Three operating weekends. That’s how long it took for the animated Larry on the merchandise cart to stop working in case anyone is wondering. The cat still works for now, but Larry-who was squeaky this morning has now stopped as of this afternoon. I believe he ties “spinning snoopy” for the “simplest animation with a short life span” award. 

The park was testing some really nice fountain patterns in the weeks leading up to Opening Day, but maybe those have gone out the window? This feels like something that might be in limbo until the nighttime spectacular starts back up on May 22nd. It makes sense in my mind, especially if they're using the start of daily operations as the time to actually have everything ready by. I could see that being the case with a chain that seems to have adopted the "It doesn't matter if they have rides/shows/etc. ready until Memorial Day weekend since that's when more paying guests start arriving" attitude.

I think the main benefit at this point is the single use Fast Lane, and that now it's the only way to get a pass that works at all the parks. The lounge used to be nice as a place to get a quick drink, but since the passes were so oversold in the fall, the line to get into the lounge has been awful a lot of the time and you'd probably be better off getting it at the Freestyle place across the way. Some of the other parks have much nicer lounges that are indoor and air conditioned, so it'd be a lot better of a benefit there. The special entrance line is a completely useless benefit, and it amazes me they continue to do it. I think the real issue with the prestige pass is that SF can't figure out whether they want it to be a premium pass with premium benefits, or just the same thing as the old platinum pass, so now it's underpriced but still has downgraded versions of the premium benefits, which just leads to everyone being frustrated.

I think the main benefit of breakfast is that you can actually get drink plan coffee at 9:30am now. That building is just not set up for a high volume of people, and shoehorning an unpopular bar in there in place of the pickup window didn't help. If you've ever peeked into the kitchen, it's literally the size of a broom closet. I don't think they can/would, since it's right next to Starbucks, but I kind of wish it was at Grain and Grill instead, since that has a better setup for a high volume of people. I keep expecting it to get Brewhouse Chicken Sandwich'd and inexplicably disappear some day because it was "too popular", never to be discussed again. One positive change since the first weekend is that the potatoes come in a paper portion cup now instead of the little tin, and you probably get twice as much (and half of it isn't burnt onto the tin).

I think that ship has sailed, but they could at least take the time to “refocus”, inspect and program a few “classic” patterns to rotate through through the day.