Magical Express CM comes up short!

[divehard]

After our return last week from WDW I have only one experience that was a disappointment. Since we were travelling with my son and his new bride, our party was on 2 reservations, in different rooms. We had a family suite and DS and DDL had their own room in same building. Both parties recieved boarding passes courtesy of DME on our door knobs the night before departure. Problem was that not all of our party had boarding passes. One of my DDs was not included in my packet and my DDL was also not included in my son's packet. I happened to have my laptop so I proceeded to the airline's online check-in. There, I noticed that none of our party was even seated together so I re-assigned the seats, No big deal. Originally my 2 YO DD was seated by herself so this was a great comfort to my DW. The next morning when I went to the DME check-in desk, the CM was not very helpful. When I explained what happened and what I had done to correct it, I asked her to reprint our boarding passes. The changes that I made the night before were not showing up on her computer. I asked if she could check with the airlines and she told me that she worked for Disney, not the airlines and that I would have to correct it at the airport. "Do you want these boarding passes or not?" she asked. I guess what got me riled up was her attitude. Not very "Disney- like" She was very short and indignant about the whole thing. We waited in line to get this resolved to no avail and the line behind us was growing longer, so I returned to the room found the main number for DME and called. It took about a minute for the CM to check wth the ariline, and tell me that the information at the check-in desk was not current. She told me to go back to the check in desk and ask for my "new" boarding passes. I went back to the desk, through the line again and got a different CM that had the passes already printed for our party, apploogized for the mixup and we were on our way. The first CM was staring at our party all the while we were waiting in line and several times pointed at us and whispered to one of her co-workers, which really was rattling my DW. This was not acceptable behavior for anyone let alone a Disney CM. AND this wasted well over an hour of our last day (almost missed our character breakfast).

 

[maxiesmom]

Disney Magical Express and Resort Airline Check in are two seperate entities. The people at the resort check in desk that give you your boarding passes are NOT Disney cast members. Which explains their un-Disney manner. So your main beef is actually not with Disney. It is with the airlines.

 

[divehard]

OK that makes more sense, but why would the lady tell me she DOESN'T work for the airlines. She clearly stated she worked for Disney

 

[maxiesmom]

Now I'm confused. You don't check in for Magical Express, but you can check in for your flight home. They are seperate things though. If you turned in your luggage and got your boarding passes at a little desk, then you were dealing with Resort Airline Check-in, which is not manned or run by Disney. If you just went to your resort's front desk, then you were dealing with a Disney CM.

You don't pre-check in for your DME bus back home. You just show up when they tell you to, and hop on. The bus driver is the one who checks you in, so to speak.

 

[DebbieB]

Did the person you talked to have a Disney CM Nametag? If they are employed by Disney, they should have one.

As far as I know, the people who work at the desk where you check the luggage are employed by Bags Inc. They have access to the airline's reservation system to print boarding passes & luggage tags.

You can get boarding passes printed at the conceirge desk, those are Disney CM's. They just go to the regular public airline website.

 

[divehard]

Thanks all. To clarify things, I checked in at the airlines check-in desk outside ASMusic. The woman at the desk had a name tag similar to Disney CM. She clearly stated that she didn't work for the airlines, but the third party Bags Inc. may make better sense. When I went back to our room I called the number that was provided with the boarding passes. Whomever it was that answered the phone completely understood what had happened and said that the computer at the desk did not have the updated information. I guess they did it once (before I changed things online) and that is how they normally do it. She did, however, put me on hold for a couple seconds, verify the information with the airlines and solved my problem. If the person at the check-in desk made the same phone call that I did we would not have had any problems. The docs came in a bag that was put on our doorknob along with the DME docs. Each set of docs was in its own envelope (DME in one and boarding passes in the other) in the same bag so they may have been from 2 different sources. We're a pretty easygoing group and we were at our favorite place in the world, but the person at the airlines check-in desk was extremely rude and unprofessional which was the only hiccup all trip.

 

[goofy4tink]

While I'm sure there are those who think this whole 'boading passes hanging on the doorknob' thing is wonderful, I hate it. You still need to go down to RAC and check your bags. So, I'm just not sure what the big deal is with them leaving you stuff hanging on your doorknob.
I don't want ANYONE touching my airline stuff. I want that dealt with when I personally arrive at the RAC counter. I do not want some stranger going into my airline reservation and doing anything..not even checking me in, if I'm not standing right in front of them. Way too much room for error.

 

[divehard]

goofy4tink,
You surely got that right. I really appreciate thet DME for getting us back and forth to the airport but I usually fly in on Southwest and we never had any boarding pass issues before. That was the first time I remember getting the boarding papsses on our door. I had done pre-flight check-ins before at the resort desk previously and the CM always satisfied. While I'm sure that we would have resolved the seating dilemma at the airport, you can only imagine how upset my DW was that our toddler was seated in a row without a family member.

I just wanted to post in hopes of saving any grief for someone else. The caveat here is to double check your travel documents if you are using DME. Anyone can make a mistake.