A few weeks ago myself and my fellow 2017 graduates of my high school journeyed to Disneyland for our grad night. Upon arrival, it did not feel as if we were entering the happiest place on earth; rather, it felt as if we were entering a high-security prison.
Before even entering the park, a Disney employee boarded our bus and told us that we could not bring in the following items: food, water, lotion (when I asked about sunscreen I was told “you’ll have to ask security”), Chap Stick, deodorant, perfume, and anything glass. By the time this man was done listing off the things we weren’t allowed to bring in, I was surprised he didn’t tell us to leave our clothes on our bus because, as he so graciously told us, “you’re not spending $5 here.” How classy.
After we stepped off the bus, we were greeted with half an hour worth of security checks and Disney employees glaring and yelling at us. Our first step was a bag search for all of the controversial items listed above. While waiting for my turn, I saw an employee remove a dangerous hacky sack for a student’s bag and throw it away. I also saw one employee through away a girl’s water bottle while another didn’t even look at a girl’s hydro flask (which could have been filled with alcohol, or anything really, which was what I thought the park was trying to avoid). One of my classmates brought a sign to ask his girlfriend to prom and that was allowed in. Another one of my class mates also brought a sign to ask his girlfriend to prom yet it was thrown out even after he explained to them what it was. One of our chaperones (yes a full grown adult) had to remove a bottle opener key chain. It seemed that each employee searching had different spidey senses that inconsistently detected anything too “dangerous” to bring into the park. To make sure I didn’t go 15 hours with dying lips, I carefully hid a contraband chapstick in my bra.
Next came a walk through the metal detector, some wand screenings, and, my personal favorite part, a sniff from the Disney drug dog (not nearly as cute as Pluto). The cast members yelled at us to get in a single file line or risk not entering the park, so we all complied like the nasty little criminals Disney thought we all were and got our little test.
After that we got a kick-in-the-butt into the park and had a great time. I mean, it is Disneyland so it’s basically impossible to not have fun when the employees are actually in character and doing their happy-go-lucky job correctly. When it was time to leave, however, Disney- a multibillion dollar, international company - once again disappointed me and all its attendees with its terrible handling of a situation. The night ended at 2 am with a conclusion of a special grad night World of Color performance. After the final fountain went down, Disneyland showed us that they really didn’t care what happened to us: they just wanted us out of the park. There was no sort of organization at all as the thousands of students walked to the trams on this particularly rainy night (the rain, of course, was not Disney’s fault, but they did their job even worse in these conditions). So as it rained down and employees yelled at us, the usually highly efficient trams were going extremely slow. No one seemed to know what was going on or how to find our way back to our school’s bus and the employees couldn’t care less.
We eventually squeezed onto the tram and hoped we’d be on a warm bus soon. Of course, that didn’t happen. The tram didn’t even drop us off in the parking lot of all the buses. We had to walk from the drop-off and find our buses on our own. We just followed the crowd and felt confused and lost. The crowd did finally find the buses, but finding our bus was another story. We were in the middle of the lot with 50 plus buses and hundreds of confused people. Even without the rain, it would have been almost impossible to find our bus easily. While searching for our bus, a different bus drove over a cone, honked, and almost hit my friends and I.
After almost dying in the Disneyland parking lot, we finally made it to our bus waited for the rest of our group. I sat in my bus seat appalled at how unorganized and unsafe the whole leaving process was and surprised someone didn’t get ran over, left behind, or lost.
Now, I know we are all 17-18 years old, and we don’t need Disney to hold our hands, but you’re telling me a multibillion dollar company could not find a better way to get thousands of young people out of the park and onto their bus in a safe and efficient manner? Disney could have designated trams for schools so each group could be together or lined the buses in a way where no one would have been almost run over or something. I don’t know what the best way to get people safely out of a park is, but there’s someone in Disneyland who is paid millions of dollars to make those decisions yet they chose to not make any decisions at all and let it all be chaos.
Perhaps the exiting procedures and the entry security checks would have been better if they had just been nice about it. I wouldn’t have minded being searched and sniffed by a drug-detecting dog if there weren’t 12 adults giving me dirty looks and assuming that just because we were young, we were criminals. I get it, Disney - teenagers can do some really dumb stuff, but if you don’t want us there, don’t invite us. I know that Disneyland has dealt with enough crazy, high-maintenance soccer moms to be better at customer service than what we received. I would have smiled through all the checks and even the exit if Disney put to practice their amazing customer service to grad night attendees that regular guests get every second of their visit.
The lack of Disney magic in our entry and existing was irritating and disappointing for me, a person who’s been before, because I know they could do better. For new visitors, it was even more disappointing. I go to a Title 1 school with many students who had never visited the “happiest place on earth” and many who went on the trip through donations from teachers. One of my friends even went as a “Wishmas” wish. So for those students who were supposed to be amazed, the first impression of Disneyland was ugly and disappointing. The entire trip our chaperones were apologizing saying “I’m so sorry. This isn’t the Disneyland I know,” because the way we were received was just that bad.
I cannot even fully express how disappointed I am at how my classmates and I were treated. If you’re not going to be organized Disney, at least be safe in your procedures, and is it too hard to ask for you to be a little bit nice?
