CAUTION: If you are checking in Tuesday, October 9th

[kaytieeldr]

Sorry, but if the IT staff can't figure out a way to get this done in a 4-6 hour overnight window(with the ability to go back if the upgrade fails), then they should be replaced.

An outage this long is completely unacceptable. If they can't figure it out, then block out a two day window where WDW is completely shutdown(parks & resorts) to guests during that period.

Really? Cancel hotel reservations that may have been made 500 days ago? Dining reservations people made six months ago? Throw out all the resort guests already onsite?

Not everyone is affected; not everyone uses a dining plan. No reports so far of guests' tickets not working, but I haven't been to TPA&S yet. Now, Disney isn't going to shut down for two days due to an IT upgrade.

 

[kamik86]

I bet if this system changeover could have been done in the wee hours of the morning, it would have been. Apparently it's going to take somewhere in the vicinity of 20 or so hours to complete; early mornings just don't last that long, and spreading it out over five or six days wouldn't work.

Given some of the things I KNOW are redone without large impacts I can't imagine that it couldn't be done. I can however imagine that disney isn't willing to shell out the money required to get those skilled enough to do this, or isn't willing to shell out the money to pay those that they have long enough to correctly plan it out to work this way. (To do an upgrade in a shorter time window generally means spending MORE hours because so much as to be pre-planned and predone)

 

[labattblue]

Not sure what is funny? The concept of them doing this upgrade in a 4-6 hour window or shutting down the resort for 2 days because of an incompetent IT staff?

(I see you edited your post)I wasn't talking about closing down the resorts on a whim. Plan it out ahead of time(a year or more in advance) and shut it down.

 

[reiella]

Unless their systems are non reduntant with single points of failure all over the place, there is no way they should be down for 24 hours. If it is, they seriously need a new IT department.

My educated guess here is that the actual outage will be around midnight for a relatively short period of time and the release to do the work is being over cautious by stating the lengthly window. I can't think of any upgrade I've been involved with (and there have been many), where a customer impacting system would be off line for that long. So, hopefully, the pain felt will be minimal.

And to the OP, I'd be annoyed as hell too if that was happening to me.

I've found that unless the system itself is involved in communications technology, most systems aren't redundant. Very few places outside communications care about 5-9s. The downside of cost/benefit analysis is it tends to be a bit myopic.

 

[dburg30]

I tend to be on the side that unless you are actually part of the IT dept, you have no idea exactly how their system works, and what can and cant be done in a certain way.. You may have an IDEA how you think it works or what can be done, but perhaps, imagine this, you are just flat... out.. wrong..

I'm sorry I know WDW is nothing more then a money hungry company, but even THEY dont want to have their systems down any longer then needed.. They are going to lose money while the systems are down.. Be it where people dont pay for meals, WDW has to refund them, which takes time and resources, lost sales, maybe lost reservations etc etc..

And since parks and places are open til midnight or later, open at 7 or so in the AM, they really dont have any 'off time' if you think about it.. I am surprised they did it on a monday, thought maybe they would put it off til tuesday, but I guess they did it when they chose too.

 

[GillianP1301]

I've found that unless the system itself is involved in communications technology, most systems aren't redundant. Very few places outside communications care about 5-9s. The downside of cost/benefit analysis is it tends to be a bit myopic.

Well, I'm in the telecom industry, so that would explain where my opinions are originating from. From my experience, no service industry company would tolerate an outage of 20+ hours. It's absurd. If the telco provider to WDW shut down for that length of time, I'm pretty sure that would be viewed as unacceptable, so why is it okay for Disney internal IT to do it? The only time I've seen outages approach that length is for a complete physical facility move.

But anyway, today is the day, I'll be curious to see/read what type of disruption is caused. Hopefully for all involved, it's minimal.

 

[Disney_1derland]

Good morning...or not. The system is still down and they are currently not expecting it to be up until around 3pm with full functionality not restored until 7pm. However, we were told by the resort that all locations SHOULD be pushing transactions for dining pan credits no matter what and that it will just update tonight. She said that obviously not everyone will do it, but they are supposed to be doing it. We cannot charge to the room though. After that conversation, I went to the food court and they refused to swipe my card. guess the miscommunication continues. I told the cashier what the manager said and then had to wait for them to clear the confusion. Gonna be a long day I think.

 

[GillianP1301]

Good morning...or not. The system is still down and they are currently not expecting it to be up until around 3pm with full functionality not restored until 7pm. However, we were told by the resort that all locations SHOULD be pushing transactions for dining pan credits no matter what and that it will just update tonight. She said that obviously not everyone will do it, but they are supposed to be doing it. We cannot charge to the room though. After that conversation, I went to the food court and they refused to swipe my card. guess the miscommunication continues. I told the cashier what the manager said and then had to wait for them to clear the confusion. Gonna be a long day I think.

I guess we can all guess and speculate all we want about how long we think an upgrade should take and the bottom line is it will take as long as it takes.

BUT, there is no excuse for poor communication amongst the staff. If they are supposed to keep swimping the card for meals, then every person on shift should know that. That to me is a big blunder, Disney or otherwise.

So I'm curious, what ended up happening? Did the confusion get cleared and your card swiped? If not, what was the expectation, that you would pay OOP and then submit for reimbursment?

 

[bare necessities]

Good morning all! Things going along fine at POR dining hall. No problem swiping cards and no one turned away. Only issue seems to be charging with KTTK card. Had to write number down to process transaction later.

 

[Disney_1derland]

I'm at POR too. Yes we did have an issue, but it was cleared up in about 10 minutes. I'm not feeling overly optimistic about using it outside the resort, but I have cash just in case.

 

[dburg30]

I guess we can all guess and speculate all we want about how long we think an upgrade should take and the bottom line is it will take as long as it takes.

BUT, there is no excuse for poor communication amongst the staff. If they are supposed to keep swimping the card for meals, then every person on shift should know that. That to me is a big blunder, Disney or otherwise.

So I'm curious, what ended up happening? Did the confusion get cleared and your card swiped? If not, what was the expectation, that you would pay OOP and then submit for reimbursment?

We also dont know how much of that is CM's just not paying attention when they are told something.. Having to deal with employees, some of them unless you beat them repeatedly over the head with something about a million times, it just doesnt sink in.. Once it's in there, they are great lol.. But getting there in the first place sometimes...

 

[OrangeCountyCommuter]

While I agree the response was unacceptable, it would be really great if people didn't relay unsupported assumptions - 30 days? to 'maybe' get reimbursed?


I bet if this system changeover could have been done in the wee hours of the morning, it would have been. Apparently it's going to take somewhere in the vicinity of 20 or so hours to complete; early mornings just don't last that long, and spreading it out over five or six days wouldn't work.


If you read the original post, other posts by the OP, and responses from two Cast Members - you'll see it's expected to be completed by 3 PM today.

There is NO system change that can't be done in the wee hours of the morning... it does mean you have to take the wee hours of the morning for FIVE days and you have to plan it that way all along, but that's they way it's done in critical situations or in places where they realize IT works for the company not vice versa LOL!

If my company did this folks would literally DIE so we have learned... no IT doesn't get any sleep for a week, but that's a good trade off in our view.

Disney's IT needs to be completely redone. They think "cute" is more important then "function" and then they pull stunts like this... just bizarre!

 

[Wenny]

I'm at BC and have had no issues using my KTTWC for charging. I'm not on the DDP, so can't comment on that.

I just want to know when I can book ressies.

 

[redgrapes2]

Trying to PAY Disney almost $7K to pay off our 11 person family vacation and cannot access our reservations. STILL. Ridiculous.

 

[Bob NC]

There is NO system change that can't be done in the wee hours of the morning...

OMG, you should call WDW and tell them this!!!

 

[kaytieeldr]

OMG, you should call WDW and tell them this!!!

 

[danny1649]

Since we are now past 9th,we can move on from this thread.