Anyone else getting VERY frustrated?

[tiki23]

Why else would anyone go when it is hot, humid, hurricane season, raining and kids have to be taken out of school? May as well as wait until the winter months when crowds are low and weather is great!

Oh man, that cracked me up! Why AM I going in September instead of November?? (Oh yeah, because I NEED a Disney vacation and don't want to wait an longer than I have to! )

 

[Huff]

Oh man, that cracked me up! Why AM I going in September instead of November?? (Oh yeah, because I NEED a Disney vacation and don't want to wait an longer than I have to! )

lol, thats a good reason! I live a days drive from Disneyland and take quite a few weekend trips there during the year. Disneyworld we try to go for 7 to 10 days once a year. We can only afford to do that at times when theres decent specials such as free dining.

 

[CanadianGuy]

The item itself (food or vacation) may be different, the concept is not. Being able to only afford something only on a discount should not be the reason to prevent someone from being able to attain it. THAT was my point.

I was with ya up til this one..

What?

I bought a car last year. With just perfect timing, the model I wanted, had a $10,000 cash back. Yeah.. it was 1/3 off!

Would I have ever conceivably bought that car new any other way? Absolutely not.

Will my next car probably be less sexy than the one I have now - VERY likely.

Was I grateful for the discount? YOU BET!

Would I have bought a different, cheaper car had the discount not existed? Yup. In fact, I found the car I ended up buying cause I was looking at a much cheaper used car on the same lot.

I don't ever expect the offers .. (really they are 'sales') that are available in the marketplace? No. I don't. I plan like there will be no discounts and no offers and then do the best with what I find.

Same goes for coupons. If I don't find the ones I want/need, I just buy the specials in the store wherever possible and replace brand names with store brands to bring the budget in line.

I get folks are frustrated with the delay .. But in the end .. these discounts and offers are a 'bonus' .. not a 'right' .. and as such .. Disney offers them to increase their bottom line.. not yours or mine.

Therefore, Disney will make the offer when their marketing and promo team thinks it will have the most impact.

This year, whatever 'fall promo' may or may not be coming down the pike - Disney has decided it is in THEIR best interest to wait.

So we wait. Somewhat unpatiently.

 

[CanadianGuy]

Sorry but I am booking now !! I wanted to wait for the discount before booking !!But as it is sooo late went ahead and booked !! I really want to go and am praying for a good code , even if it's not FD!!!Once I am bookeed I will make my adrs and ashould I be unable to go I will cancel them!!I agree it does give a false sign to Disney but I wanna make those adrs before months end !!

Yup. It does give a false sign to Disney and in fact ... that false signal effectively lowers the number of potential "fall promo" rooms at the resort you picked on the dates you picked. And if you picked a popular resort and other people are doing the same thing (and they are) ... it gets even harder to secure your dream resort for your fall trip on the dates you picked.

Thus, making it harder for you to switch to whatever promo comes available. They are different room inventories. Therefore .. when you drop your room only booking and switch to the promo.. Disney is left holding the bag on a room which is NOT part of the promo and which they thought was previously booked.

Why should you care about that? Because to the bean counters eyes - that exact behavior reduces the effectiveness of the promo when all is said and done. Less effective promos are dropped and not repeated in favor of promos that are more effective to the bean counters. They don't see all the 'changes' to existing bookings in gross detail. They see room counts. X amount of promo rooms booked and X amount of non-promo rooms booked. And if the non-promo number goes down and the promo number goes up by an almost exact amount. Well duh, that's not an effective promo.

See where I'm going there?

And speaking of bean counters.. every contact you have with Disney on the phone costs money. It costs Disney money and (eventually) costs you money. If call center costs go up ... guess what? Room prices will go up to offset that and ensure the profits etc. So you may still get a 30% room discount ... but it will come off a much more expensive room each year.

Just having a booking now guarantees you NOTHING regarding a future promo.

Nothing.

If you are able to convert your reservation -- then you would have had just as much luck booking an entirely new reservation ...

Nobody gets this. But I'm going to keep repeating it anyway.

 

[francie57]

CanadianGuy you are exactly right. Other posters don't believe that people booking "in case" of a discount makes a difference. They think that only people on these boards are doing it and that is a small number. It is still a number (no matter the size) booking rooms that show up as reserved on the Disney inventory of rooms. You are also correct that just because you have a reservation now doesn't mean you can get the promo applied. We called about the free dining last year after it came out. We had a 2 bedroom villa booked at the Boardwalk already. We were told that there were no villas at the Boardwalk and if we wanted free dining we would have to change resorts. Fortunately for us we kept our reservation since a room discount worked out better than paying full price for the villa. People also have to realize that Disney is keeping the summer promos going because they are, for the first time, competing with the huge crowds that Universal will have due to Harry Potter. We always go to Universal as part of our trip to Disney every Aug. and the crowds at Universal are usually non-existant. That will not be the case this year. Disney now is competing to try and get the people going to Universal this summer. There also was an article in the news section of this site in the past that said Disney lost a tremendous amount of money with the free dining since most people were booking value rooms so they may be looking to offer something else for room discounts.

 

[MickeyMomOfThree]

Yup. It does give a false sign to Disney and in fact ... that false signal effectively lowers the number of potential "fall promo" rooms at the resort you picked on the dates you picked. And if you picked a popular resort and other people are doing the same thing (and they are) ... it gets even harder to secure your dream resort for your fall trip on the dates you picked.

Thus, making it harder for you to switch to whatever promo comes available. They are different room inventories. Therefore .. when you drop your room only booking and switch to the promo.. Disney is left holding the bag on a room which is NOT part of the promo and which they thought was previously booked.

Why should you care about that? Because to the bean counters eyes - that exact behavior reduces the effectiveness of the promo when all is said and done. Less effective promos are dropped and not repeated in favor of promos that are more effective to the bean counters. They don't see all the 'changes' to existing bookings in gross detail. They see room counts. X amount of promo rooms booked and X amount of non-promo rooms booked. And if the non-promo number goes down and the promo number goes up by an almost exact amount. Well duh, that's not an effective promo.

See where I'm going there?

And speaking of bean counters.. every contact you have with Disney on the phone costs money. It costs Disney money and (eventually) costs you money. If call center costs go up ... guess what? Room prices will go up to offset that and ensure the profits etc. So you may still get a 30% room discount ... but it will come off a much more expensive room each year.

Just having a booking now guarantees you NOTHING regarding a future promo.

Nothing.

If you are able to convert your reservation -- then you would have had just as much luck booking an entirely new reservation ...

Nobody gets this. But I'm going to keep repeating it anyway.

I get it, and tried to say it but nearly as good as you did. If they see all these reservations they won't think they need to offer a deal. We made our reservations because with or without a deal we are going, but even so I still thought about holding off so I was one less reservation they had.

 

[asmit4]

So CanadianGuy among others are basically stating that all of those prebookings before the FD codes come out or before other codes come out could mean that DW doesn't offer the code b/c the rooms are already booked. (I'm not disagreeing with this- just stating what's been said)

SOOO...All of you who booked with the hope of FD, which of you is going to cancel and when? I just wonder if this will backfire on DW. IF 15% of their rooms were booked prior to the FD code in anticipation of the FD code and 90% of those people cancel 46 days prior to their trip then DW has lots of empty rooms on their hands.

The only way for DW to see this as a negative is if people cancel their rooms if the code doesn't come out. I won't go without FD, but something tells me that people who booked prior to the code will find a way to go to DW anyway. The human brain and spirit is like that. I think people book 2 months prior to FD code. The FD code won't come out. Meanwhile the family who booked in anticipation has been thinking about DW for MONTHS. They will mull over cancelling it and decide they HAVE to go to DW and they'll do it without the FD code.

I don't fall into this group- but I think many do. Cancelling a booked trip is hard for people to do no matter what it will cost.

Someone ought to put up a survey to determine this. Maybe I'll do it.

 

[englishrose47]

I scrunched my numbers and will prolly go with or without FD !!I am confident some form of code will be out in September !! Believe me this year I will do Bounceback with FD!!!!I learned my lesson!!!

 

[mking624]

Other people probably "don't get it" because early bookers are nothing new to Disney. There were early bookers before FD ever existed. There were early bookers the first year it came out and who got the promo. There have been early bookers ever since then as well. It's not as if it's some sort of surprise to Disney, who would somehow say "man, we certainly didn't expect people to book before a promo came out...now we don't have to release it!" Trust me, they're well aware and I can guarantee they take that into account. Does that guarantee a promo will be released? Of course not. But neither does it somehow screw everything up and promos become a lost cause. People post as if Disney isn't used to this kind of thing...they are aware that people DO need to plan ahead and therefore book early. Maybe people get scared of all these early bookings because of how many people on the DIS talk about it...but remember, we represent only a very small portion of the people who actually go to Disney. Many many more people aren't even aware of the promos that release. They are also going to look more deeply into the bookings that are already paid off...as those are the people who are less likely to cancel their trip than someone who just put down a deposit. Disney has been around for quite some time...it's not like anything we do as vacationers is suddenly going to throw them off and wonder what happened. They see a LOT more of this than any of us ever could.

 

[tiki23]

Maybe people get scared of all these early bookings because of how many people on the DIS talk about it...but remember, we represent only a very small portion of the people who actually go to Disney.

I know the Dis is the best but there are other boards out there with plenty of other members booking "FD" rooms, too. Plus, plenty of newcomers to WDW take the time to at least google WDW discounts and will find the info, and call their TA.

The number of people pre-booking in hopes of FD may not be huge, but it may certainly be significant.

 

[mking624]

I know the Dis is the best but there are other boards out there with plenty of other members booking "FD" rooms, too. Plus, plenty of newcomers to WDW take the time to at least google WDW discounts and will find the info, and call their TA.

The number of people pre-booking in hopes of FD may not be huge, but it may certainly be significant.

I know there are other boards. My point is that we still represent a very small number. Even on this board, I still see members sometimes with thousands of posts that don't even know this particular forum exists and are at times shocked about the discounts that are available. And these are actual board members! And not all TAs are aware of promos either. I can't begin to tell you how many times a person here said they had to notify their TA of a particular promo.

There are a LOT more visitors to Disney than there are promo savvy people. I worked at The Disney Store and for every one person here who promo hunted, there were several more guests in the store that weren't even aware Disney did anything like that until I told them about it. And again, we shouldn't act as if Disney is clueless to how this all works. It's not like we're doing anything that would suddenly change everything. They open resort and ADR bookings early because they know that there are people who do this kind of thing.

Will a fall promo be FD? It may be, it may not be. But we shouldn't assume the lack of FD is a result of early bookings since early bookings happen year after year at all times of the year. Why would we assume that this is the one year that it's so significant...considering last year they had a drop in attendance? I think the real issue here is that Disney is still focusing on the summer and hasn't released anything for the fall yet...so people are looking for something to blame because let's face it, we're all on edge. In this case the blame has been falling on the early bookers. And yet, people book early all the time. Why is this year any different?

 

[Bridge203618]

I know there are other boards. My point is that we still represent a very small number. Even on this board, I still see members sometimes with thousands of posts that don't even know this particular forum exists and are at times shocked about the discounts that are available. And these are actual board members! And not all TAs are aware of promos either. I can't begin to tell you how many times a person here said they had to notify their TA of a particular promo.

There are a LOT more visitors to Disney than there are promo savvy people. And again, we shouldn't act as if Disney is clueless to how this all works. It's not like we're doing anything that would suddenly change everything. They open resort and ADR bookings early because they know that there are people who do this kind of thing.

Will a fall promo be FD? It may be, it may not be. But we shouldn't assume the lack of FD is a result of early bookings since early bookings happen year after year at all times of the year. Why would we assume that this is the one year that it's so significant...considering last year they had a drop in attendance? I think the real issue here is that Disney is still focusing on the summer and hasn't released anything for the fall yet...so people are looking for something to blame because let's face it, we're all on edge. In this case the blame has been falling on the early bookers. And yet, people book early all the time. Why is this year any different?

I think you should read some of the comments from the moderator in the rumors thread. It really makes a lot of sense. Why I do agree it is a small number of people in the grand scheme of things, there are only X number of rooms for a given promotion and if that resort is starting to fill up, then that resort will even have fewer than planned for the given promotion. Which means you might not get the dates you want or the resort you want and you have to rebook and start over anyway...

 

[mking624]

I think you should read some of the comments from the moderator in the rumors thread. It really makes a lot of sense. Why I do agree it is a small number of people in the grand scheme of things, there are only X number of rooms for a given promotion and if that resort is starting to fill up, then that resort will even have fewer than planned for the given promotion. Which means you might not get the dates you want or the resort you want and you have to rebook and start over anyway...

I understand that. Again, it happens every year. Every year there is a limit on how many rooms get the promo. Every year people book early. The "formula" hasn't changed. There are more factors to consider than just those who book early...they're going to look at paid off bookings, number of cancellations as time gets closer, previous year's performance, etc etc etc. People shouldn't freak out over ONE factor that constantly happens when there are more to consider. Fortunately, Disney is aware of this and they look into it all.

ETA: I have kept up with every post regarding the rumors, so I do know what has been speculated. I'm just saying that early booking is not a brand new concept so it's not going to drastically change things.

 

[tiki23]

I understand that. Again, it happens every year. Every year there is a limit on how many rooms get the promo. Every year people book early. The "formula" hasn't changed.

The formula may not have changed, but maybe the way Disney thinks about the problem has changed.

Everyone is just speculating, opinionating and venting right now - which keeps us busy until Disney does finally announce something, lol.

I'll just agree to disagree with you - no hard feelings! - and hope that everyone gets the discount they want/need, and the sooner the better!

 

[CanadianGuy]

There are 20,000 rooms a night available at Disney (give or take)

For the month of September that adds up to 600,000 room nights.

If only 25% of the "unbooked" rooms are available for the F/D promo.. (picking a number).. that's less than 150,000 room/ nights available for September for F/D. So.. now assume that 1000 DIS'ers booked ahead of the promo release for an average of 5 nights each. Well.. now there are less than 145,000 F/D available rooms and the 5000 less room/nights are going to be gone from the exact resorts those people pre-booked to be sure they got the resort they wanted.

For every room that is booked with no intention of going without the promo - it does screw up the numbers. Maybe by a lot maybe by a little.

But it does screw the numbers... and it messes with the numbers enough to make F/D look like an ineffective promo with the bean counters.

Plus - and I can't stress this enough - it doesn't make a sam hill bit of difference.

HAVING THE BOOKING NOW GUARANTEES YOU NOTHING..

Yeah you can make your ADR's.. but without a hotel to stay in and free dining for the exact dates ... what good are the ADRs?

I'm sorry.. but I don't think anyone can convince me that booking ahead when they have no intention of going without the unreleased promotion .. is ever a good idea.

 

[DISNEY1975]

HAVING THE BOOKING NOW GUARANTEES YOU NOTHING..

Yeah you can make your ADR's.. but without a hotel to stay in and free dining for the exact dates ... what good are the ADRs?

I'm sorry.. but I don't think anyone can convince me that booking ahead when they have no intention of going without the unreleased promotion .. is ever a good idea.

What?


Its like Deja Vu, all over again.

 

[disneyfan55]

Since WDW is actively advertising the summer up to 30% off on TV, I doubt the fall offers will be out there soon. I don't ever recall WDW advertising on TV here in NJ for Summer offers. I think they want to fill up the summer before putting the fall offers on. Over the past few years the free dining was offered in mid April or there about. Only last year was it offered the end of March. Just my thoughts. Until the new ads appeared a few days ago, I thought the free dining would be offered soon, but not now.

 

[DisGirl23]

I agree that one should not book a room with hopes of FD. I agree that one should not book all these ADRs with hopes of FD. UNLESS you're still definitely going to go WDW with or without FD.
I do agree that it can effect whether or not they offer it. Feeding all of us during the entire fall season can't be cheap for them. If they see all these rooms booked, they may just offer another room discount in the fall to fill up the rest of the rooms. Will everyone be happy with that?
Disney will do what they think it best for them for the fall season. Period.
That being said, as long as everyone knows that FD is NOT owed to us, it's good therapy to have the FD debate. I'm sure everyone's friends and families are happy for the Dis.
And when you do cancel your trip, PLEASE cancel all of your ADRs so others can enjoy the restaurants.
And heck, maybe Disney will purposely not offer FD just to put everyone in their place. Everyone can say "Well Disney knows people will cancel so what's the big deal?" or "We just make up a small percentage..." but, it's really just justifying your decision. And that's fine too. Disney is the only one who knows if you're messing with their numbers.

I do hope everyone gets their FD though because if not, there is going to be some scary threads on here...

 

[Craigdarroch]

Much to my disappointment, I jut had to cancel our April AP reservation for Riverside. I told the res agent that we would probably be pushing the trip to September and she told me I should re-book right away as the resort is looking like it's almost at capacity for that month. I told her we were hoping to book at an AP rate if they come available and she said in that case, I should probably hold off or check into a different resort as she doesn't anticipate that some of the more popular resorts will offer discounts during Sept. due to the high number of rooms currently booked.
I asked her if I should pre-book and then call back if a discount happened to be offered for that time and she told me that there would be no guarantee that they could switch my res to a discounted rate and priority would most likely be given to "new" reservations only as they consider current bookings as part of their full-rate quota which weighs on managements decision as to whether or not they will discount rooms and how many they will discount.

I'll hold out for the possible discount rather than add to the numbers that make offering a discount more unlikely.

 

[disneyfan55]

Much to my disappointment, I jut had to cancel our April AP reservation for Riverside. I told the res agent that we would probably be pushing the trip to September and she told me I should re-book right away as the resort is looking like it's almost at capacity for that month. I told her we were hoping to book at an AP rate if they come available and she said in that case, I should probably hold off or check into a different resort as she doesn't anticipate that some of the more popular resorts will offer discounts during Sept. due to the high number of rooms currently booked.
I asked her if I should pre-book and then call back if a discount happened to be offered for that time and she told me that there would be no guarantee that they could switch my res to a discounted rate and priority would most likely be given to "new" reservations only as they consider current bookings as part of their full-rate quota which weighs on managements decision as to whether or not they will discount rooms and how many they will discount.

I'll hold out for the possible discount rather than add to the numbers that make offering a discount more unlikely.

I would check for myself to see what is avail or not. Also, all rooms are not offered for every discount and there are a certain amout of rooms at resorts set aside for an offer. I don't think that resort is booked that full for sept. Just my opinion.