MAJOR ticket issues at Boardwalk!!!

[highsmith]

I have been to Disney about 20 times. We have stayed on site, every time, since 1985 (at the Poly). Every once in a while I have been locked out of my room due to a bad key or something but never like last week!!

I had to go to the front desk five, yes 5, times in eight days over ticket issues (denied entrance at Epcot and MK), locked out of my room, dining credits disappearing,etc.

I felt their response was lukewarm, at best, to all my issues and am very perturbed. After the first two times, I requested that the MOD deal with this and get it taken care of. HA! That helped for a day and then back to the same scenario.

The tickets were always kept in their own little cardboard holder within a nylon bag, never touching a cell phone or camera or anything that could demagnitize them. Also, we were a party of four and one day it was one ticket, the next day someone elses.

The night before we left they sent up a fruit basket for our trouble. Trouble is, we got back at 11:30pm and had to check out first thing in the AM. No time or desire to sit down and eat a basket of fruit. I would have preferred a heartfelt apology or explanation or a credit or something I did not have to leave behind. Or a fruit basket when I had more than 9 hours to eat it!

I have to say that Tood, Maureen and Lori (all MOD) did reprint the cards and acted like everything was handled but in the end, we still almost missed out treasure hunt, spent an inordinate amount of time at the front desk for no reason and we hugely inconvienced by all of it. One time, they offered to send the cards to my room so I did not have to wait! Great, but when they got there, my card was misspelled and there was no card for the 7 year old, only for the baby and they had her name all wrong (which we did not need anyway, she is 12 months old!) SO, back to the damn desk I go! I also lost 7 snack credits we were saving for the food and wine fest that I was never able to get put back on my card!

I never have had this poor level of service from Disney before...Is this a trend or did I get seriously unlucky??

 

[scanmom]

That sounds awful! I have never had problems like that before. But I have never stayed at the BWI. I would write Disney and tell them your story. I think that they should at least know about it so that it can be looked into. And I would be pretty ticked off if I didn't get to use my snack credits!!!( I do love to eat!!) Plus such a collosal waste of time from your trip! Sorry to hear about it!

 

[ReadingMama]

That's awful!!!

Mine wasn't nearly as bad, but when we were there in August (at CSR), I had issues with my ticket. First day we didn't get our room till after the parks and then my key wouldn't open the door. Took it to get fixed. Next day, I couldn't use it for the dining plan and then the final day it didn't work to charge to my room. Did not bother to go to desk between day 2 and 3 as we were leaving after that. I did not have any problems getting into the parks, thank goodness!

 

[Sammie]

I never have had this poor level of service from Disney before...Is this a trend or did I get seriously unlucky??

Seriously unlucky. Hope next trip is blessed with good luck.

 

[CarolA]

I have complained several times to Disney that the key cards are useless. There is no excuse for the fact that they must be treated like invalid realtives or they "demagnetize" The CMs generally agree with me.

 

[highsmith]

I may still write a letter to Boardwalk. I have stayed there twice before with no issues and certainly better service. I need to "cool off"first as I am livid that I spent that amount of time tryint to figure out THEIR issues. WHhch they admitted some how the check-in was messed up and they had to cancel me and rebook me for fake dates to make it work and reissue keys and they still did not work. I am tempted to send them my travel bag to prove my point that the issue was the problem, not the carrier.

 

[mickyzzzzz05]

Talk about bad luck. How frustrating, especially the time that was wasted. I would write a letter.

 

[kellyg403]

We had alot of ticket issues this past trip as well. Never did get everything ironed out. Seemed senseless that the last two days we spent a large amount of our time in the check-in lobby trying to get everything ironed out. It seemed to all stem from a "computer" issue and nothing we personally were doing. Not that it helps, but we had the same lukewarm response as you did and had our tickets reprinted on three occasions. Seemed like we didn't have the same problem twice, but the same as you described...no entrance to parks one day, no entrance to a room one day and no dining credits the last.

Kelly

 

[eeyoreiscool]

We saw people with the paper tickets that were having problems getting in the parks. It looked like the tickets hadn't been used before but they weren't being read by the gates. We haven't had any problems with our keys or tickets in the past though.

 

[Disneynutbsv]

I think I had 3 cards in my name replaced and 1 replaced with my son's name. It wouldn't give us fastpasses. Everything else was fine...getting into park, using dining credits...
They didn't have a problem and always said, Sorry about that!
It really wasn't a bother for me, it just made an extra stop at POR check in area.

 

[IWISHFORDISNEY]

I have never had a problem. That is crappy. Sounds like a stroke of bad luck. I hope next time is better.

 

[bicker]

That's one reason why I prefer having my admission on the paperized (really Tyvek) cards, instead of on the plastic cards/room keys. The paperized cards are more durable, and seem to hold their data better. The room keys are stock hotel supply items, and I don't think they were ever designed to be put through what Florida theme park guests put them through.

 

[maelstrom]

Write to WDW guest services via email with a contact phone number. They will call you back to discuss your problem. I wrote to them about my bad stay at the Poly and they sent me a letter for 10% off my next stay there. If you talk to Hope ("at the Executive Offices of Walt Disney World"), she's a doll. I've talked to her on several occassions. I finally had to explain to her that I only write to them because I want everything at WDW to be in tip-top shape and it makes me sad when it isn't. I don't write to be obnoxious. Since I talked to her several times I was worried that she was thinking I was a (w)itch.

I had an issue with my room key a couple of trips back. They refused to charge at the stores. They kept making new ones and giving the same excuses of keeping them too near to cell phones, etc, but they never were.

 

[CarolA]

That's one reason why I prefer having my admission on the paperized (really Tyvek) cards, instead of on the plastic cards/room keys. The paperized cards are more durable, and seem to hold their data better. The room keys are stock hotel supply items, and I don't think they were ever designed to be put through what Florida theme park guests put them through.

I agree.

I have the AP and while folks complain about the "paper" I find it MUCH more reliable then the idiot key cards..... Disney needs to work on this! I am sorry, but other hotels and resorts do NOT have this issue so why does Disney (and my key card does not have a ticket on it so it's not the "additional" data!)

 

[Manda]

I had the same experience last December at AKL. Our tickets/room keys stopped working daily and sometimes twice a day. They seemed to like to blame it on us rather than apologizing or fixing the problem. We spent the first 15 minutes of every theme park entry in guest services getting temporary cards for at least one of us. My travel agent finally got involved and they comped us one of our meals, but I would have rather just been able to get into my room. It was so frustrating to return to our room day after day with a sleeping child and not be able to get in. After it continued to happen, I finally insisted on seeing a manager and she gave me a one day ticket for free for my troubles. But that still didn't stop the problems. One day we entered AK and walked right back through to Rainforest Cafe. 30 minutes later, we tried to re-enter AK and our keys didn't work. And after the resort started re-issuing our keys, they didn't work for fast pass anymore. So, we had to get a temporary one park only fast pass ticket each day at each park.

On our trip last week, we had better success, but DH's card still stopped working twice. And, once again, they mostly just acted like we were purposely destroying the card and it didn't work for fast pass after it was re-issued.

 

[DisneyFans4]

I They seemed to like to blame it on us rather than apologizing or fixing the problem. .

You've got that right!! That is why I'm happy that at least while staying at the Swan that my park tickets aren't my room key because they are kept separate. I also buy my park tickets online because it's cheaper but those tickets never seem to fail on me. I just love when they ask if I kept my ticket near my cellphone or a credit card. I keep it in the cardboard envelope they give it to you in so it's not my fault. Disney needs to fix the system. I think sometimes too much information is stored on that one key card and it can't handle it.

 

[bicker]

other hotels and resorts do NOT have this issue so why does Disney

Other hotels and resorts don't use their key cards for so many things, in so many diverse environments.

 

[LoraJ]

This happened to us once when we tried to enter AK. It was quickly resolved though. I just bought 10 DAy hoppers with No Expiration, we'll onlybe using 3 days now, I am so worried that the other 7 will dissapear forever. Will they be able to give me a printout of what is on our cards when we check out?

 

[WillCAD]

You've got that right!! That is why I'm happy that at least while staying at the Swan that my park tickets aren't my room key because they are kept separate. I also buy my park tickets online because it's cheaper but those tickets never seem to fail on me. I just love when they ask if I kept my ticket near my cellphone or a credit card. I keep it in the cardboard envelope they give it to you in so it's not my fault. Disney needs to fix the system. I think sometimes too much information is stored on that one key card and it can't handle it.

It's not the additional data that causes these problems. The data is not stored on the cards at all; only the card's unique serial number is stored on the magnetic strip, the rest of the data is stored in the WDW computer systems.



Loss of dining credits or ticket days are entirely computer problems and have nothing to do with the cards themselves. Fortunately, this is not a huge problem, although it certainly does happen.



The bigger problem is cards being demagnetized, which happens to KTTW cards a lot more often than the Tyvec tickets. Demagnetized cards will cause you to be locked out of your room, not get into theme parks, nto be able to charge things, and not be able to access your dining credits (which is not the same as losing the credits).



Demagnetized tickets can happen from a variety of causes; CMs tend to ask about cell phones and credit cards most often, but I think the greater culprit is static electricity. Static can be generated by friction from pulling the cards out of the cardboard envelopes, pulling them out of pants pockets, or storing them in backpacks. And static is a very bad problem in the Florida heat and humidity.

I agree.



I have the AP and while folks complain about the "paper" I find it MUCH more reliable then the idiot key cards..... Disney needs to work on this! I am sorry, but other hotels and resorts do NOT have this issue so why does Disney (and my key card does not have a ticket on it so it's not the "additional" data!)

I think the reason why it happens to Disney KTTW cards more often than the key cards from other hotels is that Disney KTTW cards are subjected to more stress. We take them outside in the heat and humidity, we use them more often (as park passes, charge cards, dining credit cards, etc), and we use them outdoors more often (when we enter the parks).



Universal's park pass system is a barcode reader instead of a magnetic strip. I don't know about their hotel keys, but the barcodes instead of magnetic strips idea is very appealing, because the barcodes don't demagnetize, aren't damaged by static, heat, or humidity, and hold up a little better when dunked on a water ride or deluged by an Orlando summer thundershower.

 

[DisneyFans4]

Demagnetized tickets can happen from a variety of causes; CMs tend to ask about cell phones and credit cards most often, but I think the greater culprit is static electricity. Static can be generated by friction from pulling the cards out of the cardboard envelopes, pulling them out of pants pockets, or storing them in backpacks. And static is a very bad problem in the Florida heat and humidity.
.

Well that makes a little more sense to me because I know, at least in my case, that our tickets are never by a cellphone or other cards. I keep them stored in the envelope they give me and keep them in my purse which is away from anything which I would think could demagnetize them because I keep them in a separate area because I know I'm going to keep taking them out to get fastpasses.

But whatever the case, I hope they can find a solution because I know it can be a problem. I didn't have a problem this year but I did with my hotel key but only once and they issued me new cards. We were there for 14 days and the reason mine didn't work is for some reason the computer thought I checked out, so go figure that one