The importance of long ride refurbishments at Disney Parks

http://micechat.com/forums/disneyland-resort/156124-ride-closures.html

Recently on MiceChat, a member voiced his displeasure of rides going down for refurbs for 2-6 months and prefers 1-2 day refurbs. He stated that he bought an annual pass for the Disneyland Resort and says that there should be some "perks" if a ride will be down for months.

Me and other members have tried to tell him the importance of rides going down. But as it turns out, he is against any upgrades/updates to rides and will accept refurbs for 1-2 days for maintence purposes. He cleary does not understand that refurbishments of any ride at any theme park are scheduled based on the needs of the attraction, any planned additions to the ride, etc. The factors are numerous and doing this for 1-2 days is never enough.

Look at the Indiana Jones Adventure, the resort has been doing small, 2-4 day refurbs of the ride. But in the state that its in, its not enough and will need multiple months to fix everything. Fortunatley, they are aware and i've heard that a long refurb will happen soon.

There has been the mentality that if a ride will be unavailable, the trip is ruined. I never and probably will understand this. I've been at the parks when Pirates was down from Jan-Jun back in 2006, and I didn't complain about it. The person who started the thread is obviously bitching about the Matterhorn in particluar, which will be down now until September in order to prepar the attraction for new bobsleds which will either come in this refurb or the next long one scheduled for next year.

Now heres where he gets ticked off. After the Columbia incident was brought in (which was a result of faulty maintence at the time), he stated that it could've been resolved with a 2 day refurb. Then a prominent member, Mr. Wiggins responded with: "An appallingly dismissive statement that trivializes both the Columbia tragedy and the multiple, longterm causes that led to it."

And naturally, he took it like a personal attack which was not. Then he makes this statement:

 "Wow, after reading some of these hateful sounding posts it's no wonder I don't join in meetings at the park, all you guys do is try to incite flame wars about trivial stuff. Bottom Line, customers' opinions matter and there would be no Disneyland if no one came {maintained or not}. The hundreds of people I talk to each week while standing in lines is that they share the same opinion as I do, it only seems members here have a differing opinion. I can analyse that one , but answering may be disturbing to those reading it here..so I will leave it alone. All the over analysing of the refurbs times is rediculous, I was mainly concerned about the 6 month downtime of the Matterhorn and overlap {which is minor}."

Well here is something you should know. We never did incite a flame war in that thread. And we've known that Disney does take guest opinions. Why do you think the menus of some eating places are improved? And we were not over analyzing the refurb times and its not pathetic of us to explain them. We were just telling you how these refurbs are planned and you were clearly not seeing that.

Overall, this thread has proven that some people are too resistant to change that they don't want multi month refurbs because of the money the spent on an Annual Pass. Sorry dude, you lost with this thread.

And you have an annual pass, you can go back anytime you want so why are you bitching about the Matterhorn being down for a while. Just enjoy your visits without the Matterhorn till they're done. Simple as that.

So while a ride being down for refurb during a visit sucks, at least we know they take care of their rides. Now if only Walt Disney World can take care of their attractions as much as the Disneyland Resort does.