"Disney, what has to happen for you to decide that MDE does not work?"

[greg9x]

Well, thankfully we didn't have any serious issues on recent trip besides connection issues to MDE a few times... was very paranoid due to all the reported problems.
Obviously a lot has been going on behind the scenes the last few months.. and it's probably Disney trying to implement new ways to make $$$'s.
But no one should really be surprised... the big stink about laying off the U.S. IT workers and outsourcing is showing it's effects. As others have mentioned, when you deal with outsourced IT you get problems.... but for Disney they are saving money so it's still a 'win' for them.

Again... Disney is too popular, the higher demands on the system is showing it's weaknesses.

 

[Nancyg56]

Well, thankfully we didn't have any serious issues on recent trip besides connection issues to MDE a few times... was very paranoid due to all the reported problems.
Obviously a lot has been going on behind the scenes the last few months.. and it's probably Disney trying to implement new ways to make $$$'s.
But no one should really be surprised... the big stink about laying off the U.S. IT workers and outsourcing is showing it's effects. As others have mentioned, when you deal with outsourced IT you get problems.... but for Disney they are saving money so it's still a 'win' for them.

Again... Disney is too popular, the higher demands on the system is showing it's weaknesses.

Oh I rather doubt that DIsney is happy at this point. They implemented a system that almost forces their guests to use MDE, and they must begin months in advance. While plannign 180 days in advance of a trip may almost seem normal to most of us, there is a promise involved on DIsney's part, and when they renege on that promise they pay a price. I am not sure that the folks who did what they were supposed to do, booked resorts in advance, planned ADR's months in advance, and then booked FP at the appointed hour were just okay when the system crashed. That kind of problem rolls uphill, not down.

My DD and I were discussing how our family will try to plan in advance for this, and we are a bit flummoxed. Yes, printouts will be made, but those elusive FP are going to be a problem if they go POOF! And no one accepts my printouts, I imagine others who went through that had a probelm as well, and expected DIsney to make good.

No, for whatever reason, Disney has a mess on their hands, and untill that technology is corrected hey will not be happy.

 

[Mikecormier1978]

Ok so 4 days into this I'm still getting the same answers as on day 1. They cant fix it obviously, so why dont they shut it down for a couple days and figure it out or launch a new MDE. I think people would understand as long as in the end they have a working product.

 

[chris benton]

Ok so 4 days into this I'm still getting the same answers as on day 1. They cant fix it obviously, so why dont they shut it down for a couple days and figure it out or launch a new MDE. I think people would understand as long as in the end they have a working product.

I'm sure plenty of ppl would agree with you. If they don't know the root cause of the issue, there is no reason yet to shut it all down. Some folks are still ok. Luckily, I'm all good now. I hope you get back to a functional state asap.

However, in the world of WDW income, if you are still gonna pay for your trip, then everything is just fine to them. I kinda hope that if ppl genuinely get scrood over in some way, that WDW would offer some sort of olive branch. I have no idea what that olive branch would be, but hopefully they can find an identifier of the ppl that got screwed, and then rectify the situation. I'd bet it won't be a monetary award, more like an extra fastpass or two (or 10!)

If I got screwed out of my 60+ FP day, and still couldn't get what I wanted, I'd do more research, and then if I found out this was an issue because of IT outsourcing, AND I was not given correct remediation for my requirements, I'd cancel my trip. There is no way I'd pay this much money to be treated like an absolute fool. I hope everyone gets their stuff straightened out. It seems as though DIS usually gets it together, and does the right thing.

 

[MicroBeta]

This should ring a bell with anyone that is familiar with IT outsourcing. I'm not saying that this is the reason for these frequent issues, but I do know that there are plenty of times at other companies where too many cooks are spoiling the stew. The issue with some of the cooks is that they do not know they are making stew, they just think they are creating the sliced carrots, and don't even know what they are for. Ever had a stew with giant pieces of carrots, but everything else is cut in such a way that they will cook evenly in harmony? Some times, it's a giant carrot, but what about a hunk of uncooked potato sitting in a bowl of stew? A whole head of garlic? A bone with no meat? A person much wiser than me once told me that he figured out why companies outsource their IT. It's because the execs are more familiar with money than IT or contracts, so the outsourcing companies have become brilliant at displaying cost savings, and writing rock-solid contracts. IT is an afterthought. Some laugh all the way to the bank.

I completely agree this is most likely an outsourcing problem. I’m an engineer and we used to write most of our analysis tools in-house but have increasingly used commercial companies for our software. The problem is that programmers think like programmers and not like engineers. Or, any other end user for that matter. Their idea of how something should be done and how the end user wants it to work is often two different things.

Disney likely doesn’t have or want any idea how the software will accomplish a task. They worked with the vendor to create some kind of software development plan to accomplish a list of tasks and said do it. Now the vendor has to try to integrate that plan into Disney’s existing systems. Making their stuff work with the other guys stuff is a difficult task. Especially considering how proprietary everything is. That guy isn’t going to tell the other guy how their software works so the new guy has to figure how to take the first guys output and use it in his/her stuff...or you can pay the first guy a crap ton of money to write a module to output data in a form for the next guy...and so on and so on...until your head hurts.

Then there’s going with the lowest bidder who rushes to meet the contracted deadlines by stitching together canned modules and fixing problems on the fly...let the end users be the beta testers.

IMHO, MDE seems to have a couple of issues. A big one is bandwidth. Something is released and their system can’t handle the throughput and we get pictures of Stitch and Olaf missing an arm. I can’t say for sure but I also think their database can sometimes become unstable. A previous posters comments about Disney having to rebuild her MDE account is just one indication of this.

These kinds of problems are why we’re now back to having our own engineers write our stress analysis tools.

Mike

 

[chris benton]

The problem is that programmers think like programmers and not like engineers. Or, any other end user for that matter. Their idea of how something should be done and how the end user wants it work is often two different things.
Mike

One thing the execs are not aware of is that the long time-in house, programmers have, or should have, developed the sense of corporate culture, and innately know what is needed to play nice with the other systems and create accordingly with the end user in mind - since they already know they will have to modify the creation in the end anyway, after the requestor figures out that they made an incorrect request for the 6 thousandth time.

You can probably guess my occupation.

 

[fractalpotato]

Disney absolutely backed themselves in to a corner with how this was built, but I doubt they're, at a corporate level, unhappy. They're raking in the money, so the people that would have to authorize a replacement or rewrite have absolutely no incentive to do so. Mess with their bonuses and profit sharing and it will change yesterday though, I promise you.

I also believe the IT department maintaining this thing loathes it and wants to burn it to the ground every day but they don't get to make that call. I've been in their shoes. I feel for them, I try to be as nice as possible when dealing with them or any cast members having system problems because I know they're probably suffering more than we are. It's bad to have your dream vacation screwed with, it's far worse to be the one 'responsible' for it, powerless and knowing you could have done better.

To anyone defending the system due to it's load, that's a joke. Firstly, the load is just not that much, in the financial sector hundreds of thousands of operations of similar magnitude resolve in under one second, all over the world, with software written as much as thirty years ago. The sheer amount of data that moves in five minutes would make Disney's system look like that one programming class you took back in high school. This load is laughable in the grand scheme. It's also almost entirely fabricated by an incredibly inefficient service framework that duplicates data constantly for what appears to be patching holes in the architecture design. This sort of thing also exacerbates the same inconsistencies seen in reservations and tickets disappearing at random, the data isn't properly centralized and distributed. It's copied repeatedly and rapidly falls out of sync.

To those that don't understand why they don't just turn it off and fix/replace it, this is not a few days or weeks of work. This would be a new system rebuild, they would have to swap from one to the other, there is no universe where you can just shut it off and rebuild it. In addition, they'd need backing of the same executives I mentioned in the first paragraph, it's just not going to happen until they're not making money because of it, and that's just not going to happen as long as people are going to Disney World.

Matt

 

[MicroBeta]

One thing the execs are not aware of is that the long time-in house, programmers have, or should have, developed the sense of corporate culture, and innately know what is needed to play nice with the other systems and create accordingly with the end user in mind - since they already know they will have to modify the creation in the end anyway, after the requestor figures out that they made an incorrect request for the 6 thousandth time.

You can probably guess my occupation.

I so agree. And, it’s also more than knowing how to make everything play nice. In order to transfer models from design to analysis software there are certain procedures the designers need to follow starting at model creation all the way to the final version. There are other departments have also data inputs into the design software.

We decided early on that if we were going to do this we needed to include all the other groups (designers, materials, etc.) in the team so we control every step along the way. Nobody believes this will eliminate all the problems but it sure as heck makes it much easier to find and fix issues as they come along without everything crashing and without data loss.

I can’t say for sure but I think these are the pieces that is missing from MDE. It seems nobody thought about how to make it work; only what it was they wanted it to do. Now their mired in patching a flawed system with chewing gum and bailing wire just as long as it works enough of the time.

Mike

 

[fractalpotato]

I so agree. And, it’s also more than knowing how to make everything play nice. In order to transfer models from design to analysis software there are certain procedures the designers need to follow starting at model creation all the way to the final version. There are other departments have also data inputs into the design software.

We decided early on that if we were going to do this we needed to include all the other groups (designers, materials, etc.) in the team so we control every step along the way. Nobody believes this will eliminate all the problems but it sure as heck makes it much easier to find and fix issues as they come along without everything crashing and without data loss.

I can’t say for sure but I think these are the pieces that is missing from MDE. It seems nobody thought about how to make it work; only what it was they wanted it to do. Now their mired in patching a flawed system with chewing gum and bailing wire just as long as it works enough of the time.

Mike

I'm lucky that the place I work now fully supports this kind of collaborative flow. Start to finish design intent and forward thinking is huge and many companies skimp on it to save a few dollars and minutes up front. It's amazing how many different ways there are to solve a problem wrong that seem fine until you're 1000 hours in because you never looked more than three steps forward!

Matt

 

[chris benton]

I'm lucky that the place I work now fully supports this kind of collaborative flow. Start to finish design intent and forward thinking is huge and many companies skimp on it to save a few dollars and minutes up front. It's amazing how many different ways there are to solve a problem wrong that seem fine until you're 1000 hours in because you never looked more than three steps forward!

Matt

What I've seen time and time again is, the execs simply jump ship, and get a better job after boasting their "efforts" of saving the company's bottom line. There's no need to use forward thinking. The previous co. is left in a mess, while the honcho moves to greener pastures - even within the same corporation. It's hilarious.
On the lower end of the spectrum, the more things that break, the more things that the outsoured IT can "fix." Since they will be praised for that, in a mind boggling twist, you guessed it. They are stars since they fix the issues (that they caused.) The contracts, I tell you, they are rock solid and account for this stuff. They are not responsible for failures, since they ONLY do what they are told. They are praised for fixing things, and reap monetary rewards - even if the stuff that is broken is directly because of their inabilities. Again, the execs are just clueless to the whole cycle. Hard to pay attention when you're shopping for yachts.

 

[mog]

We easily got a FP for FOP at our 60 days when we went in April. There were several times available. My FP window is today but my Shades of Green reservation dropped off and will not link again. I spoke with someone in chat yesterday who could not figure out how to get it linked either and sent it "back stage". I asked about getting Fast Passes and he could not guarantee they would do anything.

I'm having the same problem - 2 rooms at Shades of Green dropped from MDE and I can't get them linked back up. Luckily we aren't close to our 60 day FP window yet so I'm hoping they get it figured out. However, several dining reservations are also missing. I guess I'm okay on those since I have emails with the confirmation numbers. I just wish they would get it fixed!

 

[0FF TO NEVERLAND]

I’ve never had a problem with the app. Yes when I am in the parks trying to get new fast passes, it goes slow, and I gotta pull down the menu to reload sometimes, but I’ve never had a big issue with it.

Sucks some people have but I enjoy the app and love the concept of it. It’s made all my trips easy. Even with making advanced stuff

 

[chris benton]

I’ve never had a problem with the app. Yes when I am in the parks trying to get new fast passes, it goes slow, and I gotta pull down the menu to reload sometimes, but I’ve never had a big issue with it.

Sucks some people have but I enjoy the app and love the concept of it. It’s made all my trips easy. Even with making advanced stuff

I like the app, and I've had minimal major issues. I think everyone likes, or at the very least can tolerate it for what it does when it's functional, which is most f the time, I think. The issue at hand is that over the past week or so, there's been a mass outage, so if you've not been building itineraries very recently, it's just business as usual. Some people have not been able to make their advance 60 day FP selections inside their 60 day window, or their adr's. They do not know what will happen when they will be able to make those selections, but I'd guess they'll still have to PAY for that benefit. I'm thankfully not one who was affected in a major way. Hopefully you were not, either.

 

[SaintsManiac]

I’ve never had a problem with the app. Yes when I am in the parks trying to get new fast passes, it goes slow, and I gotta pull down the menu to reload sometimes, but I’ve never had a big issue with it.

Sucks some people have but I enjoy the app and love the concept of it. It’s made all my trips easy. Even with making advanced stuff

Most of my issues have been on the website, not the app.

 

[VrBchJ]

My MDE was rebuilt about a month ago, also. The reason I was told it was necessary was I had "too many indicators". Of course I asked what an indicator was or how did I get too many. I was told because I came to the World too much and "it" builds up?! Go figure.

Same thing I went through in Dec 2017. I was stunned when they told me I had too many reservations. It took 3 days to get it all straightened out. And now this!!!

 

[MicroBeta]

One thing I find weird is when both my wife and I are on our laptops and one of us is getting Stitch eating pages and the other is not having any issues. That one boggles the mind...

edit-We're both on the same brand, OS, and browser.

Mike

 

[fractalpotato]

One thing I find weird is when both my wife and I are on our laptops and one of us is getting Stitch eating pages and the other is not having any issues. That one boggles the mind...

edit-We're both on the same brand, OS, and browser.

Mike

This is because, at least in part, Disney's system is designed to let your browser do some of the heavy lifting (which is terrible design), which means it needs to be aware of some state. From experience, when your local state doesn't match Disney's, and you send a message based on that information that doesn't match theirs, it ends poorly. It should reply back with the response to your request based on what it thinks is true, as well as correcting your local copy. Instead, it crashes and sprays a rather verbose technical message from the depths of their system to your browser. Your browser interprets this as something it doesn't understand and asks the system for the error page, which is Stitch.

Matt

 

[hayesdvc]

I now have ADR's that are showing up for an upcoming trip I cancelled months ago. It states beside each : "Sorry, cancellation of this reservation is currently unavailable."

 

[greg9x]

Oh I rather doubt that DIsney is happy at this point. They implemented a system that almost forces their guests to use MDE, and they must begin months in advance. While plannign 180 days in advance of a trip may almost seem normal to most of us, there is a promise involved on DIsney's part, and when they renege on that promise they pay a price. I am not sure that the folks who did what they were supposed to do, booked resorts in advance, planned ADR's months in advance, and then booked FP at the appointed hour were just okay when the system crashed. That kind of problem rolls uphill, not down.

My DD and I were discussing how our family will try to plan in advance for this, and we are a bit flummoxed. Yes, printouts will be made, but those elusive FP are going to be a problem if they go POOF! And no one accepts my printouts, I imagine others who went through that had a probelm as well, and expected DIsney to make good.

No, for whatever reason, Disney has a mess on their hands, and untill that technology is corrected hey will not be happy.

Your still going, that makes Disney happy. Until enough people stop going this is just a minor issue to them .

 

[AngiTN]

Your still going, that makes Disney happy. Until enough people stop going this is just a minor issue to them .

What do you suggest to these people tell their kids who want to take their kids to Disney World for their first trip?
Sorry kids, we aren't going to take you to Disney World because their IT dept sucks?
Where else do they go to get their Disney World trip in?
It's not like they want to buy a pair of Nike shoes so they can shop around for the best deal on them.
They want Disney World, they have one place to go to get it.