Last year, I booked a package before FD was announced and had an arrival date on a blackout peroid.
This wouldn't have been so bad except we'd already booked flights . . . through Disney. When we checked with our airline (Jet Blue) about changing travel dates, we were informed that flight prices were the same, we'd just have to pay an $100 per person change fee. Since our FD savings averaged over $300 per person, it made economic sense to change our flights to get FD. However, Jet Blue couldn't change our flights because we'd booked through Disney.
So we called Disney and got a different story. They basically told us that it would cost roughly $290 per person to change our flights (nearly equalling our FD savings). We had to make multiple calls and spend a lot of time on the phone with various CMs (and their supervisors) before we were finally able to get Disney to agree to change our flights for the same price originally quoted by our airline.
This year, I again booked a package before FD was announced (so as to make ADRs 180+10) and again had an arrival date on a blackout period. As I didn't book flights through Disney (never again), I assumed my pain this year would probably be having to wait forever to get a CM and then either getting dropped or finding out my resort of choice isn't available. To my surprise, however, I got the reservation changed at our resort of choice with virtually no wait (got a CM virtually instantaneously after finishing the Q&As). It almost felt like some pixie dust was sent our way
to compensate for the headache we experienced last year.
This wouldn't have been so bad except we'd already booked flights . . . through Disney. When we checked with our airline (Jet Blue) about changing travel dates, we were informed that flight prices were the same, we'd just have to pay an $100 per person change fee. Since our FD savings averaged over $300 per person, it made economic sense to change our flights to get FD. However, Jet Blue couldn't change our flights because we'd booked through Disney.
So we called Disney and got a different story. They basically told us that it would cost roughly $290 per person to change our flights (nearly equalling our FD savings). We had to make multiple calls and spend a lot of time on the phone with various CMs (and their supervisors) before we were finally able to get Disney to agree to change our flights for the same price originally quoted by our airline.
This year, I again booked a package before FD was announced (so as to make ADRs 180+10) and again had an arrival date on a blackout period. As I didn't book flights through Disney (never again), I assumed my pain this year would probably be having to wait forever to get a CM and then either getting dropped or finding out my resort of choice isn't available. To my surprise, however, I got the reservation changed at our resort of choice with virtually no wait (got a CM virtually instantaneously after finishing the Q&As). It almost felt like some pixie dust was sent our way
to compensate for the headache we experienced last year.
