Magic Kingdom Update: IT Issues, Missing Marquee, Walkway Widening, Etc
Magic Kingdom is next up for our Walt Disney World construction updates & photo reports. In this post, we’ll look at the widespread attraction closures, IT problems, Tomorrowland entrance changes, Cinderella Castle walkway expansion, TRON Lightcycle Power Run progress, and more.
This update is actually from a couple of visits to Magic Kingdom last weekend and this week. The day after I took the first set of photos, a few things changed, and rather than eliminate those photos from the update, we decided to go back. It was a pretty day with some puffy clouds, so why not?!
We’ve mentioned it in a couple of recent updates, but it has been a brutally hot and humid summer in Central Florida. Not that summers here are normally peachy. With ‘feels like’ temperatures over 100 degrees almost every single day for the last two months, it seems worse than normal. As always, we recommend consulting our Summer Survival Tips & Packing Ideas for Walt Disney World…
The good news is that at least it has looked nice. We lament the Florida heat and humidity, but nowhere does epic sunsets and puffy clouds like Florida. Nowhere. The clouds in the time leading up to an afternoon storm are almost otherworldly, and almost make bearing the summer weather worth it (especially if those clouds are blocking the sun).
As an additional note, Magic Kingdom is unquestionably the best Walt Disney World park to visit on a hot or rainy (or pretty much any weather conditions) day. With classic attractions like Country Bear Jamboree, Carousel of Progress, the TTA Peoplemover, Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, and other options that are air-conditioned and/or shaded, it’s your best bet if there’s “weather.”
Anyway, moving on to our beautiful, albeit hot, days in Magic Kingdom…
Outside Magic Kingdom, the controversial removal of the Walk Around the World bricks has begun.
Additionally, the old permanent bag screening area has been removed. As we covered about a week ago, work has also now started on the walkway between Magic Kingdom and Grand Floridian.
We’ve noticed a slight uptick in wait times around the parks in the last week, but our Summer Is Not Peak Season at Walt Disney World Anymore post still applies.
The trouble with judging numbers right now is that crowds feel low to moderate, but wait times don’t reflect that. This is likely caused by a mix of attractions being down and hourly capacity being reduced due to lower attendance numbers–but that’s just a guess.
Just look at those puffy clouds behind Tomorrowland. Those will never cease to amaze me.
It’s probably just coincidence, but we’ve noticed a couple of widespread park attraction outages while visiting Magic Kingdom in the last several months:
You also might’ve heard about a ticketing system failure earlier this week at Magic Kingdom.
This prevented park tickets from being scanned, which meant that only guests with MagicBands were able to enter Magic Kingdom. This resulted in multi-hour waits for some guests to enter the park and a chaotic, congested scene at the park entrance.
This is obviously an extreme scenario, but technology problems are not all that uncommon. To me, it’s mind-boggling that Walt Disney World’s IT infrastructure is so bad–and this problem has gone unaddressed for years.
If you visit Walt Disney World regularly and have not had My Disney Experience crash, or have never been unable to book FastPass+, you should buy a lottery ticket, because you clearly have incredible luck.
Both of these issues, while obviously sporadic, underscore the importance of being nimble in your plans. When I saw photos on social media and read reports of people waiting 2-3 hours in that unshaded crowd to enter Magic Kingdom, my first thought was that I’d hop on the monorail and do Epcot that day instead.
Some people may not have that flexibility, but at what point does standing in that crowd just waiting sour your mood for the entire day or, if you have kids, lead to a meltdown? (My threshold is probably about 45 minutes, tops.)
Here’s a look at the widening of the walkway between Fantasyland and Liberty Square.
Considerable progress has been made since last month, with the exterior walls for the new walkway now up.
Above is a look from the opposite direction.
I actually took this same photo less than a week earlier, and it was not nearly this far along. At the current pace, we’d expect this to be done at some point in August. (Assuming, of course, that the project continues at this pace.)
Also in this area, a large area of Liberty Square is walled off.
This encompasses the seating area of Liberty Square Market, a large stroller parking area, and part of the walkway in the area. It has added to the congestion in Liberty Square, which can be a chokepoint on a busy day even without construction.
Also in Liberty Square, canopy work is being done at Haunted Mansion.
Why these projects are being undertaken in the hottest months of the year is beyond me.
Continuing on to Tomorrowland, where we have the most noteworthy change in Magic Kingdom this month.
The iconic Tomorrowland ’94 entrance marquee has mysteriously gone missing, with crates in its place awaiting the installation of a new marquee.
Here’s an “aerial” look at the scene of the great missing marquee caper.
If you take a look at the Magic Kingdom map in My Disney Experience, you can see that there’s already a new marquee.
It’s possible that this was an unintentional reveal of the design for the replacement here. It’s also possible that Walt Disney World knows fans will obsessively comb over all possible sources for a sneak peek, and that’s a placeholder design.
Hopefully, we will know fairly soon. The D23 Expo seems like a reasonable time to release some concept art showing how Tomorrowland will aesthetically ‘congeal’ once all of this work is done.
We don’t get much further into Tomorrowland before seeing the latest color scheme changes, with the metallic fins receiving a coat of white.
Construction of TRON Lightcycle Power Run continues along at a brisk pace. Here are a couple views of the progress:
In addition to the track being installed, we’re now seeing more support structures go up.
It’ll be interesting to see if the show building and canopy go up at an equally quick speed. Call me optimistic, but I don’t think it’ll take another 2 years to finish this. We’ve done it in Shanghai; it’s not an elaborate attraction.
Last week, Sonny Eclipse was still gone, presumably raised up (yes, he goes up rather than down) for maintenance.
Whenever this happens, my heart skips a beat. With so many changes in Tomorrowland and Cosmic Ray’s popular regardless due to its location, Sonny seems like the type of thing modern Walt Disney World would cut.
Fortunately, he’s now back and entertaining guests.
I hope that the one saving grace of Cosmic Ray’s on guest satisfaction surveys is Sonny Eclipse, and that keeps him around forever. (Actually, two saving graces–Sonny and the toppings bar!)
Astro Orbiter is now down for maintenance.
There have been a lot of last-minute additions, extensions, and other changes to the 2019-2020 Refurbishment Calendar for Walt Disney World. As we discuss in that post, there probably will be even more closures added come August 25, 2019.
Our next update will come as Halloween decorations start to go up around Magic Kingdom. I know there’s a lot of disgust about Halloween creeping forward, but honestly, I’m ready for it. (I’m not ready for early closures of Magic Kingdom several nights per week, to be clear.)
After what feels like an interminably long summer in Florida, I welcome even the ‘illusion’ of seasons. I know some pumpkin decorations and menu items around Magic Kingdom doesn’t mean Florida will suddenly see cooler temperatures or fall colors, but I’m nonetheless ready for a change of pace. And maybe–just maybe–we’ll get a cool morning once or twice in the next two months, and I can enjoy some pumpkin coffee that morning to make it feel just a tad more like fall.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you experience IT issues while visiting Walt Disney World or using My Disney Experience? Did it negatively impact your trip? What about attraction downtimes? Encounter any particularly bad summer weather? Thoughts or insights about any other current construction projects in Magic Kingdom? Do you agree or disagree with our thoughts here? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
We are DVC members and on and off passholders. This June our My Disney Experience account hit its limit for storing information. Our tickets kept falling off our account (gliche 1.) I called and they told me after so many *insert IT term* that it can’t remember everything. When we went in June, we were only there one day – Our son couldn’t get in the park (gliche 2), after we used our first 3 FPs, it asked us to add a ticket – we were already in the park (gliche 3), we also couldn’t use the kiosk (gliche 4). Guest relations gave us 3 passes to help us out – but told us we weren’t the only people in the park that day having trouble. So this Sunday i called Disney IT, i had to close my MDE account/ and rebuild another one. They moved over future reservations for me and my memory maker, etc. It took about an hour on the phone to do. I am just worried that a lot of regulars are all going to hit this same limit. Luckily for us, it only really affected one day. I am all set now for our October trip, but luckily I knew to rebuild my account.
As a native Central Floridian, I’m 100% on board with it looking like Fall even if it doesn’t feel like it. My whole life, the only reason I enjoy August because my birthday is the end of the month.
Once September rolls around, it’s “bring on the pumpkin rolls, apple cider, and TV Premiere Week!” I live for the random afternoon where it will inexplicably drop 10 degrees and a nice breeze comes in. Sometimes, we’re lucky enough for it to come in September. If not, October. Even if it only lasts that afternoon, it totally changes my mood.
Go ahead Disney, decorate to your hearts content!!
I am happy to hear Sonny Eclipse returned from his vacation in Yew Nork City. I enjoy his show and I try to see him every trip even if I dont order food. He is the only reason I go to Cosmic Rays. I have my wallet ready if Disney ever sells any Sonny merchandise.
After 30 years of attending Walt Disney World on Christmas week, this year we are attending the first week in October. I just can’t take the crowds and the hours and hours of line waits. I hope Disney has its IT glitches fixed by then.
Also Tom, when we went to make our fast pass reservations this morning, we noticed that the new Star Wars ride was not an option. Why is this? I mean I know it’s not open yet but it’s slated to be open before we get there in October so why don’t we have that option?
Lasdi: The new Star Wars ride is not FastPass eligible. They do that a lot with new rides that are going to be popular. I’m told it helps keep the lines down. Don’t understand it, but ok…
I guess the good news is that if you aren’t getting a FastPass then neither is anyone else.
Have fun on your trip!
My issue with WDW IT is that there never seems to be any sort of contingency in place for when it fails. That’s fine when it doesn’t matter, but not when it’s ruining a third of a family’s holiday.
I don’t know what is worse. All the IT glitches or the fact that Disney seems to not really care about them. For example this nightmare to order the special $10 magic bands against your reservation. Disney has not even addressed this issue & when you contact them they pretty much just shrug their shoulders & say to keep trying. Not good enough. Fix it! On a brighter note we are really looking forward to our trip in Dec. to celebrate my 60th birthday. Hope all my favorite rides are open (& stay open).
It’s interesting, if not regrettable, they’re going to ramp up the closures (citing the Aug 25 date in your post) right around the time of expected attendance increases for Star Wars. As you said, a rising tide lifts all boats. So when the crowds surge at DHS and we flee to other parks, we’ll be greeted with closures. Well played, Disney.
Re. Sonny Eclipse, I’d be more upset if they took away Sonny than if they ever closed Country Bear Jamboree. I know he’s dated and hokey and never stops with the bad puns, but he’s also a lot of fun and I’d sure miss him.
Re. awning refurbs at Haunted Mansion, it never ceases to amaze me about the lack of fans throughout the parks at WDW. Under the Haunted Mansion canvas would be a perfect place to add fans. I’m a lifelong Floridian and well adapted to the heat, but even for ME it’s just plain hot so I can only imagine how the tourists are suffereing. It’s not just the MK. There are plenty of spaces elsehwere, such as the Animal Kingdom park that really need fans– like the queue for the Kilimanjaro Safari. Hundreds of people pushed together, feels-like temps over 100, no breeze… I’m surprised (but thankful) we don’t see more tourists melting.
Thanks for the update, Tom! I have a WDW trip coming up in September, and I’m starting to get a little worried about additional closures… But I’ll be at D23, so at least I’ll hear about them ahead of time and be able to prepare, and I’m sure I’ll have a great time either way!!
(Longtime reader, first time commenter btw! Hello!)
We recently returned from our yearly Disney World trip the week after July 4th. Despite the fact that our trip was booked and paid for a year in advance, and I had double and triple checked with Disney in the weeks leading up to our trip, we encountered many IT issues. The children’s bands would not scan at the gate [on several different days], would not accept our dining plan for some [and which rooms were removed from the plan varied by day], and of course, more rides were down than we have ever encountered. My entire 1st day was spent in customer relations trying to straighten everything out. One of our rooms actually had to pay for their food out of pocket on the 1st day. Because so many rides were down, Disney offered additional fastpasses for other rides during the course of the day. The problem was that we were told that everything else we tried to ride was not included in these ‘extra” passes. Also, when a ride came back up, EVERYONE used those passes to get on that ride. At Animal Kingdom, we were less than 50 people back on the Kali River Rapids when it closed down for rain. We stayed in line and it reopened in 15 minutes, at which time there were a flood of people in the fastpass line. It took 2.5 hrs. to get to the front of the line, because they were admitting 120 fastpasses in to 20 in the regular line at a time. We counted. There has to be a better way. We have decided that it is going to be a while before we return, if ever. It is simply not worth the money we spent.
I’d really be bummed if I visited MK and 7 attractions, several of them major, were down.
Let’s start a groundswell movement for Tom to run the parks!!!
Hi, Tom. I love reading all of your hard work.
I’m waiting for my notice that my information has been compromised given that Disney knows more about me than any credit agency.
I see Walt’s dream to have Epcot house the IT team, so they can be a part of the solution, not the problem. But then I was there, when it first opened.
Thank you for the update on Sonny! I’ve been anxious about him, too.
thank you for your best guess on the completion of the walkway project! i know it’s not official, but i’ve asked and asked and never gotten any kind of guess answer. i am hoping it will be done before our labor day trip, not because we plan to necessarily use the walkway, but i’m hoping the moat will be refilled by then.
and disney IT is the absolute worst. for a company such as theirs, i honestly would expect google-level IT assistance and quick fixes. my TA has run into this several times for us between the magic bands, and mini golf reservations and some dining. the website goes down, the phone agents don’t have access to book certain things even though disney announced booking would be available on specific dates. it’s insane. does this have anything to do with the controversy a few years back to outsource IT overseas…
I can’t imagine waiting that long to enter the park due to an error on Disney’s part! Would it not have been better for guest relations to just let people in who appeared to have a valid ticket?
unfortunately, due to all the scams and counterfeit tickets out there, that probably wouldn’t be an option to go on looks alone.
Another problem would be using FPs – you are supposed to have used ticket media to get into the parks before you use a FP, if you don’t then your account gets locked. At least that is what I’ve heard.
Is it wise to purchase a magic band for future trips to avoid malfunctions within DW’s IT system? For the last 4 years, DW has been our family vacation and spring break vacation in one. However, we are celebrating Spring Break in January. We would be devastated and miserable as adults, let lone adults with a 5 year old if we had to wait to enter the park. Trying to avoid IT issues.
I am currently still 10 years away from Military retirement, but my wife insists that I go work for WDW IT department and fix all their little quirks. Some button presses and links in the app just feel wrong. Things in the wrong place and too many links to go through to get to what you want. I especially get angry when you swipe up or down and can’t swipe sideways to see your plans because it isn’t at the exact “Y” coordinate it needs to be in order to swipe sideways.
I often wondered about the horsepower behind such a large system. I can imagine it’s astronomical. But what was with the addition of CPU time to make wait timers on their website for reservations? Give that horsepower to the actual servers running the reservation look-ups. You just used hardware and new software to create an additional step for your customer to be put through. Add more hardware to your reservation system.
What really boggles my mind is that they spent ~$2 billion on the NextGen initiative (that included MDX, MagicBands, etc.) and the end result is an app that–for 5+ years–has still felt like it’s beta testing.
Walt Disney World’s backend system is obviously super-complex, but how did they throw so much money at the problem and end up with THIS?!
I agree so completely.
Because they fired much of their long-time IT staff and replaced them with H1-B’s. That is my take, as the IT and app quality have nose dived since the H1-B debacle a few years ago.
I appreciate what you are saying but CPU is likely not the bottleneck with their stuff. Disk I/O is the likely culprit. Particularly on their database servers. Especially when you are talking about trying to maintain consistency to ensure say… you don’t over book a FP+ or Galaxy‘s Edge time slot, sell too many tickets, or oversell hotel rooms. These are not always easy problems to solve. However, there are solutions and steps they could take to improve things. My guess is they have a mix of legacy systems they have a hard time justifying modernizing when it works most of the time. I have no knowledge of their internal systems so it’s hard to say what they could, should or even would do.
Everyone talks about the summer heat. For me….bring it on!!! In fact,our family is moving near Orlando by this time next year. We cant wait to leave our current state! We will need,jobs, maybe WDW can hire my husband. He is an IT mgr.
The first Halloween party is 76 days before Halloween, that’s not creeping forward; it’s insanity.
I don’t see why they couldn’t start the fall decorations in late August (you still get your transition to Fall, which I appreciate) but hold off on parties until mid to late September. Maybe kick off the parties about 45 days before the actual day (that’s about what they do for Christmas)? That seems far more reasonable. I’m a big fan of the parks, and appreciate a lot of what they do well. That being said, the impact to operating hours for this lengthy of a hard ticketed event season really bothers me.
I have mixed feelings about the Halloween party. First, I agree with you about disliking the early bird stuff. Halloween candy is already out at our local grocery store. Insanity. But on the other hand, we are a Military family and Labor day is our one chance that we all have off (school, work, Army) to go for a 4 day weekend. I find it nice to be able to do the Halloween Party with my family at that time, otherwise we couldn’t do it at all. If this makes me a hypocrite, then so be it, but it is often our only chance.
I don’t disagree with you, Drew.
Halloween parties in August are insanity. Decorations (at least in my opinion) are not egregious.
I’d like to see the first MNSSHP around Labor Day, with one party per week those first few weeks. That gives everyone who wants one (at least from a 7-day vacation perspective) the chance to experience it, without impacting normal operations too much–people can easily schedule around that one night. After that, expand it to the “normal” schedule.
That’s a fantastic idea- you should run the parks. Once per week so a person on a ‘typical’ vacation schedule would have the opportunity late in the summer/early in the fall to attend MNSSHP if they so choose seems like a completely logical solution.
I know I’m belaboring a point, but it’s worth emphasizing that the busiest theme park in the world reduces it’s operating hours for ~35% of the year (that’s the span for both parties combined) to sell these parties.
One of the biggest (the biggest?) guest complaints is crowds, and the way they run the events it makes the MK overly busy (bordering not enjoyable) on the non-party days and the other parks more busy on the days there is a party at MK. It disrupts everything. Disney would lose out on some revenue…but could seriously improve the guest experience by limiting these dates.
Hi Tom, thank you for your updates. Do you know when the construction projects you updated us on will be done? Thank you.
Aside from the ones listed on the refurbishment calendar, I do not. Sorry!