The really sad thing is that these issues have been going on for MONTHS - at least since the beginning of 2013. Too bad that they haven't really made any improvements since the new website went live. These are the same issues I was having booking for Feb 2013 and I am going to book for Feb 2014 in a month....not looking forward to it. Will probably just call.
But the live website isn't finished. They started working on it in November or so, and they are still doing things. That's why things change, go down, come back up a bit differently, etc. It's not done.
I think the Disney website is absolutely terrible. It drives me crazy. I often think to myself -- Doesn't anyone in charge over there ever try to use this website? You would think someone (with some clout) would try it and determine that it is unacceptable. I wish I could be Queen for a day.
Again, it's not done.
Now, I seriously question the IT department for not just leaving it as is and creating a "master" site that they fix and make perfect before rolling out, like at least one other huge company has, but that's not what they've done. So taking things as they are, the answer is that they aren't done, and they have been changing things regularly.
Their other IT problem is that they, apparently, have no budget for a department to come up with error messages that make sense. Instead of "we're magically renovating, your reservations are safe, but we can't put them on the screen right now", people get "you have no reservations". No proper error messages.
The system is awful and the barrage of "why didn't you just call" responses are honestly not that helpful.
Well, if you were in hour 1 of what might become 4 hours, and you came across this thread, those answers might be very helpful indeed.
And for the last few days there have been countless threads and posts about "just call to save yourself the stress", so maybe this thread will help someone in the future to not even hit hour 1.