I agree that they can't give a time estimate, but during that first incident, they just kept repeating the same message, which was basically: "The gondolas are experiencing a temporary delay. Thank you for your patience."
They could have said "There's a backup at the Riviera station and we will get you off at the closest station once that is cleared," or "We are addressing a medical issue on one gondola and we will get the line moving again as soon as that is resolved," and that would have been enough. If we had known they weren't intending to evacuate any other cars via ladder, my friend thinks she would not have had her panic attack. Or, frankly, even just stop having the same line repeat. After 2 1/2 hours, it doesn't feel like a "temporary delay" anymore, and there's no need to say anything if it's going to be the same line we've already heard 20 times or whatever the amount was.
Also, even though they have emergency intercoms in the cars, when we called through it because of my friend's panic attack, they just replied: "We're working on the situation. Please-" and then the line cut off mid-sentence and we never heard directly from them again, not to ask if she needed to speak to medical personnel, not to ask how she was doing, etc.
There was also the issue with internal communications, with Disney initially announcing publicly that there had been no collision when there were already pictures of the cars up against each other online, etc. When we got off the gondola there was still a CM at the station who repeated that line to another of my friends, telling her that any pictures must have been photoshopped, because he hadn't gotten the update that it was more than just an electrical issue.
I'm disappointed to hear that they didn't do better with their communication this time around. They should have put much better plans in place for that after the first incident.
