Give A Day possibly reaching limits tomorrow...NOW CLOSED! UPDATE #43

[MickeyMomOfThree]

I haven't seen anything official yet, but I just got the following email from the coordinator of an organization:



So, it looks like Disney did in fact close down the program earlier today, although the site still looks live...

Wow, it really did go fast. I had a friend call me TODAY of all times and say, well, we think we might go go tell me about the free day. I'm like, ahhh, I wish you had called me sooner.

 

[disneyholic family]

Maybe backlash is the wrong word. Disappointment?

They plan a year-long promotion around this, and cut it off in March?

well i was disappointed from the start, since this was limited to the United States....

the 'what will you celebrate' promotion included foreign visitors..
the give a day, get a day promotion did not include foreign visitors...

i volunteer anyway...and i don't really need a free ticket or anything else free for that matter....but a fastpass to toy story mania would be appreciated..

 

[lugnut33]

So it took about 60 days to give away a million vouchers. Pretty impressive. And I'm not going to complain if they don't extend the program. Disney committed roughly 80 million (sale price for a 1 day ticket) for the program. Include all the admin. costs of the program. This was a very big and apparently very popular program. The one downside.... we might not see any more of those great Muppet commercials.

 

[jessrose18]

I second the muppets commercials, and Taye Diggs

 

[doconeill]

well i was disappointed from the start, since this was limited to the United States....

the 'what will you celebrate' promotion included foreign visitors..
the give a day, get a day promotion did not include foreign visitors...

i volunteer anyway...and i don't really need a free ticket or anything else free for that matter....but a fastpass to toy story mania would be appreciated..

Well, Canadians were included, despite their beating us for the gold medal

I can't imagine the level of effort it was to pull this off for two countries, never mind every country...

I also think there was some confusion as far as the "promotions" going on, and comparing it to YOAMD. I'm not sure the technical term Disney uses, but I think of the YOAMD, What Will You Celebrate?, etc. as "celebrations". They typically last a couple years or more (wasn't YOAMD over two years, almost 3?). What Will You Celebrate? is still going on.

Last year, in conjunction with WWYC was the "Free On Your Birthday" promotion. It ran the whole year, which made sense because otherwise it would have been extremely unfair to those whose birthdays were outside the promotion range.

The next promotion was GAD, which was to get 1 million volunteers to sign up, which they did. Probably sooner than expected. It wasn't advertised to last the whole year.

There is a good probability a new promotion will be announced. What it may entail, what the limitations will be, etc. is anyone's guess at this point. It probably won't be as big as this one.

 

[MickeyMomOfThree]

I so desperately want the statue and pin set. Now with so many people doing it I wonder if there will still be any left come November when we get there.

 

[PolynesianLily]

I hope that they do another promotion!

 

[wildfan1473]

I second the muppets commercials, and Taye Diggs

I am impressed with them going just over 2 months and getting this many people out volunteering. There are so many ways they can extend this, without giving away tickets...one suggestion would be to give away the fastpasses, like they are to people who have APs. I would be just as happy with an unlimited fastpass or something along those lines, but I'm sure that's not for everybody.

Like a pp poster said, I volunteer all the time, unfortunately not anywhere that signed up for the promotion. This gave me the opportunity to do something I wouldn't have done otherwise (make a Project Linus blanket).

 

[HillPete]

I guess we got in just under the wire (I printed out our vouchers yesterday!). I hope we can still use them in December...

--H

PS - I second the notion of more Muppets and LOTS more Taye Diggs!

 

[MickeyMomOfThree]

I guess we got in just under the wire (I printed out our vouchers yesterday!). I hope we can still use them in December...

--H

PS - I second the notion of more Muppets and LOTS more Taye Diggs!

You are fine. They are running out of the vouchers, but once you have yours you can use it till Dec. 15. So you are all set!

 

[LMO429]

So back in January I signed up to volunteer in two weeks. Does this mean now we will not be able to redeem vounchers. Or does are sign up still count?

 

[doconeill]

So back in January I signed up to volunteer in two weeks. Does this mean now we will not be able to redeem vounchers. Or does are sign up still count?

If you signed up for a particular opportunity and date, and received your confirmation, you should be all set. When they officially close it, they are just going to stop future registrations.

 

[LMO429]

If you signed up for a particular opportunity and date, and received your confirmation, you should be all set. When they officially close it, they are just going to stop future registrations.

Yes we received a confirmation. Thank you for clarifying I appreciate it.

 

[WaltD4Me]

So it took about 60 days to give away a million vouchers. Pretty impressive. And I'm not going to complain if they don't extend the program. Disney committed roughly 80 million (sale price for a 1 day ticket) for the program. Include all the admin. costs of the program. This was a very big and apparently very popular program. The one downside.... we might not see any more of those great Muppet commercials.

Not knocking the program at all...I think anything that promotes volunteerism is a wonderful thing, but I don't know that it's costing Disney 80 million. Mostly people go for more than one day. So the one day ticket is going to mostly likely extend a trip for alot of people. Maybe they will go to the parks 5 days instead of 4 or 6 days instead of 5...a good thing for Disney. Goodness knows they do everything they can to extend your stay, keep you in the parks. Not a darn thing wrong with that, but I think it's a little short sighted not to extend the program. I think it got alot of people interested in going to Disney, thinking about going to Disney, I wonder how many planned trips due to the program that might not have otherwise. If even a quarter of the people who signed up go to Disney who had no intention of going before that's a pretty big draw, especially now.

 

[Dizneydaz]

Looks like we missed out. I couldn't get an opportunity to do. Signed up for several and only heard back from one that they were full. Oh well, I was going to use my GADGAD voucher to apply to getting me AP in Oct. when our current ones expire. Now I'll probably wait longer to get them so as to spread the cost out more.

Glad some of you got your vouchers. Looks like living near DLR was not a good thing for this promotion. Too many people looking for their vouchers. How I wish I could have made one or two blankets or 2 doz. or more cookies but none of the opportunities were that easy. Especially when looking for one a 10 y/o could also do.

Darn it....

 

[doconeill]

This post has an email that seems to spell out how things are winding down...Think of this as a "Phase 1" closure of GAD:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=35710684#post35710684

 

[calena]

I so desperately want the statue and pin set. Now with so many people doing it I wonder if there will still be any left come November when we get there.

What is the statue and pin set?

 

[doconeill]

What is the statue and pin set?

There are some pictures in one of the threads in the GAD forum, but it is a small "ear hat" figurine and some unique muppet trading pins. The figurine has a bottom that can open and store some things in it as well.

It appears also that if you are an AP holder, you may get more pins...

 

[denise]

Just did our volunteer today.
Well actually we made the blankets and I turned them all in today. Turn in date is Monday but I got them there early.
We should have our vouchers in a week or two...I hope.....
We should be ok since we were excepted by the group last month...
We can only hope....

 

[Applemomma]

I can see them opeing it up again for a limited time as there will probably be a fair number of people who miss their volunteer deadline that they signed up for. For example, people were sick the day they had to be at a certain place, blanket project not finished on time and so on.

This promo always had me on the fence. It's great to promote volunteerism but it kind of felt like bribery. On one hand I'm sure the vast majority of people who volunteered probably already volunteer so were comfortable with the idea and on the other hand there is probably a pretty healthy percentage that did it, got their ticket and ran and the organizations will still be shorthanded next month, next year, and so on.