BAD ME Experience, had not TAGS!

[reedycreek]

I used ME on my trip to WDW last week. Booked the POLY about 2 months ago, and the luggage tags never came. I called ME a few days prior, and the girl was on the border of nasty and said there is nothing to worry about, you dont need to luggage tags, you will get your luggage with no problem.

Well...

When I arrived to MCO, it took about 15 min to find somone to explain what I needed to do, since I had no idea what was going on without the tags. Oh, when I checked in at Delta at JFK, nobody there had every heard of Disney ME. WHen I arrived at the ME desk at MCO, they were very nice and helpful, and told me what to do, and I told them what my bag looked like and gave them some other information. The lady said it would take about 2 hours to get the bag to my room at the POLY.

So...

I boarded a ME bus to POLY, and we sat at MCO on the bus for about 30-40 minutes waiting for more people. That was no fun. It took a little over 1 hour to get to POLY since the driver was certainly in no rush, and drove very very slow, and we made 2 other stops first at WL and CR.

So...

When I arrived at POLY at 6pm, I checked in, and asked the CM when my luggage would arrive. She also said it would magically appear in my room in 2 hours.

Well...

When I returned to my room from MK around 1230am, and my luggage was not there, I was not happy. I called the front desk, who transferred me to bell services, since the ME offices were closed. Bell services tracked my bags down, and said there were sitting at MCO airport still, and would be delivered to the POLY around 230AM! I was no happy at all.

The next morning, the bags were delivered to my door at 830am. I went to the front desk that morning and talked to the manager of the POLY. She said she looked into it, and DELTA AIRLINES had not given the bags to DIsney till 1130pm that night. I find it very hard to believe it would be DELTA's responsiblity to give the bags to Disney, especially since they werent tagged with ME tags.

So, all in all, it took 2 hours to get to WDW from MCO and about 8 hours to get my bags...

 

[Chip 'n Dale Express]

Just a couple comments, for what it's worth...

I've seen a number of situations where bags have not made flights (origin or connecting), thus delaying the bag's arrival to MCO, and then onto DME. So it's very well possible that your bag did not arrive to MCO until 11:30.

As for the motorcoach driver... Mears drivers are very good about doing the speed limit. Often times, a speed limit of 55 mph appears slow in a motorcoach, especially since many cars on these roads tend to speed, and zoom right on by. As someone who drives these roads all the time, I can tell you that speeding is a top cause of accidents and injuries on our roads. Orange County Sherrif's Dept as well as Florida Highway Patrol constantly monitor those main roads. So it's best that the coaches maintain the speed limit, even if it may be considered 'slow' by some.

 

[reedycreek]

Just a couple comments, for what it's worth...

I've seen a number of situations where bags have not made flights (origin or connecting), thus delaying the bag's arrival to MCO, and then onto DME. So it's very well possible that your bag did not arrive to MCO until 11:30.

As for the motorcoach driver... Mears drivers are very good about doing the speed limit. Often times, a speed limit of 55 mph appears slow in a motorcoach, especially since many cars on these roads tend to speed, and zoom right on by. As someone who drives these roads all the time, I can tell you that speeding is a top cause of accidents and injuries on our roads. Orange County Sherrif's Dept as well as Florida Highway Patrol constantly monitor those main roads. So it's best that the coaches maintain the speed limit, even if it may be considered 'slow' by some.

the bags made it on the plane, i witnessed them loading it on. some of the CM's were telling me that disney was loosing bags at MCO for a couple days now.

 

[Mears_Driver]

Just a couple comments, for what it's worth...


As for the motorcoach driver... Mears drivers are very good about doing the speed limit. Often times, a speed limit of 55 mph appears slow in a motorcoach, especially since many cars on these roads tend to speed, and zoom right on by. As someone who drives these roads all the time, I can tell you that speeding is a top cause of accidents and injuries on our roads. Orange County Sherrif's Dept as well as Florida Highway Patrol constantly monitor those main roads. So it's best that the coaches maintain the speed limit, even if it may be considered 'slow' by some.

As a Mears Driver for DME I can tell you that the speed limit is very important to us because we can lose our jobs as well as our licenses for speeding. The rules are very strict for commercial drivers.

Also, Mears has a safety department and all the field personnel have radar guns in their cars and they do park on the sides of the roads and clock Mears, DCL and DME buses to see how fast we are going.

So...

I boarded a ME bus to POLY, and we sat at MCO on the bus for about 30-40 minutes waiting for more people. That was no fun. It took a little over 1 hour to get to POLY since the driver was certainly in no rush, and drove very very slow, and we made 2 other stops first at WL and CR.

Sorry that you had a bad experience. As drivers we have no control over how long the Disney reps hold us at the airport.

 

[reedycreek]

As a Mears Driver for DME I can tell you that the speed limit is very important to us because we can lose our jobs as well as our licenses for speeding. The rules are very strict for commercial drivers.

Also, Mears has a safety department and all the field personnel have radar guns in their cars and they do park on the sides of the roads and clock Mears, DCL and DME buses to see how fast we are going.




Sorry that you had a bad experience. As drivers we have no control over how long the Disney reps hold us at the airport.

Mear Driver, i used to drive motorcoach in NY, and i know about the strict rules on commercial drivers. our buses were goverened at 70, and i certainly did that speed due to the enormous pressure to do an 11 hour trip in 10 legal hours. it wasnt so much the drivers speed, he was just very slow getting in and out of the bus, waiting around for no reason etc.
over all though, i like mears a lot.

 

[LisaS]

The next morning, the bags were delivered to my door at 830am. I went to the front desk that morning and talked to the manager of the POLY. She said she looked into it, and DELTA AIRLINES had not given the bags to DIsney till 1130pm that night. I find it very hard to believe it would be DELTA's responsiblity to give the bags to Disney, especially since they werent tagged with ME tags.

When we flew into MCO in May, this is what we saw going on at the luggage carousels re: bags without ME tags. Those bags were going round and round the carousel for some time after all other bags had been claimed by arriving passengers for the flight(s) assigned to that carousel. An airport or airline employee (i.e., not a ME CM) eventually came along and took unclaimed bags off the carousel and set them aside. This is standard procedure for any flight, but with the introduction of ME, there were many, many more bags than usual left on the carousel, so this took a bit of time. Those of us waiting for bags from our flight had to wait longer than usual for our bags because the large number of unclaimed bags took up so much room on the carousel that the bags from our flight could not be unloaded until some of these unclaimed bags were removed from the carousel to make room for our bags!

Meanwhile, two ME CMs with clipboards were wading through this large collection of bags trying to match them up with information provided by arriving passengers when they checked in at the ME desk. Each ME CM had many pages of listings on her clipboard, so this was not an easy task. When they did identify a piece of luggage they would hand write an ME tag and put it on the bag. Some guy came through periodically to lug the bags with the handwritten ME tags and put them back on the carousel. Those bags would make their way around and then go back behind the wall where I assume someone grabbed them off the belt because they did not come back out again.

So I could easily imagine how your bags could end up hanging around MCO for quite a while, and then end up in Delta's unclaimed baggage office instead of on one of ME's trucks on their way to your resort:

First, there was only one airline employee clearing our carousel and he wasn't dedicated full time to that task. The airlines expect a few unclaimed bags per flight but now suddenly with the launch of ME and so many people not getting their ME tags there could be 50-100 bags or more per flight left on the carousels. This is not the airlines' fault, but they are the ones left to deal with it and they don't have sufficient staff available to pull such a large number of unclaimed bags off all of the carousels in baggage claim. The unclaimed bags are on the same belt with bags coming off recent flights, so it would be very easy for the airline employee to miss a bag or two going around the carousel (he had to read the flight number printed on the white bag tag as bags traveled past him to know which bags to pull and there were bags from a few flights on the carousel at one time). So if he missed your bags, they could have been going round and round for quite a while until incoming traffic slowed down towards the end of the day and the carousels finally could be cleared of all remaining bags. Hence Disney's statement that they didn't get your bags from Delta until 11:30.

Assuming the Delta employee did get your bag off the carousel in a timely manner, given how difficult and tedious the ME CM's job was to identify all these bags, I could easily imagine they could overlook a bag, (remember that the collection of unclaimed luggage included any bags that were misdirected to MCO as well as ME-destined bags), or maybe someone mistyped something when they entered your info at the ME check-in desk such that the info either wasn't on the right clipboard or didn't allow them to identify your bags for some reason. Any bags left over after ME had done their final "sweep" for the day would end up in Delta's unclaimed baggage office. Maybe when you called at 12:30 to ask about your bags, someone went over to Delta's unclaimed baggage office and found your bags there and the info that came back was "Delta didn't give us your bags..." when it could have been due to a mistake on the part of an ME CM.

Bottom line is, if you don't have ME tags on your bags and you don't claim your luggage off the carousel it is essentially unclaimed baggage. The airlines and the ME CMs appear to be working together to handle the problem but it is a tedious, manual operation and I think you should expect delays, and in some cases some bags are going to end up in the airlines' unclaimed baggage offices.

Things are bound to improve once they get tags out to everyone using ME.

 

[reedycreek]

[
Things are bound to improve once they get tags out to everyone using ME.[/QUOTE]

and that was my entire point of the OP. disney needs to stop telling people not to worry if we dont get our tags in time. it IS a problem, and SHOULD be worried about because it turns out to be unclaimed luggage.

 

[goofy4tink]

Seems like the suggestion to make your bags really stand out from the others if you don't get your tags is a good one. Put some really distinctive ribbons, very wide, on your bags. I bought some Winnie-the-Pooh blanket binding satin, about 2" wide, to tie onto my bags if my tags didn't come. then I also had some wide lime green grosgrain ribbon to tie on also....no way were they going to be able to miss my bags. Another thing you could do if you have access to a digital camera...get your bags all set to go and take a photo of them to give to the DME people. Then they will know exactly what they are looking for. Thank heaven I got my tags last week, finally!!!
Sorry the OP had such a non-magical experience.

 

[Olallamom]

My TA from Magical Journeys recommends that if you don't get ME tags prior to leaving to claim your luggage yourself at MCO. We leave in 7 days and have no tags as of yet. I still plan on using ME but will claim my own luggage if we don't receive our tags. I think it will save us worrying about whether or not our luggage makes it to the hotel.

 

[Gillian]

Mears Driver, I'm glad you are watching your speed! With so many tourists driving around I bet you have to be extra careful.

reedycreek, I'm sorry you had such a bad experience and that the Disney CM you spoke with was not more helpful.

This whole thing seems like a big mess. I wonder if they will continue with it next year. It's a great idea, though.

 

[reedycreek]

i think it will improve over the coming months, its a good system, they just need to get the kinks out. one of the CM's was telling me they only have a few trucks to deliver all the luggage, and should start using the buses to at least carry some of the luggage to WDW to be sorted there.

it will get better...

 

[MiraDawl]

While I haven't used the system yet, it does seem like a great plan. On previous trips, it was one more headache to worry about transportation from the airport to your resort. I've also seen people who didn't understand the need to plan for transportation to the resorts.

I'm sure there are many kinks to work out. I can fully understand the frustration of not having luggage. However, considering how costly a Disney resort vacation is w/o added transportation, the ME is really a great program, and I hope it continues!!

 

[malibuconlee]

I thought I had read that if you dont' receive the tags the best thing to do is grab the bags yourself and get them to the ME personnel? Then they would get them to the resort.

 

[seashoreCM]

It all started with a problem printing the yellow tags. Add to that the CM's at the welcoming area promising almost all guests they did not have to go back to the carousels and CM's would go get the baggage. I didn't use ME but from what I read, the CM's did admirably well under the circumstances. True, Disney had to sink extra money into the operation in the form of overtime and more CM's, but the guests don't have to see that.

(copied from another post)

Let's start a fad (for all trips, not just WDW).

Get 3x5 cards and make up a three digit number you put on all of the cards in large print. Add your name, destination airport code, date, and actual destination (resort, etc.) in smaller print. For Magical Express to Disney only, add the words Magical Express. Plaster two cards on each suitcase. Should you need to go to customer relations or baggage assistance or whatever, you tell the agent the 3 digit number (same for all of your bags). Returning home you need to cross out the old destinations or make up new cards.

OT riddle: Which is faster:

1. Stopping at each piece of luggage and going down the entire list of entries on the clipboard to try to match up,

2. Taking each clipboard entry one at a time and walking the entire row of luggage to try to match up.

?

OT: I was in charge of the mailing lists for two clubs, call them A and B. Club A passed a resolution stating that members of club B who were not already members of club A would be given one free year's membership in club A.

Because of the complexity of finding out who qualified, I never sent out the free membership invitations. I posed the question of matching up the members at a club meeting, someone else volunteered, but did not follow through either. The resolution quietly went away unfulfilled. Nobody thought of offering all members of club B the free membership.

Disney hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/magicx.htm

 

[LisaS]

My TA from Magical Journeys recommends that if you don't get ME tags prior to leaving to claim your luggage yourself at MCO. We leave in 7 days and have no tags as of yet. I still plan on using ME but will claim my own luggage if we don't receive our tags. I think it will save us worrying about whether or not our luggage makes it to the hotel.

I think this is great advice.

I went to WDW on May 8th, so I wasn't all that surprised that there were problems given that ME had only been in operation officially for 3 days. But here we are over a month later and they are still having problems getting the tags out to people. The tags (and the bar codes on the tags) are key to running the baggage delivery efficiently. Without the tags, it becomes a tedious manual process prone to human error.