double booked? be careful...

[tiger4me2]

I called today to change a adr and when I got done , the cast member said we needed to cancel the one that I had before changing to the new one. Which I was going to do. That was the first time a cm said that to me.

Then you had a misinform CM. They will never cancel the one you have until they book the one you really want & then & only then do they go back & cancel. I know as I just got off phone changing one of my ADR's & she said let check first & if they have it they book it then cancel. She also said there is no way they cancel tell if you double book unless you are doing at the same time you are on the phone. And they only have your phone number & they can't really spend Disney hard earn money to call the guest <smiles> I have had mine cancel & no they were not double bookings but ADR's booked for my future stays & it was done by the club level planners dumb move on their part since I told them ahead of time that I was coming down in the future so please don't cancel any that they see. I got them back but this is not the point. I think & it is my view only if you double book shame on you but don't say Disney will cancel all ADRs for that person. But believe what you want.

 

[planitdad]

Just curious as to where the mods viewpoint is on this issue. Isn't discussing double booking circumventing Disney policy? Isn't this all based on rumor?

 

[PrincessTiffany]

What is so difficult with self-discipline? If there are 10 people in the group why is it do difficult to book 10 reservations? Not 8 here plus 4 there and another 2 over there....just 10 reservations.

As far as I can figure it out, Disney has a responsibility as you suggest. A responsibility to accept your reservation and seat you in response to the reservation. I'd also suggest that adding a fee for reservations not used would be in order.

It's not only about selfish people who double bood ADRs, as the disney ADR system has flaws of it's own. Last year my BIL and SIL and their kids went with us in September for free dining and I planned out and made everybody's ADRs. Well, the next day my SIL called and said that my BIL could not get off work the week we had planned to go and we had to move the trip up by one week. Well, I had to call and make a whole new set of ADRs and plans and cancel the first set of ADRs. Well, right before our trip, I called WDW dining so see if I could move up the time one of our ADRs, which I did and then before I hung up the CM said have a great trip I see you will be here for 2 weeks, what a great vacation. Well, I said, no we will only be in WDW for one week. She says, well, I see you have two weeks worth of dining reservations. It turns out that they never cancelled the first set of ADRs that I had made. What would have happended if I, by chance, had not called to change something? Would they have cancelled ALL of my dining reservations and penalized us because one of THEIR CMs did not cancel my first set of ADRs, as I requested? Also, those ADRs were tied up for months and no one else could book those times. If I would not have called those times would have never opened up at all.

 

[Samantha/NC]

That is not very disney of them

I REALLY just can not imagine that being true-We are doing a magical gathering so we made room and adr's at the same time-so they do have all of our info, including an email address--but we got all of our ADR's so no need to double book, and I am not so sure that we would have done that anyway!

 

[Boardwalk Gal]

Wouldn't they be able to see that you have 7 people in your party and 4 are going here and 3 are going there? I don't really think that is considered "double booking".... but who knows... maybe you could call them and ask....

you would think!!!
But when i split the party half of us are going to Morrocco while the other half is going to Japan, the cm questioned me and told me you can't double book!! i was like..huh???? I said, i am not doubling booking, but merely splitting the party because some of us don't like morrocco food and opt to go Japan instead since the countries are right next to each other. and she paused and said, oh, ok, right...

 

[SharpMomOfTwo]

I think its a good thing, I mean, double booking is cheating! I understand you want everything for your child, and you will do anything and everything to get it, but what about the next family that missed out because of you??? If we are truely in the Disney spirit of things, we shouldn't be doing that sort of thing anyway.
Having said that, we have ADRs planned for every day we are going to be in Disney, but I don't know if we will make it to all of them. We 100% want to, and are going to try, but I know my party of 8 wont want to be tied down all the time (we have mostly morning ADRs, so if I know we are going to have a late night or something, the next morning we may want to sleep in). I will, however, make my best effort to call and cancle the ADRs 48 hours out, or at least 24 hours. I doubt we will miss any though, they are all character meals, and I know my girls will LOVE THEM!!!

 

[Lehuaann]

I talked to a CM in May about CM's cancelling all adr's over double-booked ressies. She said that canceling double-booked ressies is not something new and if an account looks suspicious they flag it. The management is supposed to call first before canceling any adr's.

IMO:::::I think the best system that will nip ALL this in the bud is to start attaching ALL NAMES IN THE PARTY to the adr and MATCH WITH ID's/KTTW CARDS at the restaurant podium (except for children). Disney needs to develop a system to see whether names are being double-booked. That will nip using different phone numbers to abuse the system, needing large parties to split up (Grand Gatherings), and etc. Does this make sense???

 

[Stitch And Friends]

Until something official comes out from Disney, I don't believe this. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people should have double bookings, but I don't know how easy it would be for Disney to manage the cancellations. The reason I don't believe this is for a while I kept hearing if you changed your hotel reservation and it caused your reservation number to change, any ADRs associated with the old ressie number would be cancelled. A few years ago we changed our package when discounts came out which caused our ressie number to change, so I immediately called to check on my ADRs. The CM who helped me said they were unaware of this ever happening (but did update the info for me anyway). You could probably call 5 times asking whether or not this "new" policy is true and you will probably get 5 different answers until an official announcment is made.

On a separate note, I would love for this to be true for the possibility I could get an ADR for Dec at Le Cellier! I have been calling for a couple of weeks now and my timeframe is completely booked

 

[Lehuaann]

Until something official comes out from Disney, I don't believe this. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people should have double bookings, but I don't know how easy it would be for Disney to manage the cancellations. The reason I don't believe this is for a while I kept hearing if you changed your hotel reservation and it caused your reservation number to change, any ADRs associated with the old ressie number would be cancelled. A few years ago we changed our package when discounts came out which caused our ressie number to change, so I immediately called to check on my ADRs. The CM who helped me said they were unaware of this ever happening (but did update the info for me anyway). You could probably call 5 times asking whether or not this "new" policy is true and you will probably get 5 different answers until an official announcment is made.

On a separate note, I would love for this to be true for the possibility I could get an ADR for Dec at Le Cellier! I have been calling for a couple of weeks now and my timeframe is completely booked

This is not new. Here is a thread where someone had their adr's cancelled without notice...

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1786255

Like I said I think the best system is to start attaching all names in the party to the adr and match with IDs or KTTW cards at the restaurant podium.

 

[RACHELSMOM1]

I mentioned in another thread, but when making changes to some of our ADR's last week each time I got a new place, I was made to cancel my prior ADR right after securing the new one. It's not a 'rumor' that they are not allowing it if they catch it. They are really watching out for double bookings now. I was fine with cancelling immediately. I didn't plan on keeping them anyway.

The rumor part came as the OP did not sound legit. Read about the "emails" and the supposed fact that "all of your ADRs will be cancelled if you double book one ADR". This does not make sense, and it is heresay - the OP stated that "a coworker called at 7am" - that is not a known fact if it is supposedly from someone else who stated the "facts" we are talking about. Heresay and rumor - that is what I meant. I know for a fact that a CM told me on occasion that after I made a new ADR, I had to cancel the other one that was at the same time. I do not dispute this fact, but what the OP stated was supposedly relayed to her from a coworker. That is all I meant by my post.

 

[bytheblood]

Not that I agree with double booking, because I don't, but now how would they contact you again? Most bookings have no e-mail address associated to them, so in short either you'll get a call, or you're going to be tough out of luck.

If you have a reservation, it is all generally linked by a phone number.

 

[jennwndrlnd]

What is so difficult with self-discipline? If there are 10 people in the group why is it do difficult to book 10 reservations? Not 8 here plus 4 there and another 2 over there....just 10 reservations.

As far as I can figure it out, Disney has a responsibility as you suggest. A responsibility to accept your reservation and seat you in response to the reservation. I'd also suggest that adding a fee for reservations not used would be in order.

How is it a self-discipline problem? There are nine of us from ages 5 to 70, one vegetarian and one person that must eat at certain times because of medication issues. Because of that there will be evenings where we will all nine dine together, and some nights where five may go one place and four to another at a later time. It's not my fault that we couldn't be accommodated for such a large party between the hours of 5-7 (for the person on medication) so we just split up and will go to different places. Even if that weren't the case, there is no rule nor is it a self-discipline issue to want to eat at certain places even if the entire group is going to another place. It's our money and our vacation and we should be allowed to dine where we wish.

One phone call took care of all of this, we have nights where we are split at different places and the supervisor I spoke with said that none of our ADRs will be canceled even though it looks as though we have double bookings. I was told they would always call to confirm if they had any questions and nothing would be canceled out of the blue.

 

[jennwndrlnd]

This is not new. Here is a thread where someone had their adr's cancelled without notice...

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1786255

Like I said I think the best system is to start attaching all names in the party to the adr and match with IDs or KTTW cards at the restaurant podium.

They weren't canceled, the person was just worried that they might be since they were switching packages.

 

[Lehuaann]

The rumor part came as the OP did not sound legit. Read about the "emails" and the supposed fact that "all of your ADRs will be cancelled if you double book one ADR". This does not make sense, and it is heresay - the OP stated that "a coworker called at 7am" - that is not a known fact if it is supposedly from someone else who stated the "facts" we are talking about. Heresay and rumor - that is what I meant. I know for a fact that a CM told me on occasion that after I made a new ADR, I had to cancel the other one that was at the same time. I do not dispute this fact, but what the OP stated was supposedly relayed to her from a coworker. That is all I meant by my post.

I completely understand what you are saying...OP's wording sounds questionable.

I however personally talked to a CM about this and she told me they only flag suspicious accounts and management is supposed to call first. But then again CM's all seem to contradict one another.

 

[Lehuaann]

They weren't canceled, the person was just worried that they might be since they were switching packages.

You need to read the second post down in the link again.

 

[Tricia1972]

This canceling policy is making less and less sense to me.

I can see the point about flagging a suspicious account. That may be very possible.

I can't see Disney paying to call people who have double booked before canceling. We are talking about a lot of extra expense for a company that is currently not losing money doing things the way they're doing them now.

I CAN see CM's getting upset and seeing what they feel is un-Disney about those who have double booked. I can totally see someone 'oops' losing a reservation or two for a demanding or an insanely double booked person. It'd be along the same lines of the waiter who went against policy and left a present in someone's food. You don't hear about it a lot because it's against policy to do it, but the occasional employee does break against policy for their perceived 'vengeance'.

I believe that Disney nips no-shows in the bud by requiring credit card holds on certain reservations. Those also take more time and they are only doing them where they are losing enough money to make it worth their while.

Disney is a business plain and simple.

Should there be double bookings, no. I know my response sounds like I am defending them - I want to be clear that I am not. However, from a business standpoint - I can't see why Disney would mess with their current system for double bookings.

 

[Brian Noble]

You need to read the second post down in the link again

Those weren't double bookings. They were three separate trips--something else was going on there, but it was never clear. From that post:

One trip in May, second trip Sept/Oct third trip in Dec. All they had to do was look at the dates

 

[Lehuaann]

Those weren't double bookings. They were three separate trips--something else was going on there, but it was never clear. From that post:

Double-bookings, triple-bookings, three trips, five trips...not my point. I posted the link to show that Disney cancelled all her ADR's without her knowledge...that is a concern for me.

You should be okay. I never had a problem with dining canceling any of my ADR's expect for once they cancel all of them because they saw triple ones so they cancel all of them. Unlucky for me because they were for the three upcoming trips I had planned. When I found out I blew a gasket I talked to a guest service supervisor & told her flat out I want them back the same places & same time as Disney had no right to cancel them all they had to do was look at the dates. One trip in May, second trip Sept/Oct third trip in Dec. All they had to do was look at the dates or at the most call me. To make it worse I told them at each time I had upcoming trips so they knew about them. She got them back for me with little trouble & said she was sorry but it gets confusing at times which I understand but all that CM had to do was either look at dates or call me.

With this said with my upcoming three trips this year I point out to dining again I have three trips plan so don't mess with my ADR's LOL.

 

[Tricia1972]

Double-bookings, triple-bookings, three trips, five trips...not my point. I posted the link to show that Disney cancelled all her ADR's without her knowledge...that is a concern for me.

My vote is still for an annoyed cast member making a mistake on purpose.

 

[Brian Noble]

I posted the link to show that Disney cancelled all her ADR's without her knowledge

That's fine, but I have never read a first-hand report of someone who had their ADRs cancelled automagically for double booking. As mentioned, the DRC CMs will balk at being asked to double book if they realize that's what's going on.

I have no idea what happened in that poster's case, because it was very odd. There is no plausible reason why anyone with multiple trips booked should have all their (non-overlapping) ADRs cancelled out from under them, and so I suspect something else is going on there.