Booking activities online still midnight ET?

[miztressuz]

It's now nearly 12:30 am on my 90 mark for Silver but I can't book activities. The site just says "Activities: Booking begins August 13, 2016" Well according to all my clocks it's been 8/13 for nearly 30 minutes now.

I can't find anywhere else on the site to book activities. I'm showing a 0.00 balance so I'm PIF. What gives, did they change when Aug 13 starts?

I've signed out, signed in, cleared all cookies/cache/history, tried 3 browsers. What am I missing?

 

[miztressuz]

Ok, to answer my own question - Aug 13 started at 3:00 AM Eastern time on the dot. So I guess that's changed since my last cruise.

I'm not sure exactly when Online Checkin opened, I fell asleep after they took the site down at 3:30am. At 7am Eastern when I signed back in I could complete checkin. I recall I couldn't checkin at midnight before, I just don't remember from the threads when people were saying that did open.

I'm sure it's not a nightly occurrence, but beware especially on Friday nights (technically Saturday AM) that they take the site down for scheduled maintenance at 3:30. So I was able to book 2 activities and while browsing for others the site disappeared. They did give a pop up about 20 minutes before "reminding" you that it'll be down for maintenance (I'm not sure where maintenance was announced for that to be a reminder... more like an announcement for me)

 

[ILoveMyKellen]

I had this same problem last week on the 7th of August. I tried checking in at midnight Eastern time and the website wouldn't let me. At 1am I could check-in but I could not do any bookings. At 3:15 I could finally start booking things but then the site went down at 3:30. Ugh!

 

[KCBelle]

Same experience here a couple weeks ago. Was able to do check in at 12:30 but activities didn't open until 3AM ET and then it had a countdown going for when the site would be unavailable for maintenance. First timer cruiser so no idea if this is normal.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

It's now nearly 12:30 am on my 90 mark for Silver but I can't book activities. The site just says "Activities: Booking begins August 13, 2016" Well according to all my clocks it's been 8/13 for nearly 30 minutes now.

I can't find anywhere else on the site to book activities. I'm showing a 0.00 balance so I'm PIF. What gives, did they change when Aug 13 starts?

I've signed out, signed in, cleared all cookies/cache/history, tried 3 browsers. What am I missing?

Well, time was that the online check in opened at midnight and the excursion booking window opened at 3:00. Then it was changed and now both open at midnight.

That being said, for some reason, there are times when the actual booking/check in windows don't open "on time". Reports run from 30 minutes to 6 hour delays in one or the other not opening at midnight. It's not standard that they open at different times, but it does happen.

 

[Deb T.]

Does anyone happen to know how long after 3:30am the site usually stays down? TIA

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Does anyone happen to know how long after 3:30am the site usually stays down? TIA

Are you talking about the daily maintenance/update downtime? It's usually only down for an hour between 4-5 am eastern time.

 

[miztressuz]

Well, time was that the online check in opened at midnight and the excursion booking window opened at 3:00. Then it was changed and now both open at midnight.

I guess I've always been unlucky (or lucky i guess)as I was able to book activities at midnight on the last cruise but check-in wasn't open until later. After I booked activities and checkin still wasn't open, I went to bed and checked when I woke up early the next morning. It must have opened sometime during the night because I think I missed the very first PAT. I do recall reading something around the time that one of them wasn't opening at midnight and I thought it was check-in as that jived with my experience.

Does anyone happen to know how long after 3:30am the site usually stays down? TIA

Are you talking about the daily maintenance/update downtime? It's usually only down for an hour between 4-5 am eastern time.

Well they seem to have changed it to 3:30 - 4:30 am ET then as the pop up said that the site would be back "within the hour"; but not knowing if it was a daily maintenance window or some other scheduled maintenance I didn't hold my breath. If it is daily maintenance then tech departments are usually good at getting stuff back up in the window.

Hopefully the midnight thing is just a glitch and not a new change. Since all the rest of Disney follows Eastern time it'd be odd to change when a day starts to an arbitrary time. (but then again I always found it odd that check-in and booking activities never opened at the same time either, at least for me)