Fastpass+ WATER TORTURE!

[Bonacker]

The MDE website today is so glitchy and muddled and mistake-riddled that trying to endure the slow, painful, process of fixing my Fastpass+ selections is the internet equivalent of water torture! Or bamboo slivers under the fingernails.

One minute I cannot change our family's Fastpass+ selections because the Fastpass+ system thinks one member of our party --- first me, then my husband -- has "exceeded the number" of allowable selections. (Even tho all our selections have been made as a group of four; no one's selections vary in any way from anyone else's.) So I wait, reboot . . .. try again . . . and then the system thinks everyone except my four year old son has exceeded the limit of allowable passes. Wait . . .sign out, sign in again . . . yeah. Same thing all over again.

I have work to do, MDE, I have to get back to work!

 

[smalltowngirl504]

its not just MDE its reservations too apparently there are 0 rooms available for this fall at WDW

 

[Bonacker]

Blarg! Twelve-minute wait time to get technical help via phone, and no "chat" help available. I guess the system is having a bad day.

 

[ucfknight]

Blarg! Twelve-minute wait time to get technical help via phone, and no "chat" help available. I guess the system is having a bad day.

This is part of the time "savings" of FP+. You get to trade an hour savings in line at the park for an hour spent with the website/app/phone in the comfort of your own home or office.

 

[amylevan]

The MDE website today is so glitchy and muddled and mistake-riddled that trying to endure the slow, painful, process of fixing my Fastpass+ selections is the internet equivalent of water torture! Or bamboo slivers under the fingernails.

So, in other words, its acting normal?

I swear that Disney should be embarrassed of the technical nightmare they have released to the public and effectively are forcing all on site guests to use at this point.

 

[surferdave]

Hey, hey, no fair......you're not allowed to comment on this system until you've been in the parks and used it!

 

[Bonacker]

Heh heh!

I can certainly comment on the TORMENT of trying to make the website work.

And the hours and hours I've invested on the MDE website . . .

 

[JanaDee]

The MDE website today is so glitchy and muddled and mistake-riddled that trying to endure the slow, painful, process of fixing my Fastpass+ selections is the internet equivalent of water torture! Or bamboo slivers under the fingernails.

One minute I cannot change our family's Fastpass+ selections because the Fastpass+ system thinks one member of our party --- first me, then my husband -- has "exceeded the number" of allowable selections. (Even tho all our selections have been made as a group of four; no one's selections vary in any way from anyone else's.) So I wait, reboot . . .. try again . . . and then the system thinks everyone except my four year old son has exceeded the limit of allowable passes. Wait . . .sign out, sign in again . . . yeah. Same thing all over again.

I have work to do, MDE, I have to get back to work!

That is how it is every day.

 

[matt1979]

Has anyone ever been to the MDE website and not had a problem? My personal favorite glitch that happens to me almost every time I use the site is after using it for a bit...something goes screwy with the dates and when I select a new date the information associated with the date will not load. Even though I've selected a date from our trip...the reservation info displayed is actually for today. The only way to get past it seems to be to close the browser and start again.

 

[dwheaton]

I'm really starting to think that even trying to change FP+ reservations won't be worth the time. We'll set them up and then just hope for the best when we go. If it's going to take that long, it's just easier to go standby and wait for that amount of time.

 

[kaybird]

Has anyone ever been to the MDE website and not had a problem? My personal favorite glitch that happens to me almost every time I use the site is after using it for a bit...something goes screwy with the dates and when I select a new date the information associated with the date will not load. Even though I've selected a date from our trip...the reservation info displayed is actually for today. The only way to get past it seems to be to close the browser and start again.

Guess that would be me. It has worked every time, and have several trips now booked with different people. Sorry you all are having a hard time. Know how frustrating that can be. Trust me though, when you get it working, it is amazing.

 

[KatieCharlotte]

This is part of the time "savings" of FP+. You get to trade an hour savings in line at the park for an hour spent with the website/app/phone in the comfort of your own home or office.

Thankfully, I work from home and can set aside a few hours to book my one day of fastpasses next month. I couldn't even book my room without three error messages.

But, to be fair, the cruiseline I booked with has just as many problems. Every time I log into my account, it send me back to the login page, and I have to use a backdoor. OTOH, some companies have more complicated systems that seem to run flawlessly. I know nothing about technology, but I think it's a matter of not spending the money on a good IT team.

 

[KatieCharlotte]

I'm really starting to think that even trying to change FP+ reservations won't be worth the time. We'll set them up and then just hope for the best when we go. If it's going to take that long, it's just easier to go standby and wait for that amount of time.

I have nightmares that I'll change something and create ghost reservations and won't know which are the real ones.

 

[xie]

Historically speaking, there are things that Disney Parks and Resorts have done well.

Technology has NEVER been one of those things. Their website is consistently (even before last year's "upgrade") one of the slowest websites with the worst user experience I have used in the modern internet era. Compare, for example, the query speed of a search for anything on Amazon - go there, type something in the search box, and see how many seconds it takes to return your results - with the speed of searching for hotel or restaurant availability at Disney. Amazon has optimized their data and indexed it in such a way that they can parse MILLIONS of products and return your result instantly. Disney, on the other hand, can't reliably return a list of the couple dozen ride wait times in your chosen park. It is SO bad. And it's always been bad. And now that they have dumped a bunch more people into searching for things via web and app, it's even worse.

Searching for available hotels. Available table restaurants. Anything that requires the system to search for anything and return an accurate result is a disaster. And the phone apps have to do the similar kinds of searches - for the "posted ride wait times", for "what's near me", for fast pass selection changes of time and ride, for a bunch of stuff.

Their data layer is really really jacked. I don't know why a company of their size and resources hasn't hired the right people to fix it (and I happen to know some people who could, in fact, fix it). Queries should return in milliseconds with consistently correct results, not minutes later with untrustworth results, or never.

 

[wiigirl]

Blarg! Twelve-minute wait time to get technical help via phone, and no "chat" help available. I guess the system is having a bad day.

Yikes....

 

[Escape Artist]

I spent nearly two hours on the phone with MDE support last Sunday. Couldn't believe I took up a quarter of that person's whole work day! The CM was excellent and knowledgeable - it just took forever to get a workaround running for me.

Apparently the system messed up somehow when it merged my DVC reservation into my MDE account. You wouldn't think that would be so tough to do?

 

[matt1979]

Guess that would be me. It has worked every time, and have several trips now booked with different people. Sorry you all are having a hard time. Know how frustrating that can be. Trust me though, when you get it working, it is amazing.

Even when it is working...it's just tedious to go through multiple steps and pages just to make one small change. Just isn't streamlined very well.

That said, I have had better luck with the MDE app FWIW. Honestly not sure I've ever had an issue with the app. Perhaps that's where Disney has focused more of their effort.

 

[Music City Mama]

MDE is definitely wonky this week.

When we were there in November, we could not reserve FP+ until we arrived (ticket situation) and even though we had the weird things with the screen still showing the FP+ we changed, additional FP+, etc., it would always clear up within a couple of hours and show the right thing.

This week, I've done FP+ for a March trip from both the app and the website. No matter how many times I've logged out and back in from either, it still shows my original selections (or just 1 or 2 selections, etc.), not the selections/times I have changed them to.

However, if I try to change the times, that next screen always gives me the new/correct info. I can only assume it's in there as it should be it will display correctly before my trip. I'm not worried about it, it's just annoying that they can't get this kind of thing fixed.