New Disney Theme Park reservation system

[CrimsonRave]

So I think a lot of people are getting mad about the situation. They aren't going to make any money for awhile with the parks open. Universal did open, but I want to think Disney is looking at big picture, refining their procedures, and going from there. I personally wouldn't go the first month or 2, but we do have Disneyland in November. I feel like by then a lot of the questions will be answered.

But if you think they are going to put the safety of cast members, and park goers at risk your not thinking like them. Why open, risk people getting sick, to just have to close down because you were the source of it.

One step at a time everyone! Just happy to see movement on both parks now!

 

[DebbieB]

The fact that they haven’t put out a notice that it’s not happening makes me wonder if it is a go? They seem to be trying to get people to cancel their reservations - seems like cancelling F&W would cause a lot of cancellations.

They never announced dates, so what is the current status? I’d say not happening unless they announce dates.

 

[justadreamaway77]

So I think a lot of people are getting mad about the situation. They aren't going to make any money for awhile with the parks open. Universal did open, but I want to think Disney is looking at big picture, refining their procedures, and going from there. I personally wouldn't go the first month or 2, but we do have Disneyland in November. I feel like by then a lot of the questions will be answered.

But if you think they are going to put the safety of cast members, and park goers at risk your not thinking like them. Why open, risk people getting sick, to just have to close down because you were the source of it.

One step at a time everyone! Just happy to see movement on both parks now!

A billion dollar company should have all their ducks in a row before any announcement is made. It's like they made an announcement and woke up the next day like "crap, what do we do now". Same thing with the whole SAB thing. A few days after announcing no SAB and say BCV can use a tiny quiet pool, they realize how ridiculous that is so they are like "oh yeah, I guess you can head over to BWV because that does really suck"

 

[Avery&Todd]

So....it's Friday.......and we're less than 30 days until the parks open....

Maybe we'll hear something today.....

 

[MommaBerd]

I realize that this is uncharted territory, and it’s a huge, multi-faceted, interconnected organization, but it certainly seems to be a hot mess right now. They’ve trained us to stress over making all kinds of reservations and plans, and now they have taken all the tools away and given very little information in their place. So, of course, everyone is frustrated and anxious. Hopefully they will come out with more definitive information, and tools (e.g. park reservation system and open up ADRs) to help guests actually plan their trip very soon! Talking about trial by fire for Josh D’Amaro!

 

[icc2515]

A billion dollar company should have all their ducks in a row before any announcement is made. It's like they made an announcement and woke up the next day like "crap, what do we do now".

I think that Disney had no intention of opening until Aug/Sept at least. I think that DVC really forced their hand and to a lesser extent the FL government may have pushed them a bit too. For years and years WDW has been enjoying huge profits due to DVC sales. Now they see that there was some price to those profits. Timeshares are not like a hotel that you can do with as you please. We own that property and there are laws in place about keeping owners out of their property. Once the state of emergency was lifted, they had to open DVC per their contract with the owners.

Universal pushed their hand with the opening of the theme parks. Unni made the decision to open their parks and then did so a short amount of time later. Disney did not even prepare to open the parks no plan at all. They are flying by the seat of their pants and it shows. They make rules that contradict each other ie no resort hopping, but feel free to congregate at the parks or DS. They seemingly want everybody to cancel their cash reservations, but instead of just cancelling them they move people to DVC rooms. Don't think of this as some well laid out plan, they have no idea what they are doing. They don't seem to realize that their IT department sucks and has failed time after time.

 

[BWV Dreamin]

Yesterday and today, Florida has all time highs of daily infection rates and hospitalizations since reopening. This can not be ignored. Disney should really reconsider its opening dates. Disney is not an essential business.

 

[emilymad]

I think that Disney had no intention of opening until Aug/Sept at least. I think that DVC really forced their hand and to a lesser extent the FL government may have pushed them a bit too. For years and years WDW has been enjoying huge profits due to DVC sales. Now they see that there was some price to those profits. Timeshares are not like a hotel that you can do with as you please. We own that property and there are laws in place about keeping owners out of their property. Once the state of emergency was lifted, they had to open DVC per their contract with the owners.

Universal pushed their hand with the opening of the theme parks. Unni made the decision to open their parks and then did so a short amount of time later. Disney did not even prepare to open the parks no plan at all. They are flying by the seat of their pants and it shows. They make rules that contradict each other ie no resort hopping, but feel free to congregate at the parks or DS. They seemingly want everybody to cancel their cash reservations, but instead of just cancelling them they move people to DVC rooms. Don't think of this as some well laid out plan, they have no idea what they are doing. They don't seem to realize that their IT department sucks and has failed time after time.

I agree completely. My biggest issue is why didn't they see some of these things coming? Timeshare laws aren't new and there was always going to be this issue of reopening as soon as they closed down in March. I understand that even a good IT department would have a real challenge of developing a reservation system in this time frame. But again, Disney didn't see this coming?

At this point they need to come out with their policies even if the systems aren't ready yet so people can make decisions about their vacation. I currently have 3 hotel reservations (1 onsite and 2 offsite) for our July dates because it is such a mess.

 

[CrimsonRave]

Were seeing the same thing in Texas. Seems like the lockdowns helped, but as soon as you open numbers are going to go up. I have a feeling we haven't hit our spikes yet.

 

[Darklord77]

Yesterday and today, Florida has all time highs of daily infection rates and hospitalizations since reopening. This can not be ignored. Disney should really reconsider its opening dates. Disney is not an essential business.

Were seeing the same thing in Texas. Seems like the lockdowns helped, but as soon as you open numbers are going to go up. I have a feeling we haven't hit our spikes yet.

So lifting the lockdowns in early May is the cause of spikes? It couldn't be what's been happening over the last 14-17 days? Which has nothing to do with the lifting of the lockdowns.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Cutting Disney some slack - their situation is far more complicated than UO's. There are pre-paid dining reservations that need to be refunded, resort reservations that need to be moved, existing tickets that include things like waterparks and park-hopping that need to be sorted out, AP's, both with and without resort stays that need to be considered. Add to this they need to implement an -all-new park reservation system that accommodates all of this. All of this that must be integrated into the My Disney Experience software that was never all that fantastic to begin with. My wife works in IT - I promise you there is an entire staff of people working well over 40 hours a week, probably more like 60, just trying to meet the hard-and-fast deadline of opening day, let alone those of us that are begging for it to be finished well before that so we can have some solid information on our vacations. Not only that, but this IT staff is working from home, just like the rest of us, which is complicated enough.

All that said...
Constantly refreshing my e-mail and watching this thread, just like the rest of you.

 

[BWV Dreamin]

So lifting the lockdowns in early May is the cause of spikes? It couldn't be what's been happening over the last 14-17 days? Which has nothing to do with the lifting of the lockdowns.

Don’t know but you can’t separate the two. Numbers don’t lie.....

 

[CrimsonRave]

So here in Texas there was a report released that stated the positive results we have seen this week, were not people at protest. They expected those results to start coming in end of this week and next week. So for us here in Texas we were open 1 month before the protest started.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1270747193587179520

 

[Sandisw]

Let’s be sure to stay on topic and not go off on Covid...thanks!

 

[one_cat]

I think that Disney had no intention of opening until Aug/Sept at least. I think that DVC really forced their hand and to a lesser extent the FL government may have pushed them a bit too. For years and years WDW has been enjoying huge profits due to DVC sales. Now they see that there was some price to those profits. Timeshares are not like a hotel that you can do with as you please. We own that property and there are laws in place about keeping owners out of their property. Once the state of emergency was lifted, they had to open DVC per their contract with the owners.

Universal pushed their hand with the opening of the theme parks. Unni made the decision to open their parks and then did so a short amount of time later. Disney did not even prepare to open the parks no plan at all. They are flying by the seat of their pants and it shows. They make rules that contradict each other ie no resort hopping, but feel free to congregate at the parks or DS. They seemingly want everybody to cancel their cash reservations, but instead of just cancelling them they move people to DVC rooms. Don't think of this as some well laid out plan, they have no idea what they are doing. They don't seem to realize that their IT department sucks and has failed time after time.

I agree that he lack of information is a result of - they don’t know how to do it. I was convinced when they sent out the surveys on Wednesday. If they already knew what the rules were going to be there’s would be no reason to send out a survey. You send out surveys when you aren’t sure and want to pick the brains of your customers. I agree that DVC forced their hand. With the 3 month closure 1/4 of the 2020 points are no good. We just don’t know exactly who is going to get screwed. If they don’t do this correctly it is going to get a lot worse. Already the summer availability is wide open which means owners are hoarding their points. They cannot allow mass DVC cancellations into the fall. Even pushing points to RCI causes long term ramifications. DVC has to provide rooms to RCI to match those points which will cause inventory shortages in the future.

I have a feeling there are lots of meetings going on where ideas are being thrown out and rejected. The survey was probably someone’s brilliant idea: let’s see what the customers think... bottom line - it may be awhile before we get the bottom line and the final decisions may look a lot different than what they have laid out so far.

 

[Lumpy1106]

I agree that he lack of information is a result of - they don’t know how to do it. I was convinced when they sent out the surveys on Wednesday. If they already knew what the rules were going to be there’s would be no reason to send out a survey. You send out surveys when you aren’t sure and want to pick the brains of your customers. I agree that a DVC tipped their hand. With the 3 month closure 1/4 of the 2020 points are no good. We just don’t know exactly who is going to get screwed. If they don’t do this correctly it is going to get a lot worse. Already the summer availability is wide open which means owners are hoarding their points. They cannot allow mass DVC cancellations into the fall. Even pushing points RCI causes long term ramifications. DVC has to provide rooms to RCI to match those points which will cause inventory shortages in the future.

I have a feeling there are lots of meetings going on where ideas are being thrown out and rejected. The survey was probably someone’s brilliant idea: let’s see what the customers think... bottom line - it may be awhile before we get the bottom line and the final decisions may look a lot different than what they have laid out so far.

I hate to burst your bubble, but when you are sent a survey, it is rarely to gauge your opinion before making a decision. The decision has usually already been made and they are crafting the message to sell the decision. The company I work for did this a lot when they were switching us to open office. They were doing it, they just wanted us to feel like we had a say and needed data to sell that we were happy with it after it was done. Truth is, we all hated it, but that's not the message they were able to craft using the survey results. Hmmm...guess it can't be all bad if 65% of the respondents aren't looking to quit and go elsewhere (but 35% are?). See what I mean?

 

[MommaBerd]

Cutting Disney some slack - their situation is far more complicated than UO's. There are pre-paid dining reservations that need to be refunded, resort reservations that need to be moved, existing tickets that include things like waterparks and park-hopping that need to be sorted out, AP's, both with and without resort stays that need to be considered. Add to this they need to implement an -all-new park reservation system that accommodates all of this. All of this that must be integrated into the My Disney Experience software that was never all that fantastic to begin with. My wife works in IT - I promise you there is an entire staff of people working well over 40 hours a week, probably more like 60, just trying to meet the hard-and-fast deadline of opening day, let alone those of us that are begging for it to be finished well before that so we can have some solid information on our vacations. Not only that, but this IT staff is working from home, just like the rest of us, which is complicated enough.

All that said...
Constantly refreshing my e-mail and watching this thread, just like the rest of you.

I hear and agree with you on this - it is a huge operation and a LOT more complex that UO. (And this isn’t an argument against what you stated) BUT I think they could be doing a much better job with communication. You can’t over communicate in a situation like this. In the absence of information, people begin to fill in the blanks, for example the whole #Jambogate.

 

[BWV Dreamin]

Disney absolutely needs to make this new reservation system work. People are already stressed with all of the uncertainty. If this system becomes a nightmare,people will simply cancel reservations and bank/rebook into next year. Disney needs some cash flow....but there is already a petition to keep Disneyland closed. If WDW cant get it right, just stay closed until they do.

 

[one_cat]

I hate to burst your bubble, but when you are sent a survey, it is rarely to gauge your opinion before making a decision. The decision has usually already been made and they are crafting the message to sell the decision. The company I work for did this a lot when they were switching us to open office. They were doing it, they just wanted us to feel like we had a say and needed data to sell that we were happy with it after it was done. Truth is, we all hated it, but that's not the message they were able to craft using the survey results. Hmmm...guess it can't be all bad if 65% of the respondents aren't looking to quit and go elsewhere (but 35% are?). See what I mean?

That’s pretty cynical. I love it.

 

[RalphRR]

I had a thought about what it means to have a park reservation. If I have a reservation and go to that park early in the morning, can I leave go back to my hotel pool and come back to the park again for dinner. If not shouldn’t there be a standby line to take my place in the park.

Since I didn’t read all 10 pages of prior posts, if this was covered earlier I apologize.

Interested in any thoughts.

Ralph RR