. I then tripped over the next when and he said something, so I yelled at him. (I have bad knees and can’t lift my legs.)”
Inside the Magic can attest to the disorganization on Main Street, U.S.A. pre-fireworks. On a surprisingly hot trip to the park in June, we witnessed tensions running so high in the runup to Disney’s Electrical Sky Parade (the drone show that currently preludes Disney Illuminations) that two male guests ended up yelling at each other as one family tried to cut across the street to reach Discoveryland. This continued until one of the male guest’s children started crying.
While there’s admittedly nothing employees can do to stop guests growing frustrated in their own interactions with each other, there should reasonably be a way for guests to pass through the crowd to get from one side of the park to the other without irritating others (and without having to walk all the way down one side of Main Street to circle round in Town Square and walk back on the other side).
As one Reddit user pointed out, in the past, the park “recognized the need for people to move and had ropes / CMs enforcing it” – a practice that would make all the difference if it continued today.
How do you think Disney could improve crowds?
