News on new January 1st changes

[Starr W.]

I called in last yr to add DME to a trip and since we were waiting for the point charts I asked the cast member if she had seen them.

Her comment, is the CM's will get to see them when about the same time we will.

I figured it would be something ho-hum, like the travel insurance or a remake of the DVC mag for Deb & Bill .

 

[Sammie]

This kinda reminds me of the Sign to Announce the.... Sign

That is probably the best, "nothing" of all times.

I was hoping for the announcement that Disney Files was actually going to be about DVC.

 

[erionm]

I just spent about 5 minutes looking on the website and couldn't even find it. It didn't see it on the front page or under "news", but maybe I'm just not seeing it. I agree that it doesn't sound "big," but I can't even find it.

Glad to hear that I didn't miss much.

At the very bottom of the main page is this graphic:

 

[hakepb]

When I logged in and checked the news section, my top story was something about being unable to access member services from dvcmember.com, but there was no link from the title..
So I guess Disney IT's version of "breaking news" is really a news story that is broken.

 

[dizfan]

There could be an announcement about on-line booking but don't expect anything to be live in the near future. It's still months away.

Even if it was ready, a roll-out in January--when people are making reservations for December--would be the worst possible planning.

Seems like it was almost a year ago that someone on another board posted they were part of an online booking test program. I was hoping it would be coming up soon but should have remembered Microsoft's many, many, many product delays throughout the past 20 years.

Also, very good point about not rolling it out in January.

 

[tjkraz]

Seems like it was almost a year ago that someone on another board posted they were part of an online booking test program. I was hoping it would be coming up soon but should have remembered Microsoft's many, many, many product delays throughout the past 20 years.

At the annual meeting they claimed on-line bookings would be available by the end of 2011. Sample screens were shown and they did reiterate that member feedback and testing was using during development.

 

[spiceycat]

well if it is in the new home resort rules and regulations - I did NOT find it.

they seem to be about the new rules for the Hawaii one - rather than change the WDW dvc

here
if anyone finds something different - definitely say so

http://advc.disney.go.com/media/dvc...andregulations/HomeResortRulesRegulations.pdf

 

[DebbieB]

At the annual meeting they claimed on-line bookings would be available by the end of 2011. Sample screens were shown and they did reiterate that member feedback and testing was using during development.

I went to the annual meeting in 2000 and they claimed it was coming soon.

Considering all the computer problems they are having, I don't have much hope.

 

[dizfan]

At the annual meeting they claimed on-line bookings would be available by the end of 2011. Sample screens were shown and they did reiterate that member feedback and testing was using during development.

Thanks Tim

 

[tjkraz]

I went to the annual meeting in 2000 and they claimed it was coming soon.

Considering all the computer problems they are having, I don't have much hope.

Obviously any year 2000 promises were wishful thinking but I fully expect we will have on-line reservation capabilities in the next 12-18 months (including my own margin for error. )

As for the issues Disney is having now, I don't mean to sound callous toward those who have suffered due to conversion issues but frankly there is little about this process that surprises me. I've worked in IT for almost 20 years. Conversions are NEVER fun but they are a necessary evil if many organizations can ever hope to move forward.

Disney currently has about 35,000 hotel rooms in the US alone. With reservations accepted more than a year in advance, there are literally millions of pending transactions in their system at any given time. No matter how carefully they designed and tested the conversion programs, there just isn't time to account for every unique situation (many of them mistakes) made by reservation agents under the old framework.

Honestly you go into a conversion KNOWING that there will be problems. But the reality is you can only invest so much time and money into fixing those problems beforehand. The other bad thing about conversions is that they are a moving target. You can test and test and test for months on end, and come up with ways to address 99.999% of the problems, but at some point you have to stop programming. And there's no way of preventing the live agents from introducing new problems after that programming cutoff.

In the grand scheme of things, the volume and severity of problems that I have seen reported here since the conversion began in October are pretty mild when held up against the 3000+ DVC Villas with near-max occupancies for 2.5 months.

 

[kapeman]

I was hoping for the announcement that Disney Files was actually going to be about DVC.

Now that's just crazy talk!

 

[dianeschlicht]

I went to the annual meeting in 2000 and they claimed it was coming soon.

Considering all the computer problems they are having, I don't have much hope.

Yes, every annual meeting I have been at they have promised "online booking coming soon", and twice they said "by the end of the year", so I'm not holding my breath either. If then new booking system caused so many problems, just imagine what online booking would create!

 

[dianeschlicht]

Honestly you go into a conversion KNOWING that there will be problems. But the reality is you can only invest so much time and money into fixing those problems beforehand. The other bad thing about conversions is that they are a moving target. You can test and test and test for months on end, and come up with ways to address 99.999% of the problems, but at some point you have to stop programming. And there's no way of preventing the live agents from introducing new problems after that programming cutoff.

In the grand scheme of things, the volume and severity of problems that I have seen reported here since the conversion began in October are pretty mild when held up against the 3000+ DVC Villas with near-max occupancies for 2.5 months.

I know you are right Tim, but I'm hoping that the beta testing they are doing with online booking is going to help "debug" their system before it hits the active level. I'm just skeptical because of all their past failures. Frankly, I too think there were relatively few problems this time with the exception of the housekeeping computers not being able to track things properly. In the scheme of things though, you would think they would have gotten that ironed out after the first few days, but we are still hearing of those issues a month later.

 

[dizfan]

I know you are right Tim, but I'm hoping that the beta testing they are doing with online booking is going to help "debug" their system before it hits the active level. I'm just skeptical because of all their past failures. Frankly, I too think there were relatively few problems this time with the exception of the housekeeping computers not being able to track things properly. In the scheme of things though, you would think they would have gotten that ironed out after the first few days, but we are still hearing of those issues a month later.

As a developer, I've had plenty of experience where a fix appears to be easy to a user, but involve many systems and many developers.

The easier a program is for a person to use without much thought, the more complex the system is underneath. Additionally, the more people that use a system simultaneously, the more complicated it becomes to track down and repair the problem.

 

[LJM721]

Well I just spent about 10 minutes reading this thread from beginning to end anxiously awaiting the post that will first announce the "big news". Wow what a letdown. I think I'll go find another thread to read.