Magical Gatherings....Grand Gatherings????

[Mike Bartenhagen]

We have 11 of us going to WDW in October. We are booked with points at SSR and I have reservations for breakfast in the castle and also supper at Chef Mickeys. I have been looking at the Magical Gatherings info on the Disney site and have some questions. Does a Magical Gathering just mean that you link your reservations togeather so that your party can get rooms next to each other? I am not sure I get the point of the Magical Gathering. Is a Grand Gathering a Magical Gathering that has 8 or more people? The only advantage that I can see to a Grand Gathering is that there are 3 or 4 things that you can book that aren't available to anyone else. If we aren't interested in any of these things is there any advantage to getting a Grand Gathering number?

Thanks for the help.

Mike

 

[Mrs. Toaster]

I may not be able to answer all of your questions, but I'm happy to share with you what I know! A Magical Gathering and a Grand Gathering are the same thing. Hopefully they will decide which name to go with eventually! Everytime I call for our Gathering, they call it by something different! You have to have at least 8 people staying on Disney property to qualify. We already had our plans made before this program came out, so we just had a Gathering number assigned, figuring it couldn't hurt. It actually has been a big help in planning for our family reunion. As all of our ressies are linked under the one Gathering number, when I call, they can reference all the reservations and tell me who has paid, who has reserved what, etc.. This has been helpful to me as the planner, just to keep track of everyone. We were told that as we are all staying in the same hotel, that the room assigners would try to put us close together, once they saw our gathering number. I don't know if this is true or not, but I will post about our gathering here after our trip in August. Other than that, the only benefit I can see is that you do get access to some special activities. We are booked for the Fireworks Cruise, which has received great reviews on this board. In theory, you are supposed to have access to reservation specialists who can book just about anything for your party, but I have not found them to be any better than the regular phone line employees. In some cases, they have been much less knowledgable.

So I guess my conclusion would be that I think it's a good idea, but they that still need to work out the kinks and make it a better program, perhaps offering more.

 

[4greatboys]

Yes a Grand Gathering is a Magical Gathering for 8 or more. We just had a Grand Gathering in June. We didnt do any of the 4 special events but we did have a Grand Gathering number and used it on our reservations and ps.
I was told with the Grand Gathering number your party would be seated together or if that wasnt possible at tables next to each other (with regular ps they try to do that but there is no guarentee).
During our stay BWV stay we only had room as there only 9 of us then but we when moved to the Poly we did have 2 adjoining rooms--there were 11 od us then.