Park reservations

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

Is it ever possible to add a person to your party on the day of?

Our situation is we are going down for UCA College Nationals (a cheer competition). Our family has had our tickets booked and park reservations made for months. We waited and waited and bugged the college cheer coach about tickets for my daughter who is competing so that we could add her to her park days. IDK if coach is just being difficult or truly doesn't understand how it works. She has told all of them that they can't do anything until check in when they receive the actual paper tickets. We've tried to explain but we get no where.

So now here we are the trip is next week the last week of April. Still have no ticket number for her and the parks we have reservations for are showing no availability.

Anyone have any idea is there anything we can do? or anything Disney might allow us to do?

 

[scrappinginontario]

There is no easy way to add a park reservation for a park that has no reservations available. Sadly this board is full of people in a similar situation to you.

You will not be able to even try to book a park reservation until you have a ticket for her and even then it may or may not happen. The best suggestion is to try for a reservation as often as you can once she has a ticket. Do not go by the park reservation availability calendar, just keep trying to actually book a reservation as the calendar is not updated real time.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

ok thanks. UGH so frustrating. She doesn't receive her ticket until Monday of our week so literally 3 days before the days she wanted to go with us.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

Maybe availability will open up for only 1? that's all we'd need. Fingers crossed

 

[luv2cheer92]

Is it ever possible to add a person to your party on the day of?

Our situation is we are going down for UCA College Nationals (a cheer competition). Our family has had our tickets booked and park reservations made for months. We waited and waited and bugged the college cheer coach about tickets for my daughter who is competing so that we could add her to her park days. IDK if coach is just being difficult or truly doesn't understand how it works. She has told all of them that they can't do anything until check in when they receive the actual paper tickets. We've tried to explain but we get no where.

So now here we are the trip is next week the last week of April. Still have no ticket number for her and the parks we have reservations for are showing no availability.

Anyone have any idea is there anything we can do? or anything Disney might allow us to do?

The coach is correct, you can't get the athlete's tickets until you check in. It's not that she doesn't understand how it works or is being difficult. That is how it works for the competitions.

 

[Meglen]

The coach is correct, you can't get the athlete's tickets until you check in. It's not that she doesn't understand how it works or is being difficult. That is how it works for the competitions.

But the rules should be different with the way the parks work. Now they have tickets to nothing if no reservations are available. Imo I would buy her a set of tickets and book her reservations. Than keep those tickets on file go to gs and use her competition tickets for the trip than open up the set you bought to use another time.

 

[luv2cheer92]

But the rules should be different with the way the parks work. Now they have tickets to nothing if no reservations are available. Imo I would buy her a set of tickets and book her reservations. Than keep those tickets on file go to gs and use her competition tickets for the trip than open up the set you bought to use another time.

Oh I agree, I just didn't want the OP to think the coach was holding back on something that she doesn't have access to.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

The coach is correct, you can't get the athlete's tickets until you check in. It's not that she doesn't understand how it works or is being difficult. That is how it works for the competitions.

So do y'all think that Disney will be helpful in anyway in allowing them to use these tickets? Like maybe they held back some availability to accomodate them? I have called Disney and couldn't get answers.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

But the rules should be different with the way the parks work. Now they have tickets to nothing if no reservations are available. Imo I would buy her a set of tickets and book her reservations. Than keep those tickets on file go to gs and use her competition tickets for the trip than open up the set you bought to use another time.

Dang that is a super smart idea I wish I'd thought of that earlier. I wasn't thinking of it only focused on the competition tickets because they are only good for like a week but that would have totally worked. UGH

 

[zoo2tycoon]

So do y'all think that Disney will be helpful in anyway in allowing them to use these tickets? Like maybe they held back some availability to accomodate them? I have called Disney and couldn't get answers.

No you can’t expect Guest Services to make a reservation for her. Everyone wants to just add one more person- there is a thread where an admin talks about this. Just keep trying.
https://www.disboards.com/threads/important-book-park-reservations-asap.3833582/

 

[focusondisney]

OP, reservations do open up day of as people change plans. For example, Epcot was the only park that had spots available for resort & APs for today for the last few weeks. I looked early this morning & all parks except MK had spots open. And I looked again this afternoon & all 4 parks were listed as available. Now the weather is predicted as rainy off & on all day. So maybe more people cancelled or changed plans. But spots did apparently open up. I don’t know if that is a usual occurrence or if it was more weather related.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

No you can’t expect Guest Services to make a reservation for her. Everyone wants to just add one more person- there is a thread where an admin talks about this. Just keep trying.
https://www.disboards.com/threads/important-book-park-reservations-asap.3833582/

I'm not asking them to do ME a favor. I'm saying if Disney knows they give these kids 3 days tickets yet they have no way at all to make park reservations then maybe they held back some reservation space for them. I wouldn't think that was unreasonable since Disney holds these tickets until they get there to checkin for the competition. I'm not trying to skirt the system or get something that no one else can get. I'm just trying to get my head around how they give them tickets as part of the huge $$ of this comp if they wouldn't be able to use them.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

OP, reservations do open up day of as people change plans. For example, Epcot was the only park that had spots available for resort & APs for today for the last few weeks. I looked early this morning & all parks except MK had spots open. And I looked again this afternoon & all 4 parks were listed as available. Now the weather is predicted as rainy off & on all day. So maybe more people cancelled or changed plans. But spots did apparently open up. I don’t know if that is a usual occurrence or if it was more weather related.

Thank you so much! That is good to know! Fingers crossed!

 

[Tigerlulu]

I'm not asking them to do ME a favor. I'm saying if Disney knows they give these kids 3 days tickets yet they have no way at all to make park reservations then maybe they held back some reservation space for them. I wouldn't think that was unreasonable since Disney holds these tickets until they get there to checkin for the competition.

Im not particularly helpful to your cause of cheer competition but I know in our case of planning a school trip for June Disney specifically is not holding reservations for the group despite not allowing ticket purchases to happen in enough time to ensure reservations happen. It’s frustrating. So we are all buying direct instead of the discount tickets from Disney. It would be another 3 weeks before we would have them in hand at this point if we were doing things through the school and Disney for the discounts. It’s ridiculous and Disney knows exactly what they are doing. They spelled it out in the information they emailed us.

 

[subtchr]

I'm not asking them to do ME a favor. I'm saying if Disney knows they give these kids 3 days tickets yet they have no way at all to make park reservations then maybe they held back some reservation space for them. I wouldn't think that was unreasonable since Disney holds these tickets until they get there to checkin for the competition. I'm not trying to skirt the system or get something that no one else can get. I'm just trying to get my head around how they give them tickets as part of the huge $$ of this comp if they wouldn't be able to use them.

No, they are definitely not holding out any spots for these or any other groups.

I work for a company that creates trips for high school music groups. For the couple groups we have early summer (yay for getting back to work!!), we had to book parks for each student, in advance. Fortunately, when Disney made more spots available for ticket holders last week, we jumped on it and were able to get the last of our group members booked.

This situation with the cheer/dance groups seems to be particular to them, so I think it's more the organizer than Disney driving it. For some reason, they don't want to give tickets/ticket numbers early. It was a factor when there were fastpasses to book, and now it's even more of a factor with park reservations. I hope they hear enough from their clients/participants that they change their ways!

 

[leebee]

It sounds fishy to me, like the trip organizing organization is charging you for a product that has no worth or value. I'd be... irritated, because what I'd really be is definitely not a DISboard-friendly term!

 

[HiStitch626]

This situation with the cheer/dance groups seems to be particular to them, so I think it's more the organizer than Disney driving it. For some reason, they don't want to give tickets/ticket numbers early.

I am not a group organizer, but I wonder if some of this is not wanting to give ticket numbers due to concerns about cancellations due to the pandemic. If the organizer holds the tickets, then perhaps Disney refunds them. If they distribute the numbers and people add them to their MDEs you have tougher situation for the organizer.

OP, I hope you are able to get park reservations

 

[luv2cheer92]

I am not a group organizer, but I wonder if some of this is not wanting to give ticket numbers due to concerns about cancellations due to the pandemic. If the organizer holds the tickets, then perhaps Disney refunds them. If they distribute the numbers and people add them to their MDEs you have tougher situation for the organizer.

OP, I hope you are able to get park reservations

This is how it has been even before Covid though, so they can't really use that as an excuse. It wouldn't at all surprise me if this is all on Varsity and not Disney. They aren't the most trustworthy company, and unfortunately they pretty much run all of cheer.

 

[happilyeverfirstgrade]

This is how it has been even before Covid though, so they can't really use that as an excuse. It wouldn't at all surprise me if this is all on Varsity and not Disney. They aren't the most trustworthy company, and unfortunately they pretty much run all of cheer.

Yes but at least you could get in to the park before even if you couldn't book fast pass early enough. But geez now I can't even get her in a park. I assure you Varsity will hear it from our group. Ridiculous

 

[danceteachermom]

I have booked 10 different school trips with Disney and as soon as you can pay in full they send you the tickets and you can link to your reservation. I have always been able to book what I needed with the school tickets well in advance and previously was able to book fast passes for my group. Sounds like this is Varsity or another third party trip planner issue. If the tickets are paid for you can get them any time.