thevolcanogod
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2004
- Messages
- 245
At the midway point of a 13-day trip - if anyone has any questions about anything I'll try and check it out. But here are a few observations:
- Pre-trip planning was pretty painless. Feels more structure and less spontaneous. Encountered several glitches with reservations disappearing. The biggest problem I encountered was with Memory Maker - that will have it's own section.
- Disney Magical Express - everywhere we looked, everyone said that if you're flying Spirit, you have to go get your bags at baggage claim and take them to the DME counter. This is not correct. All of the airlines transfer the bags to DME - including Spirit. So we waited like 45 mins at bag claim that we could have been doing something else instead. Also, the book of vouchers you get - apparently not needed anymore. They just scan the magic band. I'd probably take them along with you but expect to do nothing with them. It was a bit confusing at first - I don't like it when I'm putting something together and there are unused pieces so that's what this felt like.
- Check in was flawless - CMs met us as we were walking into the resort and got us all set up. To this point magic bands worked flawless. Although you do have to claw your hand up to get it to work on your door.
- Memory Maker - this is by far the worst thing of our trip. I paid for it about 2 weeks prior to departing. After a couple days it disappeared from My Disney Experience - so I called and the Internet Help Desk put it back on. Then about 2 days before leaving I noticed it fell off again. This time when I called, they couldn't find any record of me having bought it. But after talking with guest relations, he said he would credit our room with $149 for the pre-purchase amount and then $50 for the extra to buy it on-property and I would just buy it when I got there. When I checked in, they mentioned the credit so I assumed everything was fine. Later on, however, I saw that they only credited me the $50 and not the $149 - so another trip to Concierge. The biggest issue I have with Memory Maker is that it's not working right. The long-range RFID is not working and so far, none of the ride photos have uploaded into my account. So that leads me to believe that it's not working correctly. I think I'm going to call and tell them I'm very disappointed in the product. Also, most of the photos the "pros" have taken are frankly nothing you couldn't do with a half-way decent camera.
- One more gripe then on with the good stuff. For some reason I really haven't been able to charge to my magic band. I'm supposed to have a $500 limit but it gets to about $150 and then every place says I'm over limit. Had to make 2 trips to Concierge and they finally increased my limit to $1000 and that seems to have worked.
- FP+ has been fine. However, the process of getting your 4th fastpass is glitchy. Half the time the kiosk had some of my party as "invalid media" and I couldn't select them - some CMs knew to restart the process and often that would fix it, others were just sort-of dumfounded.
- Star Wars Weekend - very cool - busy though. I didn't see much of the events - was traveling with extended family and they didn't care about SWW but I still got to get a pic with some of the characters. I got to pick up some of the LE stuff - things like the LE magic bands and pin set are still available but they are down to the last few ones as of today.
- Weather has generally been pretty wet. The past days have been good but we've had some storms that have hung around for a few hours. Next few days also look pretty wet. My bro who lives in Miami said he thinks the rainy season got started late so they're experiencing more rain than usual for this time of the year.
- BOG lunch - great experience. The lunch fastpass went flawless and felt really good to bypass the line and go right in. Food was great and refillable drink is a big plus. Eat in the west wing - it's dark but the theming is great - watch the painting.
- SDMT - fun but wish it was just 30 secs to a min longer of a ride.
That's all I can think of right now. If anyone wants me to check on anything let me know - we're in the relax phase of the vacation so going to be doing less rides and more relaxing, maybe SOTMK and some pin trading etc.
- Pre-trip planning was pretty painless. Feels more structure and less spontaneous. Encountered several glitches with reservations disappearing. The biggest problem I encountered was with Memory Maker - that will have it's own section.
- Disney Magical Express - everywhere we looked, everyone said that if you're flying Spirit, you have to go get your bags at baggage claim and take them to the DME counter. This is not correct. All of the airlines transfer the bags to DME - including Spirit. So we waited like 45 mins at bag claim that we could have been doing something else instead. Also, the book of vouchers you get - apparently not needed anymore. They just scan the magic band. I'd probably take them along with you but expect to do nothing with them. It was a bit confusing at first - I don't like it when I'm putting something together and there are unused pieces so that's what this felt like.
- Check in was flawless - CMs met us as we were walking into the resort and got us all set up. To this point magic bands worked flawless. Although you do have to claw your hand up to get it to work on your door.
- Memory Maker - this is by far the worst thing of our trip. I paid for it about 2 weeks prior to departing. After a couple days it disappeared from My Disney Experience - so I called and the Internet Help Desk put it back on. Then about 2 days before leaving I noticed it fell off again. This time when I called, they couldn't find any record of me having bought it. But after talking with guest relations, he said he would credit our room with $149 for the pre-purchase amount and then $50 for the extra to buy it on-property and I would just buy it when I got there. When I checked in, they mentioned the credit so I assumed everything was fine. Later on, however, I saw that they only credited me the $50 and not the $149 - so another trip to Concierge. The biggest issue I have with Memory Maker is that it's not working right. The long-range RFID is not working and so far, none of the ride photos have uploaded into my account. So that leads me to believe that it's not working correctly. I think I'm going to call and tell them I'm very disappointed in the product. Also, most of the photos the "pros" have taken are frankly nothing you couldn't do with a half-way decent camera.
- One more gripe then on with the good stuff. For some reason I really haven't been able to charge to my magic band. I'm supposed to have a $500 limit but it gets to about $150 and then every place says I'm over limit. Had to make 2 trips to Concierge and they finally increased my limit to $1000 and that seems to have worked.
- FP+ has been fine. However, the process of getting your 4th fastpass is glitchy. Half the time the kiosk had some of my party as "invalid media" and I couldn't select them - some CMs knew to restart the process and often that would fix it, others were just sort-of dumfounded.
- Star Wars Weekend - very cool - busy though. I didn't see much of the events - was traveling with extended family and they didn't care about SWW but I still got to get a pic with some of the characters. I got to pick up some of the LE stuff - things like the LE magic bands and pin set are still available but they are down to the last few ones as of today.
- Weather has generally been pretty wet. The past days have been good but we've had some storms that have hung around for a few hours. Next few days also look pretty wet. My bro who lives in Miami said he thinks the rainy season got started late so they're experiencing more rain than usual for this time of the year.
- BOG lunch - great experience. The lunch fastpass went flawless and felt really good to bypass the line and go right in. Food was great and refillable drink is a big plus. Eat in the west wing - it's dark but the theming is great - watch the painting.
- SDMT - fun but wish it was just 30 secs to a min longer of a ride.
That's all I can think of right now. If anyone wants me to check on anything let me know - we're in the relax phase of the vacation so going to be doing less rides and more relaxing, maybe SOTMK and some pin trading etc.
