Positive/negatives of using a travel agent when booking a package at WDW?

[sWDWcopeland]

I've been using a TA for 10+ years now. I am a control freak but this is one area where I learned to relinquish control. The first lady/company was awesome in many ways. She retired and I filled out quotes for someone else in her company and another well known company. It took several days to hear back so I looked up a company related to someone I follow closely for the latest Disney info. I heard back from them very quickly. I've used them for 6+ trips. I give her my dates and resort. She takes care of everything - monitors for better discounts, makes sure room requests are noted (always get exactly what we want - even 4 rooms adjoining), will book dining for us, book special tours, and sends out very cool pdf type pages right before our trips with detailed info about parks & changes.
Our last trip I let her know we wanted to do two bounce back trips and she had one booked before we left property. Disney was having computer glitches and the second date wasn't showing as bookable. She was able to still get it for us even though it was after the cut off date. She's awesome and takes great care of us. I never have to spend even 1 minute on hold with Disney thanks to her.

 

[bluezy]

With virtually everyone having internet access, TA's aren't able to do anything you can't do yourself at home. Often you will spend more time explaining your preferences to the TA vs doing your own online booking. That relates to not only Disney resorts but ADR's or flights as well. Do you prefer a window/aisle seat, want to travel non-stop or at a particular time of day, check your baggage vs carry-on only? Do you want to spend extra to choose your own seats, have more legroom or sit nearer the front of the aircraft? A few of the obvious examples. The time it takes to communicate all of that is probably longer than doing it yourself.

Once your TA makes the reservation, the Disney phone people will no longer discuss it with you since you aren't considered the 'owner' of the reservation. Probably also likely your TA hasn't actually recently been to all of the various places where they can make reservations for you.

Using a TA isn't an all or nothing deal. Just because someone uses a TA to make their room/package reservation doesn't mean they have to have them do everything for them. They can still make ADRs, flights, etc. themselves if they don't want to take the time to explain their preferences to the TA. I only use our TA for our room/package reservations. If we flew to Disney, I'd probably have her take care of our flights as well because it really doesn't take any longer to tell her the information than it does for me to enter it into a website (or two or three) -- and I can go do something else while she sifts through all of the possible flight options. I take care of any ADRs, tours, LLs, etc. because I agree, there are too many variables to those things and I prefer to be able to make spontaneous decisions about those things.

I have no need to call Disney for anything regarding our room/package reservation since our TA can take care of any changes very quickly -- probably faster than me if I made the reservation myself since she has a direct TA line to Disney and gets her calls answered immediately and I'd have to sit on hold for some length of time. If I need to change a reservation for any reason, it happens within about 15-30 minutes of me contacting her. The important thing is to have a truly good Disney TA rather than a TA who deals with a million other locations and isn't really an expert in any of them.

 

[dunkindonut]

You can beat most TAs using an auto refresher when reserving difficult events