Disney website - someone should be fired

[Luvchefmic]

Originally Posted by stlocke

My husband is a cast member for Disney and works on backing up the storage for Disneys various websites. Before they go live with a website, there are months and months (sometimes years) of behind the scenes work and testing that goes on by lots of people! Unfortunately, things happen.....mistakes happen, sometimes its software error and sometimes its human error. Before you say someone should be fired, let me tell you that when problems occur, they try to fix it as fast as humanly possible and their employees are working around the clock to find out what is wrong and fix the issue. Disney cares about their customers and I assure you are working to fix these issues you're all talking about! My husband is on call every three-four weeks and there have been birthday parties he has missed, all nighters pulled, vacations interrupted....all in the name of trying to uphold their reputation and get things up and running. When you get frustrated, just remember they know its a problem....they're not ignoring it, they're working on it and it just may take some time, and their employees are working very hard to fix the problem!!!!

Please thank your husband because castmembers rely heavily on his team for their
work behind the scenes Everything is done on the web internet and intranet
From first applying for a position to accessing work schedules, paychecks, internal email,
costume performance and attendance records on and on layers and layers of technology that makes my head spin He has a role that we never think about as guests or CMs until something goes wrong then its 'fire someone' things happen is it frustrating of course but
nothing in this world is perfect and IMHO we are all spoiled impatient and
demanding We have again IMHO lost touch with people esp the ones behind scenes because we are too used to instant results at the touch of a button

If this gets anyone irritated take a breath before hitting that submit reply and thank the n@mless faceless people behind this website that makes your posting possible

Happy New Year I wish you all health employment peace and patience

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by merbobear

I disagree. That's like saying there is no retail industry because all of the stores sell different products.

No it's not the same at all unless you're suggesting that people sell "Retail". They don't!! They sell goods and services through the retail sector of the economy.

If you read the whole string you would know what was going. The pp said he was in the same industry as Disney. I said the Amusement Park industry? He replied customer service industry. There is no customer service industry.

[seadd67]

Originally Posted by Indy Denise

[No one is going to stop patronizing Disney because of a bad website. That's silly. Complain yes, but give up Disney. Give me a break! They would have to do a whole lot more than that. Tell anybody you won't be going to WDW any more because you dislike their new website and they'll think you're nuts. There is no butterfly effect! There won't even be the slightest ripple in the cosmos.

You are wromg. dead wromg. I like Disney but I am not gaga over them. With my personality and my love of planning vacations for my family I would very well say " nope, let's go to xyz" because I can't stand their website. Yup that's me. Something that is fun for me, vacation planning, should not be frustrating.[/QUOTE]

I belive the poster was talking with people in genreal, ya theres always going to be people that get tired with Disney, i think you can say that with about anything.
So you are both right

[Bobo912]

I haven't read the entire thread and so far I've only seen failures, but has anybody been able to link their existing resort reservation on the new website? I'm trying to do online checkin and I've tried everything I can think of with no success. I found a cached version of the old reservation page in my browser history, but the links on that page don't work any longer. For those of you who have called Disney, have they been able to do anything to help? I guess I'll just wait and do regular checkin at the resort, but as long as I can't see my reservation I have this small, nagging (probably irrational) fear that it is gone.

[annabanna]

I called Disney last night to make my final payment and add DME, but the lady I spoke to couldn't help me. She said I needed to call runDisney because that's who I made my reservation through. However, I have always been able to do everything through the normal reservation line with no problems. That annoyed me as runDisney was closed. The CM told me that with the issues they were having, they couldn't link the ressie to my account with them.
All I want to do is give them my money! It shouldn't be this difficult!

I work an industry where we create our own software for our machines. It can be tedious launching something, even with a beta site. So I totally understand what Disney is dealing with. But, it doesn't make it any less annoying for the end user!!

[seadd67]

Is it me or I am i just being naive, that when you are dealing with money, millions of dollars floating in reservations that you would keep the existing site, so you would have two sites temporally going,so going until all the existing revs are done?. I know Disney spent a lot of money on this, but there must be something where not seeing or doing

[larryz]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

No it's not the same at all unless you're suggesting that people sell "Retail". They don't!! They sell goods and services through the retail sector of the economy.

If you read the whole string you would know what was going. The pp said he was in the same industry as Disney. I said the Amusement Park industry? He replied customer service industry. There is no customer service industry.

Hey, guys, take it PM...

[aaarcher86]

Originally Posted by seadd67

Is it me or I am i just being naive, that when you are dealing with money, millions of dollars floating in reservations that you would keep the existing site, so you would have two sites temporally going,so going until all the existing revs are done?. I know Disney spent a lot of money on this, but there must be something where not seeing or doing

I think they're doing that. Some people can still access the old site and most lost access just recently.

I don't think there is a way to way until all existing reservations are done since there are new reservations every single day being made and starting.

[keaster]

I can't access the WDW site directly (ie if I google walt disney world click on the link it says page not available.)

But if I go to disneyparks.com, click on a couple links through there, it does get me to the site (but I think it's the old version, not sure what the new version looks like).

we have an iMac with safari and a PC with IE 9 and it is the same for both.

i was also thinking being in Canada we might be getting something different as well?

[minnie mum]

Originally Posted by keaster

I can't access the WDW site directly (ie if I google walt disney world click on the link it says page not available.)

But if I go to disneyparks.com, click on a couple links through there, it does get me to the site (but I think it's the old version, not sure what the new version looks like).

we have an iMac with safari and a PC with IE 9 and it is the same for both.

i was also thinking being in Canada we might be getting something different as well?

I've been having exactly the same problem (I've got IE 9 too) for the last 3 days. But this morning I can't even access the WDW site thru Disney Parks. This is really getting me PO'd.

[AngiTN]

Originally Posted by stlocke

My husband is a cast member for Disney and works on backing up the storage for Disneys various websites. Before they go live with a website, there are months and months (sometimes years) of behind the scenes work and testing that goes on by lots of people! Unfortunately, things happen.....mistakes happen, sometimes its software error and sometimes its human error. Before you say someone should be fired, let me tell you that when problems occur, they try to fix it as fast as humanly possible and their employees are working around the clock to find out what is wrong and fix the issue. Disney cares about their customers and I assure you are working to fix these issues you're all talking about! My husband is on call every three-four weeks and there have been birthday parties he has missed, all nighters pulled, vacations interrupted....all in the name of trying to uphold their reputation and get things up and running. When you get frustrated, just remember they know its a problem....they're not ignoring it, they're working on it and it just may take some time, and their employees are working very hard to fix the problem!!!!

I've never posted here despite how long I've been reading but I have to comment this time.

The main frustrating factor is... this is NOT the first time they have had problems. They have them all the time. Time after time the same thing. A horrific website with horrific issues trying to access things. If this was an isolated incident I'd agree with you but seeing as it's not, sorry, I do think they have significant problems in their IT dept. I don't know what they are but they keep making the same problems so there is no pass for me. Whatever they are doing behind the scenes for months and months (or years) is not working right. It is not giving them a product ready for public or resort use. Stop doing it and try something else. I just don't get how they keep making the same mistakes time after time. By same mistakes I mean rolling out a software that is not tested as fully as it should be. A couple bugs are expected but nothing to the level of what we are seeing. There are more problems with their websites than with any other I've ever used. Just one example, how could anyone working on the design of this website think that leaving off the ability to make a payment on the reservation would be a good idea? How could anyone think "oh, the users won't need that, lets leave it off." and if they didn't do it on purpose, if they just forgot? Someone should be fired. That is a huge thing to just forget

And don't get me started on the nightmare I had when I had the misfortune of trying to check in earlier this month when their entire system was down. Their inept IT dept totally ruined my vacation. If their dept was fully competent to run the website the entire resort system, both on site and online, should have never, ever gone down. Ever. Not for an entire day.

[bumbershoot]

Originally Posted by AngiTN

The main frustrating factor is... this is NOT the first time they have had problems. They have them all the time. Time after time the same thing. A horrific website with horrific issues trying to access things. If this was an isolated incident I'd agree with you but seeing as it's not, sorry, I do think they have significant problems in their IT dept.

This, exactly.

Originally Posted by stlocke

My husband is a cast member for Disney and works on backing up the storage for Disneys various websites. Before they go live with a website, there are months and months (sometimes years) of behind the scenes work and testing that goes on by lots of people! Unfortunately, things happen.....mistakes happen, sometimes its software error and sometimes its human error. Before you say someone should be fired, let me tell you that when problems occur, they try to fix it as fast as humanly possible and their employees are working around the clock to find out what is wrong and fix the issue. Disney cares about their customers and I assure you are working to fix these issues you're all talking about! My husband is on call every three-four weeks and there have been birthday parties he has missed, all nighters pulled, vacations interrupted....all in the name of trying to uphold their reputation and get things up and running. When you get frustrated, just remember they know its a problem....they're not ignoring it, they're working on it and it just may take some time, and their employees are working very hard to fix the problem!!!!

No. I'm sorry, no.

They could not possibly have thought they were done with the website. Did you SEE it the first day it debuted? It did NOTHING. It's all bubbly and cute (just like the new weightwatchers website, whose aesthetics are NOT my style) but it didn't work.

They didn't move the trip info from one site to the other. HOW is that a finished website? Or they didn't code it right to GET the data from the same place that the old site did. Nope. It's simply impossible that they thought they were finished.



So there's a big huge large big company out in WA, and what THEY do is have a "master" website. That site is days in the future, and it is rolled out, IF it is good, day by day. If it's not good, they don't roll it out.

I would really tell Disney about it, because you almost never hear of problems with the website; they hardly even ever get hit by "denial of service" attacks when some group or another TRIES to knock it down.

Having a master site is a good thing. I highly recommend it.

But there's no chance in anywhere that ANYONE in his department thought they had a working website up. It did nothing but sit there and look cute.



NOW, what, 2 weeks later? I'm getting the interesting functionality of the "new" site on the OLD site. That's cool, though I still don't understand the purpose of checking in NOW for a hotel reservation that starts Feb 18. But I was supposedly able to do it.

all in the name of trying to uphold their reputation

Well I do have to say that they are doing that, since their reputation for having a working, problem-free, website is pretty bad. Having a pretty, flashy, blinky website that makes an older computer (like I used to have) rev up like a jet engine has taken over the hard drive, they are good at THAT. But functioning? Not so much. So...good job to the IT department?

[newlittleminnie]

I was having a problem the other day looking at dining reservations. For CRT it took me to the screen where it says 'advance payment is required'. I selected 2 adult quests....and then couldn't get any further

The 'continue' button was greyed out so that I couldn't click on it.

Does anyone know if this is related to the website problems or if I'm doing something wrong?

[aaarcher86]

Originally Posted by newlittleminnie

I was having a problem the other day looking at dining reservations. For CRT it took me to the screen where it says 'advance payment is required'. I selected 2 adult quests....and then couldn't get any further

The 'continue' button was greyed out so that I couldn't click on it.

Does anyone know if this is related to the website problems or if I'm doing something wrong?

More than likely the website. Making ADRs on there is pretty straight forward, so I doubt you were doing something wrong unless something wasn't filled in properly.

[LucyBC80]

I was able to link my reservations around two weeks ago. I even posted about it here but I guess people overlooked that. Now it seems even with the real confirmation number you are not able to link your package reservation.

I'm sorry if you or your loved one work at the development of this website but this is poor customer service and I agree someone should be fired. Is not possible they didn't test all variations of booking (packages, room only) and didn't see some of them were not working. You don't put the new website online without hundreds and hundreds of tests. And if you do, you should be fired when thousands start to complain.