When I was a little girl, I my aunt was the photographer in the family, and I can remember her and I spending time in the camera centers at the Parks when she needed photography help, film, accessories, or even simple repairs on the fly. It was a huge benefit to her having the peace of mind that if something went wrong it could be taken care of right there.
Flash forward to my trip last October. First off I will start by saying that this was the first working trip that I had ever NOT brought my laptop. My usual routine is that I offload my images to the computer at the end of the day to clear up my SD card. Since we were staying at 3 different hotels over 3 nights, I decided that instead of doing that I would just bring three SD cards with extra memory. That way I would just leave all the images on the card until I got home, and not have to worry about my computer being carried around all day, or transferred with my luggage. I wasn't going to have time for any processing anyhow.
Shortly after we arrived (as in on the Magical Express on the way to the resort) I had an SD card malfunction. The read/write switch broke off and rendered the card currently in my camera useless. No big deal, I still had the bigger card in my bag so I switched that into the camera and simply hoped that all my shots would fit on it. Worst case scenario I figured I would buy another card if I needed it. I shot about 500 pictures on my first day.
Day two came and we headed off to Animal Kingdom, I was another 400 shots into our day when suddenly my camera started flashing that my SD card couldn't be read. I turned the camera off, and then on again. SD Card Error. I tool the card out, and loaded it back in. Still all I got was flashing read error messages telling me to reformat my SD Card. This was the point that panic set it. There was no possible way that I could go back and reshoot those 750 pictures from all of the things we had already done. I WAS A MESS.
I needed a machine to slip my SD Card into so that I could tell if those images were gone or not. We had no other electronics with us that would do the job. No back-up camera, no tablet, no laptop, nada. Then I remembered traveling with my aunt and the Kodak Camera Centers. I knew Nikon was now the sponsor, which could only be a benefit to me because I shot with a Nikon. Tori and I made our way to the front of the Park, with me in an absolute tizzy. We walked in and immediately the friendly cast member could tell I needed help. I explained the situation and hoped that she had something that would be able to tell me if there were images on my card.
She did not. The Disney Parks Camera Centers are now 98% useless for photographers. I broke down in tears. Pretty much all they do is PhotoPass+ sales, and there was a small spinning display with a couple of things on it that I can't even remember, batteries maybe, little stuff like that. They no longer sell cameras or accessories, there's no one there with any actual knowledge of cameras, there's no tablet or computer with an SD slot that could check my card. All there was was PhotoPass sales. The cast member who was trying to be supportive and help me made some off the cuff comment about having heard stories of "way back when" that made me feel ancient and even worse. She was sweet, and did everything she could to try and help me when there was nothing we could do. The best solution she has was me taking an Uber over to the closest Walmart.
I literally went outside, sat down on my ECV and ugly cried as I called my husband and told him what was going on. After finally realizing that there was nothing at all I could do, Tori and I decided that I would stick in the last of my cards, and we would go back and get as many reshoots as possible of my "must have" list foregoing some of the small items that I wanted to capture. I just had to wait until we got home to see if I had pictures from our first day and a half or not.
This was probably one of the roughest working days I have had at Disney. I know that those camera centers in the Parks used to actually cater to photographers, but they don't any more. They're pretty useless, unless you want a PhotoPass. I'm disappointed in this turn of events. I always thought Disney was about keeping guests on property with services, not sending them to Walmart for something that should be as easy as slipping a card into a slot and bringing an image up on a computer. Obviously being useful to someone who takes their own pictures doesn't make as much money as selling pictures they took to people who don't. A little shocking when you consider that Cinderella Castle is one of the most photographed structures in the world, right up there with the eiffel tower and taj mahal.
And for those who have read to this point - when we got home all of my pictures were safe.
