No so magical MDE experience

[mudpuppysmom]

Please tell me that people do t all have the experience our family recently did with the MDE app/page and linking tickets and booking FP+ ressies.

This trip was very scattered. We were in Florida for several weeks for my kids to go to a camp in New. Smyrna, each going different weeks so I was afforded going to the parks with each son separately as well as together with more family.

Issues arose our first trip over with DS1, myself and a cousin from Florida, an AP holder. We tried putting Sami on our reservation but since she was a minor and her dad controls her account we had some trouble. A call to MDE resulted in a TWO HOUR call with IT and I. The end me adding Sami to my account, linking her pass and magic band to mine and DS1s ressies. Yep, TWO hours.....it was very confusing as to why we needed to add her as my family to my account, but the CM assured us this was fine. We arrive at DHS and now Sami tries her magic band, won't work, tries her actual pass, won't work, won't scan and won't slide on the iPad magnetic reader. They allow her entrance and direct us to guest relations. Another TWO hours at guest relations, three calls to The Avengers (those are the super smart IT MDE people apparently) and they ended up almost making everything right....Sami's magic band is still on my account, but how about it's linked to MY TICKET, not hers!!! About 30 min into this ordeal I sent the kids away and told them I'd meet the in a bit bc there was no reason for them to wait with me while they straightened this out. Even the CM's at guest relations were miffed by al, of this. Something so simple was absolutely impossible to deal with. And for wha I'm going to call "stealing 4 hours of my time", and I was pretty upset about the park hours missed, we got one FP, for Toy Story! I have two kids with me 12/14, sent them off alone in the park and a FP is how you say sorry? The kids were less than impressed but we continued our day and just "moved along". After this day I'm very less then impressed with MDE period....and we even had more issues later on when all 9 of us tried to be on the same party for FP's last week.....it was an absolute nightmare.....we called MDE again and they seemed to have trouble with the concept that my family of 4 and their family of 5 wanted to do things together! Since the fam I. Florida are AP holders we ended up using their magic bands for the kids to ride and a couple of our tickets to ride when we had FP's for things! The adults waited while the kids and maybe an adult or two went on the FP rides.

Bottom line is.....this isn't normal, right?? Please tell me everyone with large parties and multiple families don't have these issues?!?!

[ibelieveindisneymagic]

I'm so sorry ... what a horrible mess of issues!

We're a small family, and even we've had a couple of "quirks", but nothing like the craziness you had.

[Mfarquar]

This sounds absolutely horrible! ONE FastPass?! For a 4 hour time-waster?! I think you need to write a letter for some sort of compensation for time you cannot get back...

I'm so sorry that you and your family had such a horrible experience with this - it is so stressful to waste valuable time in such a fun place; you feel like you're missing out on everything.

[DizneyRox]

I think that's par for the course sadly... The odder the situation the less likely things will go smoothly. If you are the vanilla family of 4 1/2, everything works great, start travelling with others and it goes downhill fast.

Not as easy as Edna makes it seem in the video.

[Kenny1113]

I agree I think the multifamily trips trying to coordinate as a group is a huge down side to the MDE. We had 3 separate reservations for our group last nov. We didn't have nearly the issues you had, but it still was frustrating trying to get all of our FP coordinated. We had to get on the phone together and coordinate what we were going to ride and what times showed available for each person. (Bc 2/3 rides we were doing together, DSs did not want to do princess m &g, and my niece cannot ride any of the mtns). Then when there was no line for one of our FP to try to drop and then coordinate another was frustrating as well...who wants to spend park time messing around on the phone?

[DizneyRox]

I've heard the trick is the get one person access to all accounts, each individual account needs to have a good hotel reservation as well as linked tickets before selections can be made.

If people travelling with you decide to stay off site, or don't want to pony up in advance for tickets, etc, then the chances of coordinating will be very hard.

It's possible to get day of fast passes for some of the lesser rides to overlap to some extent with someone's fast passes who got them early, but planning going a whole trip that way is asking for a headache.

[Mfarquar]

[QUOTE=DizneyRox;2424543]I've heard the trick is the get one person access to all accounts, each individual account needs to have a good hotel reservation as well as linked tickets before selections can be made.


If people travelling with you decide to stay off site, or don't want to pony up in advance for tickets, etc, then the chances of coordinating will be very hard.

/QUOTE]

Maybe that's exactly Disney's new strategy to keep the hotels filled and individual guest spending climbing upward and upward...nothing like a little personalized peer pressure to stay onsite and put everything under one reservation...

Hopefully, this is just a bug and there will be accommodations for big groups made soon.

[DizneyRox]

I've heard the trick is the get one person access to all accounts, each individual account needs to have a good hotel reservation as well as linked tickets before selections can be made.


If people travelling with you decide to stay off site, or don't want to pony up in advance for tickets, etc, then the chances of coordinating will be very hard.

Maybe that's exactly Disney's new strategy to keep the hotels filled and individual guest spending climbing upward and upward...nothing like a little personalized peer pressure to stay onsite and put everything under one reservation...

Hopefully, this is just a bug and there will be accommodations for big groups made soon.

There's an ROI put on every project done by most businesses. It's done before any significant work is done. I'm sure that was done on this, and while it went significantly over budget, the numbers really aren't out of whack with a company the size of Disney or the scope that this can reach. You bet your bottom dollar (careful Mickey is reaching for it too) that increasing profits, not just revenue, is what they are trying to optimize. It's happening too..

[Mfarquar]

There's an ROI put on every project done by most businesses. It's done before any significant work is done. I'm sure that was done on this, and while it went significantly over budget, the numbers really aren't out of whack with a company the size of Disney or the scope that this can reach. You bet your bottom dollar (careful Mickey is reaching for it too) that increasing profits, not just revenue, is what they are trying to optimize. It's happening too..

Yes, but that ROI drive is obviously negatively affecting the guest experience at this point. Particularly with groups of guests with subsequent high potential spending capabilities. It is reasonable to question if such an approach will hurt the customer service reputation and negatively hurt ROI in the long-run.

When a customer loses 4 hours at your venue, not only are they upset (and spread the word as in this case), but that was also 4 hours they could have been spending money with their group.

[Kenny1113]

I've heard the trick is the get one person access to all accounts, each individual account needs to have a good hotel reservation as well as linked tickets before selections can be made.

If people travelling with you decide to stay off site, or don't want to pony up in advance for tickets, etc, then the chances of coordinating will be very hard.

It's possible to get day of fast passes for some of the lesser rides to overlap to some extent with someone's fast passes who got them early, but planning going a whole trip that way is asking for a headache.

It was still frustrating even with all 3 rooms on site, plus all tickets were purchased in advanced.

[DizneyRox]

Yes, but that ROI drive is obviously negatively affecting the guest experience at this point. Particularly with groups of guests with subsequent high potential spending capabilities. It is reasonable to question if such an approach will hurt the customer service reputation and negatively hurt ROI in the long-run.

When a customer loses 4 hours at your venue, not only are they upset (and spread the word as in this case), but that was also 4 hours they could have been spending money with their group.

Remember though, a Disney trip is a right of passage for most of the world, at least the parts of the world with money to spend. This gives them a built in pool of people that will come. WDW has long since abandoned any concern they had for repeat customers.

[mudpuppysmom]

To address some of the things mentioned.....

We did TRY to let one person have control of everyone....the tickets and magic band assignment then went all wonky on us, so we deleted my family from his account (cousin who is an AP holder and a local who goes a LOT with his family of 5).

I had my family's tickets linked to my account, so that wasn't a problem.

When's e initially made FP ressies for three of us, two from my family one from the other family, THAT is where the trouble began and we called the number and were transferred to IT. I'm not sure if IT is the same as The Avengers that were called from MGM guest services, but if it was, god help us all!! Two hours on the phone with Peggy and we were actually worse off I came to find! When we entered MGM my ticket and my so s ticket worked fine, cousin Sami's AP had nothing on it!! They had been to the parks the previous week with no incident and now her ticket was dead! Her magic band, also dead! Guest Services, Paulina and Les didn't even offer me a bottle of water I. The two hours I stood there!! He kept saying he was going to "take care of us" and that apparently meant that one FP and we really weren't staying in the park! My son wanted to do the animation academy and LEAVE! We had FP for MK later that day, not even MGM!! So, I actually had to visit City Hall at MK once we arrived there also, so more time in line wasted and we missed our first FP window, but they fixed it for us,as well as grouped us all on the Mine Train together since Peggy gave us THREE SEPARATE TIMES not even together!!!

Am I frustrated, yep. Was I mad, yep. Did we lose time in the parks. Yep. Is there really anything I could do, nope! We had to roll with it and we did. I will never get those hours back, but I do know we will return to the parks and ride what we want again one day, so in the grand scheme of things yes I was wronged, Disney isn't going to compensate me now, but I'll be back!

[faline]

How frustrating!!