Pete's challenge excepted. Disney Trip

[wildcatbn]

To go along with Pete's what do you think of Disney now discussion at the end of the news segment I would like to share my experiences as we get ready for our trip at the end of April.

I know this is a trip pre report but with the discussions on the podcast I wanted to put my thoughts here and if you guys want to move it you can.

Back story:

My family lives in South Dakota so we live along ways from anything. We don't have alot of money but my mother loves to spoil her grandchildren so much so she told my daughter when we were on our first trip to Disney together at the age of 5 that she would get to come back when she had her 12 birthday.

We have been to Disney World 3 times before this will make our fourth trip as a family and mine and the wife's fifth trip. I have been to Disneyland 2 times once when I was 10 and a few months ago in May '13 when I turned 40 with my wife.

I do all the trip planning and quite honestly we were not going back to Disney for this trip other than one day to say we did, and fulfill my mother's promise to my daughter and celebrate my youngest fifth birthday at Magic Kingdom. We all agreed two years ago we were burnt out on Disney and wanted to try something different.

Cast of characters

Me Bob 40 turning 41 May 18
DW Angela 37
DD Abbey 11 turning 12 May 28
DS Wyatt 9
DS Zach 4 turning 5 April 27
DM Pat to old to put the numbers down here Dinosaurs called her grandma really 68 or 69
DD Larry Same as mom but older still 73 or so.

Can you tell I am a only kid.

Disney has changed coming from someone that only was able to see Disney every two years or so you see things that others that go everyday or every year may not. Let me also say this it is expensive to we don't go somewhere else as a family and thanks to mom we are able to do this every so often. To put in perspective we have not spent less than 11,000 on a trip and this one will be close to 15,000 that is a whole crap ton of money. I run a small computer shop and barely clear more than that every year. I was shocked how much it changed from years before.

Ok so how did it change from years past and why did we say we would not go back. CM have lost the magic touch we have all seen the boards about cranky CM but it didn't just start this year two years ago we had problems with cranky or less than helpful CMs. My mom uses a ECV she had a knee replacement and is unable to walk around and the EVC has been great in Disney. Twice we were left at the bus terminal because the driver didn't want to put her on the Bus. One driver told me he was full and we needed to wait for the next bus. There were 3 people on the bus and we were the only ones waiting for the bus that morning. My wife got food poisoning from the chicken Cesar salad they server her at the Port Orleans Riverside quick service. I contacted the resort front desk about her getting ill and what we should do and the CM I talked to said ok and asked if there was anything else and said have a great day. They never called to check on us or anything. When we check out we mentioned that and the CM just kept on doing the paper work. While we were setting in the airport we all decided even the kids maybe someplace else next time the magic had faded for us.

Ok so fast forward a year mom calls me up and says start planning our next trip. With our last trip fresh in my head I said how about a Disney Cruise and one day at Magic Kingdom the rest spent at Universal and Sea World she agreed and I started planning. My wife was on board as long as we didn't go back to Disney World all the fairy dust in the world can not remove two days stuck in the resort room bathroom.

I feel i have to break this up some so I will start anouther post.

 

[wildcatbn]

So Universal, Seaworld, and a Disney Cruise no problem, should be easy not much to plan just go relax and have fun. Oh how things would change.

I'm a geek I run a computer shop and love technology. I was able to get google glass last year and look forward to use it to log our trip. I'm not afraid of technology so I had the MDE app downloaded to my phone from the beginning. I started to listen to the podcast again and made sure to get our cruise booked as soon as we were able to.

Around Christmas I started to watch ride videos of Universal we don't have many roller-coaster riders in our family and I was starting to get concerned we were going to spend $2000 on tickets and just walk around the park talking about rides we would do when our kids grew up. I showed my mom and wife and they agreed Universal was out.

So now what, I started to hear a sucking sound with low Disney music in the background. This is why I think Disney can still afford to not to be on their A game every time. Where else are you going to go with 4 year old 9 year old and 11 year old that doesn't like to ride roller coasters? I broke the news to my wife slowly talking about how many days we would be at Seaworld and the Cruise. We booked rooms at Boardwalk Villas and 7 days of tickets at Disney World.

I slept on the couch for a few nights after I booked our rooms.

 

[wildcatbn]

So I went from a relax not much planning vacation to once again commando Disney vacation mode.

Booked ADRs and waited for the Magic Bands to be available. So when I booked tickets they sent me them within a few weeks even thou I was able to get Magic bands and customize them. To me this was a waste of money why print tickets if you know bands will be how I interface with Disney from here on out. So now I am not sure if I still take my tickets with or leave them at home and just take MB. Just more confusion to add to the mix.

Fastpass + just came up for me the other day so I started to look at what I can book. Wow what a disappointment on the choices you are given. With HS you have nothing after you pick TSM and with little ones you have to pick that if you want happy kids. So that leaves the two roller coaster parents unable to ride Rocking Roller coaster unless you want to wait in a 40 min plus line with the hope the Grandparents can keep the littlest one entertained log enough for us to ride. This to me is the biggest downfall of fastpast + currently. In the past we could grab fastpass schedule our time roughly around things the kids wanted to do and slip away and ride our ride and meet up again. Now we are stuck riding toy story mania and hoping we will get time to ride the coaster.

So that's where I am at we leave on the 25 of April with google glass, my nexus 5, my wife's Iphone and backup batteries we hit the parks that night and hope for the best. I will try and do a rolling trip report in the proper forum and link it here. I am hoping for the best but so much is unknown at this point and spending the kinda cash a person does you don't like to have that many things hanging out there.

 

[disneychik21]

I am part of a Disney family. We have gone for many years, several times a year. We are DVC/annual pass holders. We travel in various way. Sometimes we all split up and do our own thing and the only time we see each other through the day is meal times. Sometimes we do all stay together and some go on rides, some don't. Sometimes we travel with 2 or 3 and sometimes 8 or 9. We are a Disney family. We were huge fans of everything Disney and found that everything was fabulous.

This past December, we had our first trip planned with MMP+. There were 8 of us on this trip, 5 adults, 2 children, and 1 infant. I went into it very open minded, as did we all. I refused to "judge the book by its cover." We arrived at the airport. We were told that the Magical Express data would be on the magical bands. It wasn't. No big deal, took a little longer to get it figured out, but no big deal. Arrived at resort #1 (SSR). We were only staying there for a night in a grand villa and then moving to AKL in a grand villa. When we checked in there, we found out that our magic bands weren't working, so they gave us new ones. The 2nd day was where it got tricky. Trying to check into the Grand Villa at AKL, the room was broken. We were told that the key thing on the door didn't work. They offered us two, two bedroom, but we decided to cram into one 2 bedroom because we would rather all be in the same room. They made up for the mishap by providing us with extra dining options on our dining plan. Fabulous. It was also the time when we were given the 3rd set of magic bands because the other ones were once again non functional. Once we got checked in, the room was not ready, so we went to the parks. The magic bands didn't work. We were also given the KTTW cards, so those were used. We headed to guest relations and they told us to use the KTTW cards for charging and dining for the day and they to visit the front desk at the hotel. Ok no problem. We played for a while and then went to lunch. We tried to use credits from dining plan on the KTTW cards, it didn't work. I scanned my magic band and it worked, so lunch was handled. The day went by and we went back to the hotel. Get to the room at AKL and find out we couldn't get in the room. We made the walk to the front desk, where they gave us a 4th set of magic bands and a new set of KTTW cards. We now had 32 bands. The door still wouldn't open so we called maintenance. They changed the batteries in the door and were on their way. The next day, we found out we still couldn't get into the room, so we would just leave the door propped because no one ever knew if they could get in or not. We went to the park that day, with 4 magic bands and 2 KTTW cards each, not knowing which combination would be functional. Everything was great that day until dinner. We were trying to get back in the park to go eat at EPCOT, but couldn't get in. Went to guest relations, waited in an hour line to be helped, were let into the park, got to the restaurant 1 and hour and thirty minutes late (guest relations had called), and found out that our reservation wasn't in their system at all. It wasn't even in there as late. I showed them the reservation on the app and the number, but there was no record of it in the system. At this point we were laughing because what more could go wrong. We were sat about 2 hours later, our waiter forgot about us and the dinner took 3 hours, and we almost missed Illuminations because of that. The rest of the week was about the same, but we still had fun. We have some good stories to tell. By the end of the week, we had 40 magic bands, 16 KTTW cards, and several dining plan credits because sometimes they would come off and sometimes not. The trip wasn't all bad. We were with each other, we made good memories, and the kids had fun (the most important part). We were definitely exposed to the flaws in My Magic Plus technology though. The bonus about all the negative experiences is it really can't be worse next time.

Although things kept going wrong, we had fun. We never asked for free stuff (the dining credits were just offered, we didn't ask) and we made sure the kids had fun. We didn't let the failure in technology ruin our trip, as frustrating as it was.

Still love Disney too.

 

[twob4him]

First of all, that entire report needs to be mailed/emailed/somehow sent to Disney. They need to know about this kind of result. Anyone who was not a disney fan, would NEVER come back after all you went through. I give you so much credit! You are the most laid back person I have ever heard from....people usually go crazy by the second or third mess up. That is amazing. Sorry everything went wrong on your trip but....glad you survived and had a good time anyways!

By the way, in your title do you mean excepted or accepted??

 

[disneychik21]

First of all, that entire report needs to be mailed/emailed/somehow sent to Disney. They need to know about this kind of result. Anyone who was not a disney fan, would NEVER come back after all you went through. I give you so much credit! You are the most laid back person I have ever heard from....people usually go crazy by the second or third mess up. That is amazing. Sorry everything went wrong on your trip but....glad you survived and had a good time anyways!

By the way, in your title do you mean excepted or accepted??

What was so important to me was that my nephews had a good time. I've been to Disney so many times. While I still love going, when they are there, the priority is them. I didn't want to let my frustrations get in the way of their good time. They had no idea what was going on and just knew that they were meeting Mickey Mouse and one of them was now tall enough to ride the bigger rides. They had a great time, so Disney fails aside, it was a great trip. If the nephews weren't there, I probably would have lost it a little.

 

[SamSam]

Although things kept going wrong, we had fun. We never asked for free stuff (the dining credits were just offered, we didn't ask) and we made sure the kids had fun. We didn't let the failure in technology ruin our trip, as frustrating as it was.

Still love Disney too.

Absolutely LOVE your attitude. Things will go wrong, rather than get all bent out of shape, roll with it - laugh about it...above all have fun!

Thank you for such a refreshing 'take' on a 'gone wrong' vacation. Love it!

 

[disneychik21]

It very well could have ruined the trip. We just had to constantly remember that we were making memories with the littles. One of the most magical times was when a street entertainer at DHS stopped the two boys and had a very long conversation with them. It was great! She gave the two boys their new favorite thing to say, "Holy socks and underwear!" It was hysterical and the boys loved it and still talk about it 3 months later. That was absolutely perfect, had nothing to do with technology, and wasn't planned. The true meaning of a magical moment.

 

[SoarinSC]

I am part of a Disney family. We have gone for many years, several times a year. We are DVC/annual pass holders. We travel in various way. Sometimes we all split up and do our own thing and the only time we see each other through the day is meal times. Sometimes we do all stay together and some go on rides, some don't. Sometimes we travel with 2 or 3 and sometimes 8 or 9. We are a Disney family. We were huge fans of everything Disney and found that everything was fabulous.

This past December, we had our first trip planned with MMP+. There were 8 of us on this trip, 5 adults, 2 children, and 1 infant. I went into it very open minded, as did we all. I refused to "judge the book by its cover." We arrived at the airport. We were told that the Magical Express data would be on the magical bands. It wasn't. No big deal, took a little longer to get it figured out, but no big deal. Arrived at resort #1 (SSR). We were only staying there for a night in a grand villa and then moving to AKL in a grand villa. When we checked in there, we found out that our magic bands weren't working, so they gave us new ones. The 2nd day was where it got tricky. Trying to check into the Grand Villa at AKL, the room was broken. We were told that the key thing on the door didn't work. They offered us two, two bedroom, but we decided to cram into one 2 bedroom because we would rather all be in the same room. They made up for the mishap by providing us with extra dining options on our dining plan. Fabulous. It was also the time when we were given the 3rd set of magic bands because the other ones were once again non functional. Once we got checked in, the room was not ready, so we went to the parks. The magic bands didn't work. We were also given the KTTW cards, so those were used. We headed to guest relations and they told us to use the KTTW cards for charging and dining for the day and they to visit the front desk at the hotel. Ok no problem. We played for a while and then went to lunch. We tried to use credits from dining plan on the KTTW cards, it didn't work. I scanned my magic band and it worked, so lunch was handled. The day went by and we went back to the hotel. Get to the room at AKL and find out we couldn't get in the room. We made the walk to the front desk, where they gave us a 4th set of magic bands and a new set of KTTW cards. We now had 32 bands. The door still wouldn't open so we called maintenance. They changed the batteries in the door and were on their way. The next day, we found out we still couldn't get into the room, so we would just leave the door propped because no one ever knew if they could get in or not. We went to the park that day, with 4 magic bands and 2 KTTW cards each, not knowing which combination would be functional. Everything was great that day until dinner. We were trying to get back in the park to go eat at EPCOT, but couldn't get in. Went to guest relations, waited in an hour line to be helped, were let into the park, got to the restaurant 1 and hour and thirty minutes late (guest relations had called), and found out that our reservation wasn't in their system at all. It wasn't even in there as late. I showed them the reservation on the app and the number, but there was no record of it in the system. At this point we were laughing because what more could go wrong. We were sat about 2 hours later, our waiter forgot about us and the dinner took 3 hours, and we almost missed Illuminations because of that. The rest of the week was about the same, but we still had fun. We have some good stories to tell. By the end of the week, we had 40 magic bands, 16 KTTW cards, and several dining plan credits because sometimes they would come off and sometimes not. The trip wasn't all bad. We were with each other, we made good memories, and the kids had fun (the most important part). We were definitely exposed to the flaws in My Magic Plus technology though. The bonus about all the negative experiences is it really can't be worse next time.

Although things kept going wrong, we had fun. We never asked for free stuff (the dining credits were just offered, we didn't ask) and we made sure the kids had fun. We didn't let the failure in technology ruin our trip, as frustrating as it was.

Still love Disney too.

One of my favorite posts ever. I love the optimism despite the hassles. It really is about being together and the memories. That being said, I'm going to stay optimistic that Disney will continue to work the kinks out...like any business, it seems the motto is to roll out and fix as you go. Just life...might as well enjoy the ride. Disney is Disney and most of us will continue to love it despite the hassles...even if we don't feel we will in the heat of the moment sometimes.

 

[Auntie L.]

I agree with everyone - GREAT attitude -and Disney IS magical. But, having said that, they have really got to step up to the plate and fix this.

 

[wildcatbn]

Well we are here now and have to say fp+ is the the worst thing for our family. We have been able to use a total of three fast passes in six days. Cast members have been rude to my mother who has limited mobility. We were told no gac cards are given out unless you have mental issues and dont understand why there is a line which she tried to go on a few rides in epcot and she just gave up even trying becuse she couldn't stand long enough in the short lines we tried. With the way the parks are lines at the food courts time it takes to eat get 7 of us back thru the parks fp+ just didnt work. The ap sucks lag from switching pages the inabiliy to just go back to home page made me want to throw my phone. Battery is dieing be back soon.

 

[Asc341]

I love DisneyChik's attitude! There are usually snags we encounter while at Disney (albeit, no where near what she endured!), but as they say - there are no bad days at Disney. As Pete has said in the podcasts, so much is reliant on attitude.

 

[wildcatbn]

I will have to update all that went on. I agree with the attitude thing but Disney CM have attitude to and while most are great I have ran into a large share of what I call newbies CM that have not learned to smile or even say hello. This trip I have ran into a lot of groups of CM two or three that seem to busy talking about last night to help solve any issues you may have.