Just for information -
Lifetime Mugs - We have the Dixie Landings & Ft. Wilderness lifetime mugs. We've taken them back to WDW every year. In casual conversations, many staff members acknowledged these are lifetime mugs. As years progressed & in recent years, some "old timers" staff members even smiled & reminised when they saw them - especially the elderly man who sometimes is at the door to POR. Have had lots of friendly conversations about them - especially the Dixie Landings mug.
Just returned, & during this trip a Trail's End employee politely told us that she was instructed to advise guests using such mugs that the mugs are no longer usable. Needless to say we were shocked, but didn't take it as the end of the world. We did ask for the manager to confirm & see what he said about it. He also was polite, & agreed with us that they were sold as lifetime.
During this trip, we had free
DDP mugs that we could have been using, but we like the memories of our old mugs. But we didn't use the lifetime mugs after being told not to do so.
BTW, as the manager at Trail's End agreed & which confirms, our mugs were sold to us not only as lifetime, but also as good at any WDW resort. We bought 2 kinds because we liked them.
We use them at home now, which we would never do before because we wanted them to remain pristine.
While I don't agree with Disney's recent reserval of an unwritten sales contract, & I believe the lifetime mugs do not hurt their profit, & I do believe it is a bad PR move, we will not use them at WDW. I'm sure the "old timers" employees will miss seeing them! The funny thing for us is, we rarely drink anything but water - so Disney wasn't even losing any money on us, since we wouldn't have bought bottled water from them anyway!
Happy "mugging"!