Just returned from AS Movies, Park Hopper Tkts Disappeared From Res

[mummy2nj]

Just returned home from 7 nights at All Star Movies resort with free dining, 5 days park tickets with park hopper option. I made the reservation online in late May, and was able to snag some great dining reservations including Be Our Guest (dinner) and Cinderella's Royal Table (dinner). Our kids are 2 and 4 so they had an absolute blast! Most of our time was spent in the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom.

I wanted to share a technical issue you could encounter while booking your Disney reservation online. I booked 5 days worth of standard park tickets (Magic Your Way) plus the park hopper option, yet the park hopper option did not work when we tried to use them one evening. Thankfully, a very nice man at the Magic Kingdom guest services let us in for the night and told us to see our resort front desk asap. We got back to the resort late that night, so I went to the front desk early the next morning. We literally spent half a day getting the issue cleared up at our resort, on the telephone, and by sending screenshots of their own website to their guest services department. It was very frustrating, but in the end they discovered what was wrong (though I don't know exactly what happened still) and honored our park hopper tickets, plus refunded the cost of the park hopper option for the inconvenience (we lost half of a day dealing with this)

So how did this happen? I clearly remember selecting it when I made our online reservations in May. Over the weeks prior to our trip I was kind of obsessively looking at our reservation on the Disney website (not the app, actually on my computer) and tweaking our dining reservations, etc. I am 100% positive we booked the park hopper option for all of us, for the full 5 days. There is no doubt in my mind. I even posted a question about our park hopper tickets a few weeks ago on this message board, lol! The Disney website confirmed everything - our resort, our dining plan, our base tickets & the park hopper option. However, every single Disney World computer in existence showed the opposite - no park hopper. The strange thing is the "My Disney Experience" mobile app (when I logged into my account) showed only the 5 day MYW tickets, but when I went into the regular Disney full site and logged into my account, our park hopper tickets were there and one was clearly assigned to each of us... Nobody at Disney understood this or could offer us the explanation. In fact, nobody seemed to believe us at first, and everyone we spoke to had some other explanation for what was going on. My favorite was "Oh, that just means you have the OPTION to purchase park hopper tickets if you want them". NO! NO! NO! What got me even more irritated was nobody could give me an itemized invoice of what we paid for. They could only tell me here is how much you paid for your reservation - $XXXX.XX - but they couldn't show me a breakdown beyond anything that was totally vague. Someone also quoted me how much 2 adult and 1 child cost for base tickets for 5 days. All of that bothered me quite a bit because I was starting to feel cheated.

In the end our situation was resolved because I had absolute proof from their own website that we had the park hopper tickets, thankfully. I just wanted to throw this issue out there in case anyone else has a package deal with Disney directly through their website and is having issues with their park hopper tickets. Somewhere some Disney database isn't communicating properly with another database. It's unfortunate because I'm sure some people just think they made an error at the time of their reservation, when in reality they could have already paid for them...

 

[shyjade]

Sorry that happened, how frustrating! This is exactly why I always print out our reservation details and carry it with us (Disney, our flight, etc.) I love technology as much as the next gal, but I know "glitches" can happen and I prefer to have a written backup as proof. I tend to be overly cautious, and your post just reconfirmed it for me!

 

[rickers353]

The only thing I can think that may have happened is even though you paid for the hopper option it was backed out later. The free dining option was for the base tickets so maybe the computer did it because the free dining was a better value?

Computers have been known to do strange things......

 

[mummy2nj]

I know, it was so bizarre. I couldn't understand how it happened, especially since Disney's own website was clearly still showing it, yet the mobile app and apparently every Disney guest services database was showing the opposite. If I wasn't so positive I absolutely selected park hopper I would have been second guessing myself, which is really unfortunate. My husband is a healthcare IT person and I am a former IT person (now a stay home mom) so these kinds of issues drive us NUTS, especially from a company like Disney who really shouldn't have kinks in their system like this.

 

[mummy2nj]

Sorry that happened, how frustrating! This is exactly why I always print out our reservation details and carry it with us (Disney, our flight, etc.) I love technology as much as the next gal, but I know "glitches" can happen and I prefer to have a written backup as proof. I tend to be overly cautious, and your post just reconfirmed it for me!

Jade, You are right. I had that with me too, but it didn't make a difference because it "wasn't in the computer". So frustrating!

 

[shyjade]

Jade, You are right. I had that with me too, but it didn't make a difference because it "wasn't in the computer". So frustrating!

That's just wrong! If it's on your confirmation, that should be enough proof.

 

[bumbershoot]

What got me even more irritated was nobody could give me an itemized invoice of what we paid for. They could only tell me here is how much you paid for your reservation - $XXXX.XX - but they couldn't show me a breakdown beyond anything that was totally vague.

Yep, that's what packages are like. For the future it's good to know this, just in case.

 

[Belle5]

I am just so sorry this happened to you! What a waste of your precious vacation hours!! It's not like you are spending two hours (or more) waiting in line for your favorite ride...you're spending it FRUSTRATED and STRESSED! Not what you want to deal with when you've spent so much money to be there and so much time dreaming about your family moments. I'm not one to say Disney should compensate guests for everything, but in this case I feel they should have done a little more than just comp you the cost of the hopper feature. I think they could have sent a little more "magic" your way since they were clearly in the wrong...and you had your paper work to prove it!! Oh, well. Maybe they'll figure out the glitch because of what happened to you and no one else will experience that same frustration.

 

[Bribrittmom]

I am just so sorry this happened to you! What a waste of your precious vacation hours!! It's not like you are spending two hours (or more) waiting in line for your favorite ride...you're spending it FRUSTRATED and STRESSED! Not what you want to deal with when you've spent so much money to be there and so much time dreaming about your family moments. I'm not one to say Disney should compensate guests for everything, but in this case I feel they should have done a little more than just comp you the cost of the hopper feature. I think they could have sent a little more "magic" your way since they were clearly in the wrong...and you had your paper work to prove it!! Oh, well. Maybe they'll figure out the glitch because of what happened to you and no one else will experience that same frustration.

I totally agree. You should have at least got a free meal and some extra fast passes.

 

[mummy2nj]

Thanks! I have to say it was very frustrating and a total waste of our day. I mean, yes, I could have sent my husband into the Magic Kingdom with the kids and dealt with it on my own, but we had planned 1/2 day at Animal Kingdom and evening at Magic Kingdom. By the time we got rolling out of our room it was late lunchtime. We had planned to be at the park at opening. This was very annoying and felt so unnecessary. I am composing a letter to guest relations this week discussing the issue and also how we were refused the $15 per night fridge credit even though everyone seems to say it's given. Our rep even asked his manager and he refused. ('we could have used ice' was his response!)

Anyway, we aren't planning to go back to Disney for about two years now. We want to travel elsewhere in the world, plus this was our third Disney visit in 2013 alone. Hoping when we go back things like this will be straightened out!

 

[sjs314]

So happy they were able to resolve the issue and compensate you for the inconvenience it caused you.

 

[mousefan73]

Everyone who books online will get an email confirmation that inclides their reservation number and details. If you open this and print this, you will see every detail of your package including the $15 Planet Hollywood gift cert, for example.

My tip: I personally go ever this in detail and check; especially if making changes. I also bring a paper copy with me when I check in. I also print out the statment showing my zero balance. You never know what can happen. I take it as my personal responsibilty to protect myself as a consumer. It's my contract between Disney and our family. No room to argue from either parties.

 

[minnie mum]

Everyone who books online will get an email confirmation that inclides their reservation number and details. If you open this and print this, you will see every detail of your package including the $15 Planet Hollywood gift cert, for example.

My tip: I personally go ever this in detail and check; especially if making changes. I also bring a paper copy with me when I check in. I also print out the statment showing my zero balance. You never know what can happen. I take it as my personal responsibilty to protect myself as a consumer. It's my contract between Disney and our family. No room to argue from either parties.

This post really needs to be bronzed and hung up where everybody can see it.

I never trust that a reservation will remain uncorrupted in a system, no matter where it is, and least of all at Disney. Their reservation system has never been glitch-free, and has been absolutely horrible since they've started MDE. ALWAYS print out your confirmation details once you've checked that they are correct. And ALWAYS take your "paper proof" with you in case of a snafu.

 

[POTCfan]

We had bought park tickets with the water park option through Undercover Tourist. When we checked into our resort, we went to the concierge to have the tickets added to our room key. 3 of the 4 of us had them added very easily. The 4th one was having trouble. It took about 45 minutes to transfer - the majority of the time was with the 4th one. There was a lot of "I don't know why this isn't transferring". She finally "got it", and handed me the room keys with the tickets on them. I was nervous, because it took so long (and I had had another instance in the past where they couldn't transfer them over - but everyone reporting here that it is no problem, I tried again). She pulled it up on her computer screen and showed me each persons ticket (though I had no idea what I was looking at, but she seemed confident so I left). Later that day, we went over to Typhoon Lagoon, and none of our room keys had tickets on it. It wasn't just a problem with one, none had tickets on them. I had the guest services person call the front desk and gave her the name of the person that checked us in (luckily I remembered her name). The person at the front desk took my hard tickets, so I had nothing with me to confirm I had tickets. After two hours of waiting in front of Typhoon Lagoon, they finally got it straightened out (I assume - they could see it on the resort computer but not at the computer at Typhoon Lagoon). They ended up giving us RFID cards with our tickets on them. So after this whole ordeal, they gave us a coupon for a locker rental and beach towel - only good for that day. I was just relieved that we had our tickets back, but it seriously ruined that day for us. The rest of our trip was great though, so I try just to block out that one bad day. Even having the hard tickets with us, when we trusted the computer everything got screwed up.

 

[nkereina]

OP -did you have magic bands? I'm wondering if it got left off the bands somehow, seeing all the ticket issues the bands are having...

 

[maxiesmom]

I am composing a letter to guest relations this week discussing the issue and also how we were refused the $15 per night fridge credit even though everyone seems to say it's given. Our rep even asked his manager and he refused. ('we could have used ice' was his response!)

I would compose a letter, but one nicely asking for the credit. Not one saying that it was a given you would get it, because it wasn't. That is one thing I hate about the Dis, when posters claim you will definitely get some credit or perk. Any type of credit for an inconvenience is up to the resort. If it was a given Disney would just credit you that amount back to your reservation.

I have to disagree too that more compensation is necessary. The park hopper option alone is worth $59 a ticket. I think getting more than $200 for your trouble is suitable compensation. But definitely e-mail WDW. You never know what they may do for you.

 

[mummy2nj]

OP -did you have magic bands? I'm wondering if it got left off the bands somehow, seeing all the ticket issues the bands are having...

No, we did not have the bands. We had the standard "Key To The World" card which was our room key, park tickets, dining plan, room charging, etc.

 

[dpswift]

Sorry that you did not have your fridge. We spent the weekend at AS Movies and had one. However my main request had been to be close to transportation and we were not. The CM told me they were booked solid and if I wanted to be close to transportation to walk to the ASMusic because there bus stop was closer.

 

[CuteAndFluffy]

Where did you find package ticket info on MDE?

I currently have a package booked and cannot find my tickets anywhere in the app to confirm that they are correct. On the website, yes, but not in the app.