I'm Done!!! Too Many Changes We Don't Like

[robpa]

Disney has a lot of special tickets available: convention tickets, youth tickets, military tickets, resident tickets . . . .all with varying prices and entitlements, but almost always priced below general public ticket prices and almost always with some kind of "perk" that the general public tickets don't have. For example, the convention 2-day base ticket costs less than a GP 2-day base, and it includes one fun option without any additional cost. So the precedent is out there. What about the packages Disney has offered with special "extended" tickets? Buy the package and get a 7 day ticket for the price of a five day . . . not available at the gate, not available at all unless you booked the package.

But doing it that way would almost be copying Universal's mode - FOTL for resort guests (in Disney's case, pre-booking attractions via FP+) and no FOTL for off property. The only difference is that Universal adds another layer by making a limited FOTL pass available for an additional fee during certain times of the year (not necessarily available during holidays and peak times when most people would be most willing to buy it). Disney could throw that in the mix as well, so it would come out something like:

$120 gp ticket - no FP
$120 resort guest ticket - includes FP+ selections at 60 days out
$50 add on to gp ticket - includes FP+ selections at maybe 30 days out (some limited time period that still gives resort guests an edge).

Ok, I guess I should have chosen my words more carefully. The poster chose two options which I assumed(maybe wrongly) were a general ticket that can be purchased beforehand(not at gate) One was for a resort guest and the other for a non resort guest. He had no difference in price. I would think they would charge less to a resort guest but make up that difference somewhere else in the price of the room or the pkg. So I meant that Disney may not charge extra up front for this type of ticket but they are making up the difference by charging you more somewhere else, to give the illusion of a discount.

 

[robpa]

LOL, I know. That was his point. He was asking whether or not people would think that was fair. Charging the same amount of money for a ticket with clearly more benefits.

Fine, then its not fair to charge the same price for less benefit.

 

[pinkerbell]

Sad, that so many say people are over discussing this topic. Many on here cannot check daily, weekly or even monthly. This gives everyone an opportunity for discussion and to express different points of view. I personally have learned a lot and thank those who welcome the discussion :

Oh yea, it gives people a chance to vent too!!!

and as for the topic, "I'm done" me too, sort of, just booked the last part of our spring trip for Universal! Very excited to see for myself what others have been raving about at a lesser cost and less advance planning and what seems to be better perks. We will still do some disney time, but it's always good to compare your options and choose what's right for you

 

[maxiesmom]

And part of the reason some of us who have been around a while are upset/disappointed about this is because it is a new state of affairs for Disney. When I was staying at Pop Century in March of 2011, the main pool and toddler pool were closed for construction. We received a very cute letter from Disney about the closure about 6 weeks before our trip, so we had plenty of notice. And although that was the "main" pool, at a value resort the main pool has almost nothing to set it apart from the two "quiet" pools which were both operating as normal for our dates. That's the level of service we've come to expect from Disney. Now, just a couple years later, Disney isn't notifying guests in advance about service interruptions at much more significant amenities and getting any recompense at all about a problem one encounters is a matter of being the "squeaky wheel".

In my experience it is not a new state of affairs. About 5 years ago I booked a moderate resort, just because my 9 year old niece wanted a pool with a slide. Guess what? The slide was closed for "maintenance" our whole stay. And they didn't even put a note in the room, or even put a sign up by the pool. Guests were telling other guests as they showed up at the pool. Maybe it wasn't what most would consider a significant amenity, but for that trip it sure was!

What really upset me was that if I had known in advance about the slide being out of order, I would have switched resorts. I went up to talk to the resort manager, and he couldn't have been more rude about it. He informed me that Disney could close anything, even the food court for example, and they did not have to give guests any advance notice. And I told him that is all I would have wanted, to be told ahead of time so I could choose to stay or switch resorts.

 

[loris10]

Just back from a 9-day trip to WDW with Magic Bands and not sure when we will go back.. We got married at Disney, I vacationed there as a kid & DH visited there multiple times before me while living in England. The first few years, we had AP's, but dropped those a few years back, simply because there is alot to the world I want to see that isn't WDW and each visit it seemed more frustrating and less 'magical'.. DH still drinks the Kool-Aid though so we go every other year now and it has worked for us, until this last trip.. First off, Magic Bands suck! Simple as that.. We got locked out of our room 4 times on this trip because our Magic Bands didn't work and eventually (why they didn't do this the first time, I have no clue)they had to hard code to get them to work for the remainder of the trip.. And yes, we could have carried our Keys to the World, but since the idiot employee at check-in refused to let us not attach a credit card to them, we destroyed them as soon as they were given to us, as we didn't want someone else to end up with them. The magic bands invitation were sent to my Disney account several weeks before our trip.. I knew I didn't want them, but since it is DH's trip, I let him pick and we picked our colors(I totally agree they should have purple, that's just stupid to not) and had them personalized and they were shipped to us at least a month before our trip.. We linked our tickets to them and planned out all of our FP+'s... 2 days before we left (4 days before our arrival), DH got an invite to his My Disney account saying that we had the generic grey bands waiting on us at check in.. Ok, stupid much?? Same ressie for 2 people and they issued double bands for it?? The day before we moved to SSR, we wanted to switch a FP+, which we couldn't do, but in trying to do that, we noticed that DH's band no longer had a ticket attached to it so that all of his FP+'s had been erased.. Attempting to straighten those 2 things out added a good 30 minutes to the check in process..

If you aren't willing to plan your trip at least several weeks BEFORE you go and vacation accordingly, then FP+ will not work for you. They say that you can adjust them from day to day, but that was not the case. Forever gone is the idea of waking up one day and deciding which park you want to go to, can't do that with FP+'s, you have to have decided weeks before if you want to ride the popular rides. We arrived on a Friday and our stay at SSR started on Sunday, and we tried to rearrange our FP+'s on Sunday for Thursday and Friday, but there was no availability for the more popular attractions. On the last few days, we got the ridiculousness of the STUPID having to pick between Soarin and TT at Epcot.. The only thing I can figure out about the FP+'s is that Disney wants to discourage park hopping since you can only choose them at one park a day.. For us, there isn't one park that has 3 attractions that we need FP+'s for, not 1, so each day we wasted at least 1 and at every park, but Epcot, we wasted 2... We choose to go during the Fall because we enjoy F&W, but on the weekends, it was too nuts to be able to enjoy it. You might can get 3 countries done because the lines are 45 minutes for most of them.. Crazy.. For me, I gave up the Disney kool-aid awhile back due to the transportation issues, crazy ADR call waits, refusal to have an 800 # and the constant rude employees that we dealt with on each trip, I'd never go back and be fine. But, I feel bad for DH & anyone else who truly loves it & wants to go because Disney doesn't care anything about them.. THey don't care and everyone of the changes they make cause it to be less and less magical.

And I know I will get slammed on here because you aren't allowed to speak bad of the cult of Disney around here, but thought I would give an honest account of our experience with Magic Bands..... Good luck if you have kids or you really love it and want to go.. Our next trip would be in 2015, but if there aren't alot of changes with the stupid Bands from Hell, as we took to calling them, we will be going to somewhere else....

 

[jcyoung]

I'm new to this thread, and I did not take the time to read all of the pages...just the first few and last few, so if this is redundant, I apologize!

That said, I wanted to give another point of view on the Magicbands and FP+.

Simply put...I loved them. There wasn't a thing about our trip in October that wasn't magical and MUCH easier because of the Magicbands. We carried our Key to the World cards around also, but I only ever had to pull them out to get some Legacy FP's. I loved the fact that no matter what, there was an hour of time where we could go ride Toy Story Midway Mania or Soarin' without waiting in a crazy line...and I knew it before we even left home. I didn't have to run to get a FP, I already had it.

And, even better, if we couldn't make it to Jungle Cruise because we were in the middle of something magical, we could skip it and adjust the time later. No problem.

I know that everyone has their personal preferences, but I just wanted to put this out there. For us, the whole thing was wonderful and magical! We can't wait to go back!!

 

[Sammie]

I'm new to this thread, and I did not take the time to read all of the pages...just the first few and last few, so if this is redundant, I apologize!

That said, I wanted to give another point of view on the Magicbands and FP+.

Simply put...I loved them. There wasn't a thing about our trip in October that wasn't magical and MUCH easier because of the Magicbands. We carried our Key to the World cards around also, but I only ever had to pull them out to get some Legacy FP's. I loved the fact that no matter what, there was an hour of time where we could go ride Toy Story Midway Mania or Soarin' without waiting in a crazy line...and I knew it before we even left home. I didn't have to run to get a FP, I already had it.

And, even better, if we couldn't make it to Jungle Cruise because we were in the middle of something magical, we could skip it and adjust the time later. No problem.

I know that everyone has their personal preferences, but I just wanted to put this out there. For us, the whole thing was wonderful and magical! We can't wait to go back!!

Our experience was similar. All Disney has to do is have enough people who are satisfied versus those that are not for it to be successful.

 

[fla4fun]

Ok, I guess I should have chosen my words more carefully. The poster chose two options which I assumed(maybe wrongly) were a general ticket that can be purchased beforehand(not at gate) One was for a resort guest and the other for a non resort guest. He had no difference in price. I would think they would charge less to a resort guest but make up that difference somewhere else in the price of the room or the pkg. So I meant that Disney may not charge extra up front for this type of ticket but they are making up the difference by charging you more somewhere else, to give the illusion of a discount.

I see your point, and that is another avenue Disney may explore. There are just too many question marks right know to know what they are planning to do when everything is done and they go live for off property as well. Personally, I think the FP+ would end up being a "perk" of the room reservation, not necessarily a perk attached to an admission ticket based on where you are staying. I think it would be easier from Disney's point of view to handle it that way.

 

[Granny square]

It seems to me it would be easy to be satisfied when you are done dipping. That won't be the case and many don't have that option currently thus the irritation.

 

[larryz]

Look at it this way. Imagine Disney offered two different admission tickets:

1) PARK ADMISSION: $120. Admits one adult guest to the theme park, and access to all the attractions. This ticket can be purchased by anyone.

2) PARK ADMISSION WITH FASTPASS+: $120. Admits one adult guest to the theme park, and access to all the attractions, and 3 Fastpasses to attractions of your choice. This is a special ticket that can be purchased by resort guests only!

Would your feelings about Disney's actions change if tickets like these were actually available?

Look at it this way: Imagine Disney charged more for admission to one theme park over other theme parks.

Oh, wait...

 

[robpa]

I see your point, and that is another avenue Disney may explore. There are just too many question marks right know to know what they are planning to do when everything is done and they go live for off property as well. Personally, I think the FP+ would end up being a "perk" of the room reservation, not necessarily a perk attached to an admission ticket based on where you are staying. I think it would be easier from Disney's point of view to handle it that way.

Yes, I think so but in a different configuration than what is currently out there. I think more than 3 for resort guests 3 for off site guest with the ability to purchase additional.

 

[beaprn]

Our reasons for a vacation are to get away from all the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and all the planning involved on a daily basis. Now we have to plan our attractions and ADR's even more-and make sure we don't forget to cancel ADRs far enough in advance to avoid a CC charge. Our vacation priorites are not wrong.

The new ADR policy is because apparently enough people thought it was a great idea to make several ADRs a day and then decide the day/evening of the ADR to decide which one they were going to use. Enough inconsiderate people ruined the old policy. Which is why now the best idea outside of making a ADR 3mons ahead , you call the day before- check for cancellations at your favorite restaurant and maybe get lucky. I am glad they now have some monetary initiative to give up multiple ADRs. , The attractions fastpass + is an optional plan now that can be changed as needed and they are still working it out. At this time you can still get fastpasses at the park, at least as of last month,so you can still make your plans this way.

 

[DisneyChristmas]

'No longer a vacation' js exactly how I was feeling when I got the email to set up my fastpasses and customize my magic bands.

I did do it, last minute and I was happy with the results.

The fastpasses were especially useful as an onsite guest. I had no rush to get anywhere and I could change the times when I decided to do something else or was later getting going. It worked out for the best. Almost too easy.

But - this was during testing phase.

I fear that when it's rolled out to everyone, it wont be quite so convenient. I fear that if you miss the start of your window to book, you will be in a long standby line.

That is when I will be having similar thoughts as you.

I did enjoy the Magic Band for park entry and as a room key. It was convenient and easy to manage, even to driving into the resort - touch the magic band and off we went.

Of course it's very dependent of when you're there. We stayed at CR with older Park Hoppers joined to our MBs during the week of December 9. Parks attendance was low. We didn't do our FP+ picks until the 8th and occasionally changed our choices mid-day when some FP+ choices were walk-ons. ADRs worked beautifully. We always just book what we're going to use for sure. The MBs worked perfectly for room access, charging, meals, etc.