We were also there Nov. 30 to Dec. 8. There were 11 of us in 3 rooms at ASM. It was a mixed bag of good and not so good with
MDE, MBs, and FP+.
Our MDE accounts automatically made my daughter the manager of all our accounts when we linked through My Family and Friends. No one could undo it, apparently. We spent hours on the phone with technical support before the trip. They were finally able to set things so each room could manage their own plans, though.
It took literally hours for us to make FP+ choices that were acceptable. Our MDE accounts ran very slowly. We finally gave up and left the last few days blank in hopes that the speed would improve later. I sent an email to customer support about the difficulty we were having about a month before our arrival. I received a reply the afternoon of our arrival.
Copying FP+ selections from one room to another sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. And on at least one occasion it showed that it had worked but didn't 'stick'. More about that later.
We learned at check-in that our MBs hadn't been activated, although they should have been before we received them (according to the CM). This added over an hour to our check-in process. Fortunately we arrived very early in the morning. One of our check-in CMs was very pushy about the 'fact' that the Magic Bands had to be used for everything. The card was only a back-up in case of a problem, etc. I'm sure she was just reciting what she had been told but the lecturing tone was very un-magical. The other two CMs were lovely, pleasant, and helpful, though. Mine told me to be sure to use each band assigned to the room to open the door when we first got to it so they were all 'completely activated'.
The MBs worked well for the most part. At a couple of ADRs one of the bands wouldn't scan but there were always other bands from that room so it wasn't much of an issue for us. If someone were traveling alone, though, it could be a problem. Much more of an issue for us was the lack of understanding of the system by the servers. Many seemed very stressed by it. (I know--we asked how most how things were going. I was amazed by some of the answers. And not once were we told that it was going well. Same story with the security personnel....)
About half way through the trip a couple of the MBs started being 'touchy'. Mine in particular wouldn't scan unless the Mickey on the band was turned the same direction as the Mickey on the scanner. Weird.
The day before we arrived my MDE account on the computer and my app stopped pulling reservations. So did my account manager daughter's. This caused so issues. We called tech support on arrival day, since the issue was still present. They told us that since we were on property it would have to be our concierge or Guest Relations that handled the problem. Neither of them could do anything about it, however. We finally got some functionality back on day 5 but we could never use the app to make changes.
Our second day was at DHS. This was the first place we had FP+ issues. My hubby and I arrived at TSM for our FP times (that had been copied from our daughter's room) and were told we were there at the wrong time. The copied time hadn't stuck, apparently. The CMs were less than pleasant about it, too. This prompted our first visit to Guest Relations. It took three visits and two hours to resolve this one issue. By the end of the week we had spent over 6 hours with Guest Relations at three different parks concerning FP+ issues. They were all courteous and helpful folks who resolved our problems satisfactorily, but I certainly didn't want to spend that much of my vacation with them.
Other than that the bands and FP+ worked beautifully. We were able to make good FP+ selections for our last few days even the night before. And it was lovely to practically walk onto rides that had stand-by times of 90 minutes and up. We did see quite a few other folks that were having issues with FP+. It was interesting to see the wide variety of responses by the CMs at the rides. They seemed not to have much knowledge of the system and so each had chosen to deal with issues their own way.
We only pulled paper fast passes once and still managed to do everything we wanted, usually more than once, without long waits.
It remains to be seen if things work so well with everybody on the new system. We won't try it again at least until all the bugs are worked out. And honestly, maybe not even then. I was left with the distinct impression all week that I was being 'herded'.
Concerning the crowds--we've never been this week before so we don't personally have anything to compare. But we talked to other guests all week and every one of them said it was more crowded than usual. I wonder if that's partly due to Thanksgiving being later this year? It didn't seem folks were any more or less thoughtful, though. Just the same as usual.
We only ran into one South American group--an Argentinian sports organization, I think. They were gathering on both sides of the street in front of the Train Station for the MSEP. At first their cheering wasn't too bad but as their numbers approached four hundred it got really loud and obtrusive. Then the suggestive antics of the male coaches during a beauty/popularity contest staged in the middle of the street really got the other guests angry. It was surprising how many complaints it took for the cast to try to reign them in. And just as surprising how difficult that was. Nine CMs, two security guards, and a line of blockading street vendors later it was finally calm again.
One other note--there were lots of rides broken down this week, some for extended periods of time. Lots of guests were talking about it. There was also lots of conversation about how unkempt things looked. Layers of dust lots of places I'd never seen it before, rust showing through, ride vehicles that looked like they hadn't been cleaned for quite some time, etc. It left me with the impression that things had been 'let go'. Just my opinion, my you.
But it was never a big hassle. In fact, we often saw a second bus waiting right behind the first, so we never felt stressed about missing the first bus.
