Lawsuit over Disneyland's Magic Key Passport

[PirateBrigade]

okay folks, I’m going to post about 32 pages of the original complaint. Problem is I’m on my phone and so I’m going to do a copy/paste and edit the formatting throughout the morning.

mea culpa if you are reading this in the morning and I haven’t deleted everything extraneous yet!

 

[starry_solo]

okay folks, I’m going to post about 32 pages of the original complaint. Problem is I’m on my phone and so I’m going to do a copy/paste and edit the formatting throughout the morning.

mea culpa if you are reading this in the morning and I haven’t deleted everything extraneous yet!

Maybe screen shot it?

 

[DLgal]

I'd say too bad. Yes you can say no blackouts and say reservations are subject to availability. It's crystal clear. A black out day means you can't enter with that pass that day period. And it has been that way out at DL for years. They always had passes with black outs for less money than passes without. In this case reservations for pass holders was full. That is not a black out and therefore not false advertising. Their website is pretty detailed with availability calendars. Somebody didn't get their way. And now they're all hurt inside and they're going to sue. What are the chances it's pgoing to go class action and the attorneys will clean up and the consumers will get $100 off next year's AP (that went up $200 in price) when Disney was planning to but didn't announce that they were going to offer $100 off next year's AP for current pass holders anyway. Lawsuits like this are the reason my Christmas lights come with a huge sticker with 50 warnings on it, most of them just common sense. Oh wait. Disney uses xmas lights. They contain lead and there's no lead warning on my AP. I'M GONNA SUE!!!!! You can thank me for that $5 off your $500 hotel bill coupon you're going to get later.

. Nice try. But no, that's not how false advertisement lawsuits work. There is merit to this suit, whether you like it or not. Disney screwed up. They just did. They are not immune from getting bad legal advice. People think Disney hires only "the best" lawyers for everything. They don't.

I am a Dream Key holder. I have been able to work the system in my favor, so I have no complaints and wouldn't *personally* sue over this. But it has as much merit as any other false advertising suit because, indeed, Disney was not transparent enough about how this reservation system worked and they did misrepresent this particular pass. Yes, a no blackout pass never guaranteed admission, but in the past that was ONLY to cover things either out of Disney's control or having reached actual physical park capacity such that they could not legally allow anyone else in. It did not account for "person willing to pay $150 for the day can come in but person who holds a pass theoretically good 365 days a year cannot."

 

[PirateBrigade]

Oh this is better

 

[PirateBrigade]

Standby, the actual complaint is over the attachment limit.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Lead will sure do that to you! Although I don't think anyone could claim that would be a silly lawsuit to file

Actually someone already did sue over it (but not disney) And it was silly. That was the point. Another example of a frivolous lawsuit. BTW yes, A lot of electrical wiring insulation, including Xmas lights, contain a bit of lead in them. And if you don't chew on them for 50 years, you won't get lead poisoning. BTW before you ask yes some idiot did in fact chew on wiring insulation for 50 years and did get lead poisoning.

 

[PirateBrigade]

Original complaint (had to upload it elsewhere):

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/lin...:scds:US:988c282f-01db-4a05-bad4-7f84e9fe8462

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Oh this is better

Original complaint (had to upload it elsewhere):

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/lin...:scds:US:988c282f-01db-4a05-bad4-7f84e9fe8462

Thank you for finding these.

Reading into it when she looked over half (17 days but included all weekends) of November were not available for Dream Key. It says she looked on October 19th. She went and looked and none of the days were unavailable for single day or multi-day tickets. So as far as the timing goes the rush of the Thanksgiving was not impacting single day or multi-day at that time for availability. 17 days is quite a lot to be in that "capacity bucket" when there is no issues for other ticket media (at that time).

 

[bcla]

. Nice try. But no, that's not how false advertisement lawsuits work. There is merit to this suit, whether you like it or not. Disney screwed up. They just did. They are not immune from getting bad legal advice. People think Disney hires only "the best" lawyers for everything. They don't.

I am a Dream Key holder. I have been able to work the system in my favor, so I have no complaints and wouldn't *personally* sue over this. But it has as much merit as any other false advertising suit because, indeed, Disney was not transparent enough about how this reservation system worked and they did misrepresent this particular pass. Yes, a no blackout pass never guaranteed admission, but in the past that was ONLY to cover things either out of Disney's control or having reached actual physical park capacity such that they could not legally allow anyone else in. It did not account for "person willing to pay $150 for the day can come in but person who holds a pass theoretically good 365 days a year cannot."

That's the key to any kind of lawsuit over the adequacy of a product or service. There's always the possibly of crafting terms and conditions that try to claim an out, but are unconscionable and unreasonable if they don't even come close to providing a reasonable service. We're not going to have an idea how reasonable unless we find out what the specific numbers are.

Gym memberships being oversold is generally one of these things where the terms say that they might not have equipment available. And we know that. But when there have been lawsuits over that where the backed off when they didn't want anyone looking at their books. Proprietary information is extremely sensitive to these companies. And Disney absolutely doesn't want anyone getting a look at sales and crowd control strategies. We could get a better idea by seeing what the sales number, base buckets per day, how the buckets get adjusted, etc. to know how reasonable their system is. But then this is something any major company closely guards like Scientology used to guard their secrets.

 

[PirateBrigade]

Here is exhibit A from the document and let me break down why this is problematic for me (taking off my DISboard expert hat):



1) The top line literally says "no blockout dates" and at face value, that means Disney is selling me an unlimited access pass. The plaintiff argued that she had no duty to dig deeper, and I agree.
2) "Reservation-based" doesn't imply capacity restrictions -- it's as if Disney just wants to know you are coming.
3) "No blockout dates" appears again
4) The little blurb about "Admission not guaranteed..." is problematic, because it says "subject to capacity and other closures."
--> We've discussed "capacity" being problematic with an implication that it is out of the control of Disney (physical capacity).
--> I think it's even worse now because it is lumped in with "other closures" which cements the idea that you are excluded from the park ONLY in cases where the turnstiles are closed due to events beyond the control of Disney (such as COVID-19 closures).

Nowhere is it even implied that Disney can arbitrarily impose capacity caps, and the kicker for the plaintiff is that she actually suffered technical damage by needing to purchase a park ticket to remedy the deficiency. She is the perfect plaintiff.

 

[PirateBrigade]

Related to above

 

[PirateBrigade]

Okay, and I can confirm the MINIMUM 3600 Dream Key sales figure, it came directly from a Disney VP:



It's probably higher, but they cited the minimum # of passes required to exceed a potential $5M disgorgement...which helps punt this case to federal court under CAFA (Class Action Fairness Act).

 

[HashberryOTG]

So her lawyer says it's not reasonable for her to read the terms and understand what 'no blockout dates' means. That she should take 'no blackouts' at face value. But that it's ok to ignore the next comment about admission not being guaranteed and not take IT at face value? Talk about selective. I think a reasonable person sees both comments and realize they kind of contradict each other, which makes me think oh hey, should read the fine print a little.

Whether there is a valid case or not, which I'm not getting into, you have to find this amusing. Yes, I need to get my amusement where I can!

 

[PirateBrigade]

So her lawyer says it's not reasonable for her to read the terms and understand what 'no blockout dates' means. That she should take 'no blackouts' at face value. But that it's ok to ignore the next comment about admission not being guaranteed and not take IT at face value? Talk about selective. I think a reasonable person sees both comments and realize they kind of contradict each other, which makes me think oh hey, should read the fine print a little.

Whether there is a valid case or not, which I'm not getting into, you have to find this amusing. Yes, I need to get my amusement where I can!

For the record, I read the fine print forwards and backwards...because I love finding loopholes.

BUT -- yes I'm going to have to agree that the average lay person should take the top line advertisement at face value, because if people don't and are sufficiently skeptical, it would embolden companies to further stretch the truth in future top line advertisements. Someone needs to be the lemming, so-to-speak, to keep these companies in line.

My prediction: settlement, lead plaintiff gets their customary $5000 lead plaintiff fee, and Dream Key holders will be given an opportunity to get a refund, or pro-rata refund, of either some unused portion of their pass (like, subtract $100 per successful visit), and if you bought an actual ticket like the plaintiff, a refund of that. Then look for changes in marketing, I think they'll drop "blockout dates" entirely and move to wording like "highest availability" or something sufficiently Disneyfied.

I always found that problematic, that blockout dates and reservation capacity were two different/separate functions to accomplish the same task.

 

[rmoxgt]

I could see this going some place if the separate buckets were new when the Keys came out. But they weren’t. Since Disneyland reopened there have been 1 day, hopper & on-site hotel buckets. And some did run out before others.

They didn’t block out dates on these passes. They just became unavailable. I think part of the problem is that previous pass holders were used to being able to plan last minute trips and they can’t now.

While I don’t necessarily think what Disney is doing is fair & ethical, but I’m not sure it’s illegal. The T&C clearly laid out that reservations weren’t guaranteed and that only a certain number could be held at a time. And all Key holders have the option of staying onsite if they really wanted to go.

Staying on site is a wonderful idea! I am a Dream Key holder who stayed at a DLR hotel in September but I wasn’t allocated a park reservation *because* I am a Dream key holder! Didn’t matter at the time I paid $400+ a night for a room. Had to hunt for a pass anyway.

Unless things have since changed, that idea went down the drain quickly.

Edit: I even called the resort at the time to somehow get access to the resort bucket. Was told “sorry, no”. Things have since changed, apparently, but it wasn’t a matter of me being ignorant or unable to make my arrangements: there was a brief period in time where they REALLY blew us magic key holders off.

 

[PirateBrigade]

Staying on site is a wonderful idea! I am a Dream Key holder who stayed at a DLR hotel in September but I wasn’t allocated a park reservation *because* I am a Dream key holder! Didn’t matter at the time I paid $400+ a night for a room. Had to hunt for a pass anyway.

Unless things have since changed, that idea went down the drain quickly.

I linked my GCH reservation two weeks ago and gained access to the resort bucket, which tends to be open availability. It’s tricky and you need to use a desktop/request the desktop site on your mobile browser to get it to work, but it works.

I’m not sure if that bucket existed in September. As long as a hotel stay is linked to your pass, a link allowing access is displayed.

 

[Wedgeout]

In my opinion anyone should have understood the ‘no blockout dates’ after reading can hold up to 6 reservations at a time within those 90 days. This process is similar to the old Flexpass. Even the free parking is not guaranteed. (Doubt all the stalls would be full). My concern is they don’t disclose the starting number of reservations in each ‘bucket’ for each day. They should be required to publicly adjust those numbers as the day approaches. 24 hours prior, the single day reservations should cease with the remaining reservations be put toward the Magic Key reservation availability. Then on the day, single tickets with same day reservations go on sale again, only at the park, pulling from Magic Key reservation availability (if any left) until park capacity is reached. That way Magic Key holders may still get an opportunity to grab a reservation the day of. Meanwhile we continue to adapt to this system.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

I may not be a lawyer anymore, but I do remember that failure to read the fine print does not absolve you from the terms of the contract. She is probably alleging that Disney hid the find print so that purchasers could reasonably be expected to miss it, or purposely worded the terms so that they would misinterpret it.

 

[DLgal]

I may not be a lawyer anymore, but I do remember that failure to read the fine print does not absolve you from the terms of the contract. She is probably alleging that Disney hid the find print so that purchasers could reasonably be expected to miss it, or purposely worded the terms so that they would misinterpret it.

No. Not really. What she is alleging is that the fine print doesn't fully explain the limitations of the pass.

 

[longboard55]

That is not a lot of fine print to read. They mention it 3 times. The no blockout dates is more of a reference to the other pass options