It's a Test. You have to expect issues.

[Michelina]

When we originally booked this, we had no idea what not having a chance at getting magic bands would do.

Yes, this. We could've stayed on site but the thought of a two bedroom villa 5 minutes from the park for $59 a WEEK (in-law's timeshare) seemed too good to pass up! I booked this 9 months ago and now, even though it's lovely here, I'm kicking myself for not booking WL or something for a week.
I've never felt like such a second-class citizen in all of my trips here

 

[Minniekins]

Can't you use regular fastpass?

Hope you end up having a wonderful trip!

 

[Disneylover99]

The thing with MDE is it is very hard to know where the fault lies. Is it Disney or the user, I mean if everyone was having problems, which they are not, it would be very easy to put all the blame on Disney.

We personally have not had problems, it was quick easy and accurate. We love the bands, and Fastpass+ worked great for us. I guess if they have enough people satisfied, then it is a success.

Obviously you have not had to deal with numerous cm's and IT people giving you incorrect information. You haven't spent hours on the phone or in line at guest relations or the front desk trying to find out why someone's ticket unlinked. You have not been one of the first families at rope drop, only to find out that your daughter's MB and KTTW card don't work (again - after the problem was supposedly fixed) so you have to go to guest relations.

I'm really glad it was smooth sailing for you......but

It's not fair to insinuate that because you had an awesome experience with MB' s and FP+, that the guests may be to blame.

 

[Viva Las Disney]

The technology has great potential. The backend systems need to be able to handle the increased loads. The GUI needs to be smoother and more intuitive.

I'm wondering if they aren't just trying to link to much information. The entire US government has had 5 years to create the Affordable Care Act website and it's crashing on a daily basis because it's sending and linking information from dozen of different websites. The problem with technology on this massive level is if one of the dozens of linked websites goes down or doesn't link properly it can crash the entire system.

15 years ago I worked as a travel rep for Priceline.com and we used a system called worldspan for airline reservations, seating, notes, etc. Despite it being the late 90's the entire system was still DOS based, 20 year old tech. They kept trying to make it user friendly but it kept crashing because it linked to each individual airline and each airport and everyone used different computer language and programming. They eventually figured it out but I've never forgotten how frustrating it was to have to remember and type hundreds of codes for everything when every other program we used was state of the art.

 

[TeresaNJ]

We arrived Friday, and the MB is a complete cluster and failure, in my opinion. We are a group of 19, in three separate DVC resorts, and we've all had problems, from the charging priviledges sometimes working to sometimes not, to sometimes working again, to room doors not opening, and on and on. This is not acceptable! I do not pay my hard earned money to come here and be aggravated, frustrated, and pissed off! Let's not even get into the FB+ fiasco, or the crowds. Disney was clearly not ready to handle this, and it should not have been rolled out to the masses until they were ready!

Oh, but they sure are making a profit off of the MB, with the "I belong to the band" t shirts, the pretty, customizable MB, etc.

I've been a DVC member for 13 years, but in all honesty, we are seriously considering selling. I don't come to Disney and pay Ritz prices to be treated like I'm at Great Adventure. The castmembers for the most part are dealing with the crowds and MB problems graciously, but they are just as clueless. Some CM know how to fix a problem, but the majority do not. Some are downright rude about it, like the CM I encountered yesterday at the MK in front of Buzz Lightyear, who when I asked him a question about the MB and FP+, and was telling him the problems we were encountering, told me that the paper fast passes are going away at the end of the year, so just get use to it. He said, just go on your smart phone and get a FP! Well, what if I don't have a smart phone, idiot, is what I felt like saying back to him. My husband, and family, who were watching the encounter, said they've never know a CM to challenge a guest like that before.

 

[TeresaNJ]

Obviously you have not had to deal with numerous cm's and IT people giving you incorrect information. You haven't spent hours on the phone or in line at guest relations or the front desk trying to find out why someone's ticket unlinked. You have not been one of the first families at rope drop, only to find out that your daughter's MB and KTTW card don't work (again - after the problem was supposedly fixed) so you have to go to guest relations.

I'm really glad it was smooth sailing for you......but

It's not fair to insinuate that because you had an awesome experience with MB' s and FP+, that the guests may be to blame.

These are exactly the problems we are experiencing, along with my sister's AP failing, after they exchanged her paper AP that she bought last December, to one that supposedly was going to work with their supposed great new system.

 

[TeresaNJ]

Can't you use regular fastpass?

Hope you end up having a wonderful trip!

According to the very rude CM I spoke to yesterday, get with the program or go home, as the paper FPs are going away at the end of the year!

 

[TeresaNJ]

Oh, and for the folks who've had successful MDE, MB experiences, and think failures are just based on guests who don't know what they are doing, our group of 19 consists of many business people who are very internet savvy, so it's BS to say we are having problems because we don't know what we're doing! This is all due to Disney's failure of the implementation of this system. Less castmembers, more guests, a rush to get their extra dollars with all their new MB merchandise, equals failure!!

 

[TeresaNJ]

Someone else will take their place and be glad to be there, testing, or not.

The thing with MDE is it is very hard to know where the fault lies. Is it Disney or the user, I mean if everyone was having problems, which they are not, it would be very easy to put all the blame on Disney.

We personally have not had problems, it was quick easy and accurate. We love the bands, and Fastpass+ worked great for us. I guess if they have enough people satisfied, then it is a success.

Uh, no they won't, not unless they are asked to test it for free! Not when they are spending the money they are spending for a crap experience. I am a die-hard Disney fan. I own two DVC's for a total of 550 points. I would have sold one of my children rather than sold one of my DVC's (not really, but you get my drift, lol). After three days here on this trip, I am just about DONE! It's not just the issues we are having here, it was the hours I spent online and on the phone with IT prior to leaving for this trip, the frustration of everything being so screwed up and IT not being able to fix it, the amount of money our group of 19 is paying on this trip, and the freaking fiasco we are dealing with here. It's not just us. We are hearing this everywhere we go, on the busses, in the parks, everywhere. This should not happen with a company like Disney. If they weren't ready for this, they shouldn't have rolled it out like they have. Even their castmembers don't know what the hell they are doing!

 

[buckeev]

Having spent 9 days with a magic band on my wrist a week ago and spending time on buses and in lines talking to other resort guests about it, I can attest that "spotty" is generous. The wifi in the parks was horrible and the 4g wasn't much better. It was clearly a test and the system could not handle the expanded amount of resorts they added this month.. You could access MDE and change FPs okay from the resort, but when you were in the parks it was near impossible. You were lucky if you could even access MDE to see your reservations. They definitely have some tweaking and fixing to do before they can roll it out for all park guests. I think if you look at the posts, you will see most of the ones reporting how good it worked were Sept. guests. Oct. seems to be a different story. I will say IF you make no attempt to change anything and if your band works, you probably won't have any issues other than maybe not being able to see your reservations on MDE.

In general we liked the magic bands, but we are not FP+ fans. Having the one we make a run for first thing in the morning was nice as was having them for parades and illuminations, but other than that they are more trouble than they are worth. Having to plan your day in advance stinks, especially with the inability to change your plans, which based on our experience I don't see changing because even when the system was working at the resort, what times were available for the headliners for the next day were extremely limited.

I can only imagine what it's gonna be like during the Christmas weeks...50k-60k in the parksn..with a huge percentage of cyber-wired-up folks trying to eek out a bit of bandwidth from a seriously under powered spectrum...ugh.

 

[TeresaNJ]

It's a test...you have to expect issues?

It's MY VACATION. One I am shelling out a LOT of money for. I expect it to be a vacation. No hassles.

I have to thank all of the brave folks who have volunteered to be Disney's unpaid guinea pigs in all this, cause I would never have agreed to their "invitation" to test. I can only hope that there is some semblance of order come next September when I go.

Jenna, that invitation was BS. There is no choice for resort guests. We are testers whether we want to be or not! The only difference is that if you agreed to test it before leaving home, you got to pick the color of your MB. If you didn't get an invite, you get a gray band when checking in. It completely sucks, and I'm a glass half full person!

 

[TeresaNJ]

Oh yea, and the "backup" hard room keys they give you in case of MB failure, well they failed too! Here we are just having had dinner at Kona. We didn't want to use one of our dining plan credits, as part of our group wouldn't start their dining plan until the next day, so we wanted to charge the cost of the meal to our room charge, which was attached to our MB. Well, the MB failed, said we didn't have charging priviledges. I said, "oh no, here our room key clearly shows charging priviledges". They scan the card, nope, that failed too. Said no charging priviledges. I say to my husband, get out your credit card. Oops, he didn't bring his wallet, it's back in our room. I say what??? He says, you told me we didn't need it, we have the MB and the back up hard room key. We are now sitting there all embarrassed. My daughter says she'll put it on her credit card. I'm like no you won't! Cast member tells my husband to go down to front desk to get it straighted out. Meantime, our 1 1/2 year old grandson is getting very cranky, it's 9pm, we want out of there after it taking forever to get there due to the overcrowded conditions here this week like I've never seen before, and now we have to go down to the freaking front desk because of their freaking failure!!! Ugh!

 

[kbelle8995]

There will be lots of glitches with a new system. Not to mention lots of visitors who don't know what the heck they are doing.

Trust me You will see a guest banging on the machine to let them in screaming to everyone in earshot how Disney messed up their vacation. I've seen them to it at the entrances, at the rides and at every single hotel. I've seen them scream about a complex dining plan

FP+ is a system that I hope that I continue to see them work on. I am not the kind of person who wants to book HM months in advance but some guests especially on this board are. Oh and Christmas is going to be a mess. Start booking TSM now,now. (I'm joking well just a little)

 

[magicbob]

Those of you who are Disney nerds like me know that when Disneyland first opened, it was a s**tshow. Toilets didn't work, rides broke down, the crowd control was abysmal, there was garbage all over the place because they hadn't worked out a proper system yet.

One of the things I love about WDW is the fact that things change all the time. My 11th trip is coming in December, and no two vacations have been exactly the same. But, in order to be innovative and not have to shut down the parks completely, this means that sometimes we guests are guinea pigs or early adopters.

I'm sure some here would love if things stayed exactly the same all the time. But, I think that is a boring way to look at it. Disney has never been about staying stagnant. They innovate even when it is scary to do so.

So, change for change' sake (even if it makes things worse) is "innovating?" I'll give you this... all of these reports of FP+ are certainly not coming from "bored" guests.

 

[surferdave]

Trust me You will see a guest banging on the machine to let them in screaming to everyone in earshot how Disney messed up their vacation. I've seen them to it at the entrances, at the rides and at every single hotel. I've seen them scream about a complex dining plan.

I never doubted this, but I think this is on Disney as well; it's not like they're changing their focus to a more sophisticated, computer savvy customer. They still want everybody's money. All anybody had to do is go to the local big box store and watch people trying to use the self checkout registers to know that this was going to be a problem when we first got description of how this system was going to work.

 

[AmyB2006]

There was not a blessed thing wrong with the regular fastpass system. Nothing.

Well, this is a matter of opinion of course, but I totally disagree.

There is something wrong with a system that requires you to be up at the crack of dawn to run to the ride you want the FP for in order to get one. And if you're not there by 10:00 am, sorry you miss out because Guest A and B are on their 3rd FP for that ride along with everybody else that's been there since 7:00 am and already ridden that ride 3 times.

Old FP was great, until this started happening. I can understand FPs being gone by like 3 or 4 in the afternoon, but certain rides having their FPs disappearing this early in the morning on a daily basis... not working.

 

[surferdave]

There was not a blessed thing wrong with the regular fastpass system. Nothing. Disney may try to convince me MB/FP+ is for MY BENEFIT, but it is not. It is for Disney's benefit. It is so they can track the bejeezus out of us and more importantly, our spending habits. Period.

Actually, Disney's entire legacy IT system, including the fastpass distribution system, has been around long enough that it's likely obsolete and has to be replaced soon. If they don't replace it, they face the same sort of challenges you would if you tried to call Microsoft help lines for support of your old Windows 95 computer that you think still works perfectly fine. Since it's not well integrated it's possible that they could only replace parts of it but I don't blame any company that favors a chance to integrate them.

You are absolutely right that it is not primarily for us, and they would probably do well to stop presenting it that way, but it actually should work out to our benefit if they have integrated information about what's going on in the parks, particularly things like traffic flow patterns. I remember thinking when Fantasmic was wrapping up last week that it would help if they knew how many people still in DHS were staying at my resort and how many buses to have ready. It looks like to me the CMs could be more helpful if they had an integrated system to work with as well. I've noticed that when you go to a resort Concierge for information or to check-in and change subjects (like from transportation to dining) they spend a looooong time clicking on the keys in between. This system would earn a lot of points with me if it cut the lines at registration down significantly.

Of course, how much of this benefit we actually ever see is a big question; it all depends on how they use it.

 

[Angel Ariel]

Well, this is a matter of opinion of course, but I totally disagree.

There is something wrong with a system that requires you to be up at the crack of dawn to run to the ride you want the FP for in order to get one. And if you're not there by 10:00 am, sorry you miss out because Guest A and B are on their 3rd FP for that ride along with everybody else that's been there since 7:00 am and already ridden that ride 3 times.

Old FP was great, until this started happening. I can understand FPs being gone by like 3 or 4 in the afternoon, but certain rides having their FPs disappearing this early in the morning on a daily basis... not working.

There is still going to be the rush to get TSMM/Soarin/TT FPs..it's just that instead of it being "if you're not there by 10:00 am, sorry you miss out because Guest A and B are on their 3rd FP for that ride along with everybody else that's been there since 7:00 am and already ridden that ride 3 times," it's going to be "if you're not up at 5-6am and online (on a very glitchy/slow website) 60 days ahead of time, you're going to miss out on getting any FP at all for those rides."

In the previous system, everyone was equal. Yes, people made choices not to arrive early and there may not have been any left when they arrived, but they could have chosen to arrive early...but every person who had a ticket had an equal opportunity to get a FP. Now, unless you are online 60 days out you won't even have the opportunity for a FP. Disney has said they won't hold back any FP+ same day availability. Considering certain dining reservations, it will not shock me to see all availability for TSMM gone at the 60 day mark.

How is that fair for those who decide to go to WDW less than 60 days before their trip? For example, military returning from deployment (who frequently don't know when exactly they will be home and able to travel until a month out or so, sometimes less) Previously, once on property those people had just as much of a chance at FP as anyone else. Now? Not likely, and yet they are paying the same admission charges as anyone else.

ETA: If people pulling multiple FPs for the same ride was the "problem" Disney wanted to fix, they could have instituted a one FP/ride/ticket on the old system as well (just as they had the limits of when you could pull FP).

 

[mom2rtk]

Actually, Disney's entire legacy IT system, including the fastpass distribution system, has been around long enough that it's likely obsolete and has to be replaced soon.

One could say the same thing for WDW's monorail system. Both seem like big ticket items they seem reluctant to fix.

 

[Jennasis]

Well, this is a matter of opinion of course, but I totally disagree.

There is something wrong with a system that requires you to be up at the crack of dawn to run to the ride you want the FP for in order to get one. And if you're not there by 10:00 am, sorry you miss out because Guest A and B are on their 3rd FP for that ride along with everybody else that's been there since 7:00 am and already ridden that ride 3 times.

Old FP was great, until this started happening. I can understand FPs being gone by like 3 or 4 in the afternoon, but certain rides having their FPs disappearing this early in the morning on a daily basis... not working.

With the new FP+ system you can look forward to having to wake at the crack of dawn 60 days prior to your trip to get any FP for headliners.