I saw the other day that someone had posted about the "Early Morning Magic Fail" they had on Tuesday, and first, I'd like to thank that poster because the post helped me out quite a bit. I'll start by saying that I'm not a complainer. I don't like people (especially at Disney) that have one tiny thing go wrong, and then expect unlimited fast passes or a night in Cinderella's Castle or a free trip. I also realize that "well, that's what the ticket states" or "things happen" or "at least you're at Disney" or "you can't blame them". I know that mistakes happen, things break, life happens. I am a fan of Disney World and enjoy our time there. Whew.
That being said, I was one of the people that had the same unfortunate experience at the Early Morning Magic on Tuesday. When we arrived at the park, we waited quite awhile until it got close to 7:30. I had heard that they usually start letting you in around 7:30 or so, you walk to the area where they double check your band, and then you're in Fantasyland at 7:45 to start going on the attractions. At 7:40 we were still outside the front gates of the Magic Kingdom, with security telling us they "lost Stitch" in the park and still had to find him and clear the park for security reasons. We didn't get into Fantasyland until a few minutes after 8, which meant we had already lost over 15 minutes of our time. It was frustrating to lose a chunk of the time that we thought we would have there to ride the rides, but figured we still had almost an hour, so it wasn't a huge deal.
We went on Peter Pan twice, walked over to 7DMT and were told it was shut down and they had no idea how long it would be closed, but it could be hours. This was definitely not going well. I understand that things happen. However, the basic purpose of buying this ticket was to get in early and to ride those three rides multiple times without a crowd. It was just my daughter (9) and myself and 7DMT was the one ride she wanted to ride the most and planned on riding for almost the whole time. She was extremely disappointed, but I tried to cheer her up and focus on the good. Until we walked away and went to ride Pooh...
We got to Pooh and were told that the ride was down as well! So we spent a small fortune to have only one of three rides open. (Actually, sorry. They opened the carousel as well, but that really wasn't a perk since there's a never a line for it and you can ride a carousel anywhere.) We wound up riding Peter Pan 8 times (which just felt sad, and not exciting at that point), milling about and then ate the breakfast which was good, but not worth the money that was paid without rides. Obviously things can happen. But the bottom line is that you're paying for a ticket to ride all three rides, multiple times, and they were not able to provide that service to you, which is what you paid for. If you were told you could pay $70 to ride Peter Pan for an hour and have a mediocre buffet breakfast, would you do it? Probably not.
The ride attendants told us that we could ride 7DMT until noon that day. Nice, I guess, but we had three fast passes set up for that time frame, and none of them would have us in the area of 7DMT. If we switched our fast passes (which have to be set up months in advance) we would've lost the rides that we wanted because all of those FastPasses were gone for the day. We were never able to get back to Fantasyland in time to use the bands...and from what I read, the others who did were stuck in 20 minute lines anyway, which meant the value of the cost went from multiple rides on it, to maybe a couple.
That being said, this is what my REAL issue is with how this all went down. Since I was trying to cheer up my very disappointed child, by still trying to ride Peter Pan and by eating breakfast.....I didn't want to make it worse by running somewhere and complaining in that moment. First, there wasn't ONE Disney World manager or customer service rep in the area to speak to, once they realized there was an issue. It would have been nice to have someone there explaining what was wrong and letting people know if there was anything they were willing to do about the situation. THere was no one. So we ate and I had to try and figure out when we could go speak to someone once the park opened for the day, between all of our fast pass plans.
I went to talk to someone in Liberty Square Customer Service. She was very nice and said they would compensate us by giving us 2 fast passes each for the day to go back to those rides. She seemed like I should be thrilled with that, and I said that going on each ride only once was hardly a replacement for being able to ride it multiple times. She went through the "things happen" talk and said this was the best they could do. I wasn't going to scream and yell in front of my 9 year old (and probably wouldn't have anyway because it's not my style), but I was frustrated and didn't feel like that was fair considering how expensive this experience was for us. But at that point, after I had nicely and politely explained it all to her, I figured what more could I do anyway?
However, I kept thinking of how many times on these boards people had raved about how Disney tries to make you happy, they go above and beyond to make things "right" and was kind of suprised that they could have people that paid so much extra for this experience and the best they could do was a free fast pass.
That night, I went back to our hotel room and was reading this board, when I came across a post from a person who said that they had gotten a FULL REFUND for the experience! WHAT?!?!? And then I kept reading and found out they weren't alone! Other people had gotten a full refund as well, along with someone saying they got a partial refund. I kept thinking, how could that be?
So I went back to the Customer Service desk on Friday (our next day at MK) and told them that I know others got a full refund and that I would like a full refund as well. I was super polite and friendly, and the woman said she heard about that event and would "look into it for me". I was feeling hopeful and patiently waited for TWENTY minutes while she "looked" at computer screen after computer screen. I was trying not to be rude, but I kind of wanted to ask her what exactly she was "looking" for. Either Disney should be allowing a refund to any customer that bought that ticket, or they should not be allowing it. Right?
After those 20 minutes, she looked up and started into a whole little speech about how they realize that things happen, it states that this is a non-refundable event and that the rides can go down etc....and then went on to say that "every guest's experience is different and every way we decide to compensate is different". Then she said they would not refund my money. What?!? As it turns out, after having to speak to someone else and ruining an hour of my day and missing a fast pass, they wound up giving me a resort gift card for that amount. I am satisfied at this point with that....but here is what really bothers me.....
How do they decide this? Why are all customers who pay the same price, not considered equal in terms of what they are allowed to receive as a refund? Why did some people get full refunds, others got partial refunds, some got gift cards, some got fast passes and some got nothing? Do we NEED to scream and yell and carry on to get more? Do we need to be awful people to be treated equally? I'm so confused. Yes, it's nice that they gave us anything at all...but I am so utterly confused at why people who went through the exact same thing were compensated differently.
Is it based on our financial status? Grand Floridian customers will get back more than an All-Star resort customer? Is it based on the number of past stays? How much money you spend while you're there? What in the world could the "criteria" be?
So, that's what left a bad taste in my mouth. There was a special, ticketed event that every person paid the same amount for. Each person had the same experience (1 of 3 rides open and breakfast) and did not receive the advertised experience for that ticket. Disney decided that some of those people deserved a full refund of their money, some deserved a partial refund, or a gift card, or fast passes. And sadly, some got nothing at all because they didn't know they could ask for it.
I'm curious to know how others feel about this?
That being said, I was one of the people that had the same unfortunate experience at the Early Morning Magic on Tuesday. When we arrived at the park, we waited quite awhile until it got close to 7:30. I had heard that they usually start letting you in around 7:30 or so, you walk to the area where they double check your band, and then you're in Fantasyland at 7:45 to start going on the attractions. At 7:40 we were still outside the front gates of the Magic Kingdom, with security telling us they "lost Stitch" in the park and still had to find him and clear the park for security reasons. We didn't get into Fantasyland until a few minutes after 8, which meant we had already lost over 15 minutes of our time. It was frustrating to lose a chunk of the time that we thought we would have there to ride the rides, but figured we still had almost an hour, so it wasn't a huge deal.
We went on Peter Pan twice, walked over to 7DMT and were told it was shut down and they had no idea how long it would be closed, but it could be hours. This was definitely not going well. I understand that things happen. However, the basic purpose of buying this ticket was to get in early and to ride those three rides multiple times without a crowd. It was just my daughter (9) and myself and 7DMT was the one ride she wanted to ride the most and planned on riding for almost the whole time. She was extremely disappointed, but I tried to cheer her up and focus on the good. Until we walked away and went to ride Pooh...
We got to Pooh and were told that the ride was down as well! So we spent a small fortune to have only one of three rides open. (Actually, sorry. They opened the carousel as well, but that really wasn't a perk since there's a never a line for it and you can ride a carousel anywhere.) We wound up riding Peter Pan 8 times (which just felt sad, and not exciting at that point), milling about and then ate the breakfast which was good, but not worth the money that was paid without rides. Obviously things can happen. But the bottom line is that you're paying for a ticket to ride all three rides, multiple times, and they were not able to provide that service to you, which is what you paid for. If you were told you could pay $70 to ride Peter Pan for an hour and have a mediocre buffet breakfast, would you do it? Probably not.
The ride attendants told us that we could ride 7DMT until noon that day. Nice, I guess, but we had three fast passes set up for that time frame, and none of them would have us in the area of 7DMT. If we switched our fast passes (which have to be set up months in advance) we would've lost the rides that we wanted because all of those FastPasses were gone for the day. We were never able to get back to Fantasyland in time to use the bands...and from what I read, the others who did were stuck in 20 minute lines anyway, which meant the value of the cost went from multiple rides on it, to maybe a couple.
That being said, this is what my REAL issue is with how this all went down. Since I was trying to cheer up my very disappointed child, by still trying to ride Peter Pan and by eating breakfast.....I didn't want to make it worse by running somewhere and complaining in that moment. First, there wasn't ONE Disney World manager or customer service rep in the area to speak to, once they realized there was an issue. It would have been nice to have someone there explaining what was wrong and letting people know if there was anything they were willing to do about the situation. THere was no one. So we ate and I had to try and figure out when we could go speak to someone once the park opened for the day, between all of our fast pass plans.
I went to talk to someone in Liberty Square Customer Service. She was very nice and said they would compensate us by giving us 2 fast passes each for the day to go back to those rides. She seemed like I should be thrilled with that, and I said that going on each ride only once was hardly a replacement for being able to ride it multiple times. She went through the "things happen" talk and said this was the best they could do. I wasn't going to scream and yell in front of my 9 year old (and probably wouldn't have anyway because it's not my style), but I was frustrated and didn't feel like that was fair considering how expensive this experience was for us. But at that point, after I had nicely and politely explained it all to her, I figured what more could I do anyway?
However, I kept thinking of how many times on these boards people had raved about how Disney tries to make you happy, they go above and beyond to make things "right" and was kind of suprised that they could have people that paid so much extra for this experience and the best they could do was a free fast pass.
That night, I went back to our hotel room and was reading this board, when I came across a post from a person who said that they had gotten a FULL REFUND for the experience! WHAT?!?!? And then I kept reading and found out they weren't alone! Other people had gotten a full refund as well, along with someone saying they got a partial refund. I kept thinking, how could that be?
So I went back to the Customer Service desk on Friday (our next day at MK) and told them that I know others got a full refund and that I would like a full refund as well. I was super polite and friendly, and the woman said she heard about that event and would "look into it for me". I was feeling hopeful and patiently waited for TWENTY minutes while she "looked" at computer screen after computer screen. I was trying not to be rude, but I kind of wanted to ask her what exactly she was "looking" for. Either Disney should be allowing a refund to any customer that bought that ticket, or they should not be allowing it. Right?
After those 20 minutes, she looked up and started into a whole little speech about how they realize that things happen, it states that this is a non-refundable event and that the rides can go down etc....and then went on to say that "every guest's experience is different and every way we decide to compensate is different". Then she said they would not refund my money. What?!? As it turns out, after having to speak to someone else and ruining an hour of my day and missing a fast pass, they wound up giving me a resort gift card for that amount. I am satisfied at this point with that....but here is what really bothers me.....
How do they decide this? Why are all customers who pay the same price, not considered equal in terms of what they are allowed to receive as a refund? Why did some people get full refunds, others got partial refunds, some got gift cards, some got fast passes and some got nothing? Do we NEED to scream and yell and carry on to get more? Do we need to be awful people to be treated equally? I'm so confused. Yes, it's nice that they gave us anything at all...but I am so utterly confused at why people who went through the exact same thing were compensated differently.
Is it based on our financial status? Grand Floridian customers will get back more than an All-Star resort customer? Is it based on the number of past stays? How much money you spend while you're there? What in the world could the "criteria" be?
So, that's what left a bad taste in my mouth. There was a special, ticketed event that every person paid the same amount for. Each person had the same experience (1 of 3 rides open and breakfast) and did not receive the advertised experience for that ticket. Disney decided that some of those people deserved a full refund of their money, some deserved a partial refund, or a gift card, or fast passes. And sadly, some got nothing at all because they didn't know they could ask for it.
I'm curious to know how others feel about this?
