Hi all! Well, since I had been so vocal on here about how bad our MKPS had gone during our wedding last October, and how upset I was that Disney hadn't done much to work things out with us on it, I thought it would only be fair to post an update on the situation now that I am much, MUCH happier. The solution wasn't exactly ideal, but probably about the best that could have been done all things considered.
Just a quick re-hash, for anyone who hadn't followed the story - I was REALLY upset about our MKPS. The photographer we got just did not do a very good job. Part of that was that he was pretty sick the day he did our shoot, though others on here have had similar complaints about the same photographer, even when he wasn't sick.
Mind you, I do feel for him about being sick, and can understand not feeling well and not being up to par because of it. But when you pay this much for a photo shoot, you don't want something like that to affect it either, no matter how much sympathy you have for the person who is sick. If he was sick enough for it to affect his work, he should have called in for an alternate photographer, that's how I feel.
At any rate, our pictures were not very good at all. There were focus problems in some of them. There were definately shadow problems, including shadows across faces in quite a few. The balcony shots were at such an extreme angle that they were unusable.
And I finally figured out what else had bothered me about the shoot overall. Other than the first few pictures in front of the castle, which were all taken from the same distance and all looked basically the same, there was nothing distinctive about the rest of the shoot. Nothing that made any of the photos look like they were taken in the Magic Kingdom. Nothing that made them look "magical" at all. They were very bland. They were taken in the most boring places in the castle, with little background, little color, little of distinction that made the pictures unique. Even the carousel pictures got so little of the horses and the carousel itself that it could have been ANY merry-go-round. It didn't have that magical look of Cinderella's carousel.
The pictures were downright boring. Blah!
Ok, enough of that....
So, over the last few weeks, we were getting ready for our vacation for our 1st anniversary, and we were going back down to Disney for it. In the process of getting ready, I was trying to make myself do something about our MKPS pictures. After all, it had been almost a year, and I still hadn't picked out our 12 pictures so that we could get our prints back. I wasn't sure how long Disney would give us to get back to them on that, but I was thinking I probably ought to get back to them soon.
Why was I taking so long though? Because everytime I looked at our proof book to try and pick out the pictures, I got upset all over again. I was having trouble picking out 12 I even liked. And of the ones I was picking out, I kept finding all kinds of things that needed fixed. In talking with Disney, they said we could also tell them what we wanted edited, but I wasn't confident of being able to explain in writing about what we felt was wrong with the pictures. And no matter what, I was still just completely upset at having to choose from those pictures. Deciding to spend that much money on the photo shoot was a big decision in the first place, and taking pictures that I didn't really even like, after having paid $800 for them, well, it was just killing me.
Well, DH came up with an idea. He suggested I contact the person we'd been talking to about all this at Disney, tell them we would be down there, and see if we could at least meet with someone in the photography department to discuss the pictures and show them what we had problems with in the pictures so they would understand what to fix. It wasn't a great solution, but better than trying to write down what needed fixing.
I did that. And we did work out a time to meet and discuss everything about the photo shoot. Our Disney contact stressed that she wanted us to tell them everything about why we were unhappy about the pictures and the shoot, not just point out what needed fixed in the pictures.
She also asked us again about re-doing the shoot. We talked about it, telling her that we just couldn't see being able to bring down the wedding clothes, and going through the expense that it would take to do the shoot in our wedding clothes, not to mention the fact that we weren't even sure our wedding clothes would fit right now. She mentioned that they had, for a few people in our situation, allowed them to do the shoot in just formalwear rather than wedding attire, and asked if we were planning on bringing down any formal clothes, perhaps for dinner on our anniversary night.
Well, we don't really have anything that would qualify as "formal". Semi-formal, maybe, at best. So, we said no again. But then, after we had gotten off the phone with her, DH had come up with another idea.
Last year, we got married on the 29th of October. We took our King and Queen Rennaissance costumes down with us, and we wore those on the 31st to MNSSHP. And before we went to the party, but still in costume, we had dinner at Cinderella's castle. It was great! So, he thought that if they would allow us to wear those...they are pretty formal, it is something we wore for our honeymoon at least, so it's a memory from our wedding, and it fits in so well with the whole setting of Cinderella's castle that we thought it would make for great pictures. It's not the same as getting them in my wedding dress, but if we couldn't have that, it's the next best thing we could think of. And I think my DH liked it better for him!
Because after all, instead of wearing a tux, and shiny shoes he didn't like, he got to be the KING! 
So, we called back and asked. Well, we thought we were done for, because even though our Disney contact said she would check on the costumes, she said that the castle was blocked off for stage rehearsals the entire time we were going to be there. Sigh. She said she would check on the costumes anyway, though, because even though a reshoot must normally be done within a year, because of our special circumstances, they would allow us to do it later, if we were going to be down there again sometime soon.
The problem is, we probably won't be able to go back again for at least 2 years now. ARGH!
But then, the day before we were leaving, she called back, and said she had been working on it, and they had managed to get special permission for us to do the shoot on the Monday while we were there. Which was actually the day that was the perfect day for us to do it too.
And we had permission to do it in our King and Queen costumes.
Whew..... this is getting longer than I thought it would be!
So anyway, we met our photographer at the Wilderness lodge at 6 a.m. that Monday morning. We had Amy. And I'd like to say - we had an absolute blast doing our photo shoot this time. She was fun, and we could tell that she really enjoyed what she was doing. She was very patient with us (though she did keep joking with us about kissing - she kept having to tell DH to STOP kissing so we could move on!) She said if she didn't know better, she would have thought we HAD just gotten married, not that we'd already been married a year.
She took a TON of pictures. And yet, she kept us moving right along. She did a great job with lighting, making sure she put lighting behind us and doing different things to get different effects. And she used lots of different settings too.
The nice thing for us - since we were meeting with the head of photography later that morning, and since they knew we'd had such problems the first time, Amy did a quick edit and put the images on a DVD so that they could show them to us when we were there for the meeting later that morning.
Folks, the difference between that shoot and the previous one was incredible. I absolutely LOVED the pictures Amy took. I am SOOOOO anxious for them to get them on-line for us so I can see them again. DH complained though - he's now afraid that this is going to cost us more, that I'm not going to be able to wait until we buy the cd in a few years, and I'm going to have to buy some prints right away.
He may be right.
As I said, the pictures aren't up yet. They said they would try to get them up as quickly as they could. When we talked about it, the plan was that Disney photography was going to go ahead and put the new shoot up on the same site with the old shoot so all the pictures will be together. So, when I know the pictures are all back up again, I will post here and let everyone know so you can see them.
I'm really glad we didn't just let this drop and take the pictures we got, because they just weren't worth what we paid. It was great to have Disney work so hard with us finally to get something resolved. They seemed much more responsive when I contacted them this time than they did back when we first saw the proofs from our MKPS. And in a lot of ways, I think I have a lot of people on here to thank for that. I think so many people have complained and worked on getting things made right with Disney photography that it helped. There definitely seemed to be a big difference between the last time we talked to them and this time. So thanks, all of you who have been working on making this better. And hopefully, us going in and giving our opinions and showing the problems will add to that too.
Just a quick re-hash, for anyone who hadn't followed the story - I was REALLY upset about our MKPS. The photographer we got just did not do a very good job. Part of that was that he was pretty sick the day he did our shoot, though others on here have had similar complaints about the same photographer, even when he wasn't sick.
Mind you, I do feel for him about being sick, and can understand not feeling well and not being up to par because of it. But when you pay this much for a photo shoot, you don't want something like that to affect it either, no matter how much sympathy you have for the person who is sick. If he was sick enough for it to affect his work, he should have called in for an alternate photographer, that's how I feel.
At any rate, our pictures were not very good at all. There were focus problems in some of them. There were definately shadow problems, including shadows across faces in quite a few. The balcony shots were at such an extreme angle that they were unusable.
And I finally figured out what else had bothered me about the shoot overall. Other than the first few pictures in front of the castle, which were all taken from the same distance and all looked basically the same, there was nothing distinctive about the rest of the shoot. Nothing that made any of the photos look like they were taken in the Magic Kingdom. Nothing that made them look "magical" at all. They were very bland. They were taken in the most boring places in the castle, with little background, little color, little of distinction that made the pictures unique. Even the carousel pictures got so little of the horses and the carousel itself that it could have been ANY merry-go-round. It didn't have that magical look of Cinderella's carousel.
The pictures were downright boring. Blah!
Ok, enough of that....
So, over the last few weeks, we were getting ready for our vacation for our 1st anniversary, and we were going back down to Disney for it. In the process of getting ready, I was trying to make myself do something about our MKPS pictures. After all, it had been almost a year, and I still hadn't picked out our 12 pictures so that we could get our prints back. I wasn't sure how long Disney would give us to get back to them on that, but I was thinking I probably ought to get back to them soon.
Why was I taking so long though? Because everytime I looked at our proof book to try and pick out the pictures, I got upset all over again. I was having trouble picking out 12 I even liked. And of the ones I was picking out, I kept finding all kinds of things that needed fixed. In talking with Disney, they said we could also tell them what we wanted edited, but I wasn't confident of being able to explain in writing about what we felt was wrong with the pictures. And no matter what, I was still just completely upset at having to choose from those pictures. Deciding to spend that much money on the photo shoot was a big decision in the first place, and taking pictures that I didn't really even like, after having paid $800 for them, well, it was just killing me.
Well, DH came up with an idea. He suggested I contact the person we'd been talking to about all this at Disney, tell them we would be down there, and see if we could at least meet with someone in the photography department to discuss the pictures and show them what we had problems with in the pictures so they would understand what to fix. It wasn't a great solution, but better than trying to write down what needed fixing.
I did that. And we did work out a time to meet and discuss everything about the photo shoot. Our Disney contact stressed that she wanted us to tell them everything about why we were unhappy about the pictures and the shoot, not just point out what needed fixed in the pictures.
She also asked us again about re-doing the shoot. We talked about it, telling her that we just couldn't see being able to bring down the wedding clothes, and going through the expense that it would take to do the shoot in our wedding clothes, not to mention the fact that we weren't even sure our wedding clothes would fit right now. She mentioned that they had, for a few people in our situation, allowed them to do the shoot in just formalwear rather than wedding attire, and asked if we were planning on bringing down any formal clothes, perhaps for dinner on our anniversary night.
Well, we don't really have anything that would qualify as "formal". Semi-formal, maybe, at best. So, we said no again. But then, after we had gotten off the phone with her, DH had come up with another idea.
Last year, we got married on the 29th of October. We took our King and Queen Rennaissance costumes down with us, and we wore those on the 31st to MNSSHP. And before we went to the party, but still in costume, we had dinner at Cinderella's castle. It was great! So, he thought that if they would allow us to wear those...they are pretty formal, it is something we wore for our honeymoon at least, so it's a memory from our wedding, and it fits in so well with the whole setting of Cinderella's castle that we thought it would make for great pictures. It's not the same as getting them in my wedding dress, but if we couldn't have that, it's the next best thing we could think of. And I think my DH liked it better for him!
Because after all, instead of wearing a tux, and shiny shoes he didn't like, he got to be the KING! So, we called back and asked. Well, we thought we were done for, because even though our Disney contact said she would check on the costumes, she said that the castle was blocked off for stage rehearsals the entire time we were going to be there. Sigh. She said she would check on the costumes anyway, though, because even though a reshoot must normally be done within a year, because of our special circumstances, they would allow us to do it later, if we were going to be down there again sometime soon.
The problem is, we probably won't be able to go back again for at least 2 years now. ARGH!
But then, the day before we were leaving, she called back, and said she had been working on it, and they had managed to get special permission for us to do the shoot on the Monday while we were there. Which was actually the day that was the perfect day for us to do it too.
And we had permission to do it in our King and Queen costumes.Whew..... this is getting longer than I thought it would be!
So anyway, we met our photographer at the Wilderness lodge at 6 a.m. that Monday morning. We had Amy. And I'd like to say - we had an absolute blast doing our photo shoot this time. She was fun, and we could tell that she really enjoyed what she was doing. She was very patient with us (though she did keep joking with us about kissing - she kept having to tell DH to STOP kissing so we could move on!) She said if she didn't know better, she would have thought we HAD just gotten married, not that we'd already been married a year.
She took a TON of pictures. And yet, she kept us moving right along. She did a great job with lighting, making sure she put lighting behind us and doing different things to get different effects. And she used lots of different settings too.
The nice thing for us - since we were meeting with the head of photography later that morning, and since they knew we'd had such problems the first time, Amy did a quick edit and put the images on a DVD so that they could show them to us when we were there for the meeting later that morning.
Folks, the difference between that shoot and the previous one was incredible. I absolutely LOVED the pictures Amy took. I am SOOOOO anxious for them to get them on-line for us so I can see them again. DH complained though - he's now afraid that this is going to cost us more, that I'm not going to be able to wait until we buy the cd in a few years, and I'm going to have to buy some prints right away.
He may be right.As I said, the pictures aren't up yet. They said they would try to get them up as quickly as they could. When we talked about it, the plan was that Disney photography was going to go ahead and put the new shoot up on the same site with the old shoot so all the pictures will be together. So, when I know the pictures are all back up again, I will post here and let everyone know so you can see them.
I'm really glad we didn't just let this drop and take the pictures we got, because they just weren't worth what we paid. It was great to have Disney work so hard with us finally to get something resolved. They seemed much more responsive when I contacted them this time than they did back when we first saw the proofs from our MKPS. And in a lot of ways, I think I have a lot of people on here to thank for that. I think so many people have complained and worked on getting things made right with Disney photography that it helped. There definitely seemed to be a big difference between the last time we talked to them and this time. So thanks, all of you who have been working on making this better. And hopefully, us going in and giving our opinions and showing the problems will add to that too.
Can't wait to see your costumes!
And DH just looks so.... Kingly! 
He is really proud of his king costume that I made him. And since he felt so much better in it, and was having fun being in it, I think it helped the pictures a lot too.
At least now you'd know who to request for your photo session.
