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Magic Kingdom Experiences Technical Difficulties; Guests Enter Park Without Scanning Magic Bands or Tickets

Magic Kingdom Experiences Technical Difficulties; Guests Enter Park Without Scanning Magic Bands or Tickets


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Technical difficulties caused a major back up at Magic Kingdom earlier today, January 2.

The system that allows guests to scan their Magic Bands or park tickets was experiencing difficulties and was not in operation.

Guests were held at the entry checkpoints for an extended period of time around lunchtime. This caused a safety issue as guests were continuing to flow in from the monorail, bus checkpoint, and ferryboat.

Orange County Sheriff Office Confirms Woman Jumped from Ferryboat at Disney World

Magic Kingdom guests were held while Cast Members attempted to fix the issue but were let in shortly after without needing to scan Magic Bands or park tickets.

Imagine the excitement of a “free” day at Magic Kingdom.

According to reports, within the hour the system was back up and running with guests able to use the touchpoints again.

Magic Kingdom has been quite busy this holiday season, including a phase closure on New Year’s Eve. Wait times for the headline attractions were consistently over 2 hours throughout the day. At one point, Space Mountain had a wait time of 4 hours.

Plus, there was the terrifying incident earlier this week when a guest attempted suicide on the ferryboat heading to Magic Kingdom. Thankfully, the guest was rescued and is receiving treatment.

It also seems as if the monorail had a bit of downtime earlier today, causing guests to use the ferryboat. Everyone had this idea, of course, and wait times to get on the ferryboat were long as well.

Disney Skyliner Extends Operating Hours for New Year's Eve

Disney’s Skyliner experienced some downtime on December 29. Many transportation issues are plaguing Disney this week, but when it’s the busiest time of the year these types of things are inevitable.

Are you at Disney World this week? Did you experience the technical difficulties at Magic Kingdom today? We’d love to hear your experience – share them below or on the KtP Crew facebook group.

-Monica S.

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Araceli

Thursday 2nd of January 2020

Hello, I wasn’t at the park today. But I would like to share my experience I had on New Year Eve. I’m here with my husband and two kids in which one is a special needs kid. It was insane trying to exit the park. We started leaving the park around 12:30am. It took me almost 2:30 hrs to get to the parking lot. The people were insane. I also feel that Disney crew weren’t prepared for the immense amount of people. My special needs kid is four years old so I have him in a stroller. Well people were pushing the stroller, hitting his legs, weren’t giving me a chance to move along especially when it was turn to make a turn. We have the red sticker which allows me to be able to use the stroller as a wheelchair. So every time I’m using a Disney bus the crew always lets me go to the front so they can strap the stroller. Since I saw the amount of people that was trying to get into a bus was insane I wanted to see if they would let me go with him to the front or even just wait on the side until my family would reach the front but when I told a crew member that I had the pass he was like we’re treating everybody the same. I was like ok can I just wait on the side and he said no. A group of men got in a fight in the lines. I was terrified. Everyone started moving close to where the fight was so people were hitting my special needs kid. It was insane. It’s been the worst experience I have ever had in Disney world. I understand that they wanted to treat everyone the same, but they can’t. I believe they should have had more crew members working and having more control of the situation. There were only two crew members there when there were hundreds of people trying to get on a bus. Also, yesterday I had a fast pass for the lion king show at AK, and since I have the red sticker on my kids stroller I’m able to keep him on the stroller. Well as I get to the front to scan my magicband the crew member tells me that there’s no more spaces available for wheelchairs. I was like well I have a fast pass and my son doesn’t do good when I carry him and there’s a lot of noise so I just keep him on the stroller. So the guy tells me that I need to carry him that’s it. So my husband carries him out the stroller and I go to park the stroller. When I’m walking back I see that they were letting some wheelchairs in from the stand by line. I was like my kid needs to be in the stroller plus I had a fast pass and they didn’t let me. I felt discriminated. It was two awful experience that I don’t wish to anyone to go thru. I’m a passholder and pay a lot of money to be treated like this. I hope someone from Disney sees this so they can improve there services especially with people with disabilities.

Rebecca Davis

Friday 3rd of January 2020

Araceli,

Thanks for reading our blog. I would definitely email your message to guest.services@disneyworld.com. They should hear this directly from you! I'm so sorry that was your experience. Doesn't sound very magical.

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