They canceled FP's AGAIN!

[bumbershoot]

I think I read that IT jobs were being outsourced and the current staff was to train their replacements. If true, I would understand current employees not functioning well in the department.

Lots of people skimmed the article from nearly a year ago, about events last October, and felt that that's what the article was saying. It wasn't. The article said that those people "monitored" things in the parks on computers. And they were in Orlando. IT isn't in Orlando. (hint: I know a few of them in Seattle)

 

[GaryDis]

Here's a ComputerWorld article on the Parks and Resorts IT layoffs. There's not enough into to know exactly what tasks they were doing, but certainly monitoring the systems and just keeping things running is a traditional IT department duty, while software development may or may not fall under the IT department, depending on how the company is organized.

 

[larryz]

Lots of people skimmed the article from nearly a year ago, about events last October, and felt that that's what the article was saying. It wasn't. The article said that those people "monitored" things in the parks on computers. And they were in Orlando. IT isn't in Orlando. (hint: I know a few of them in Seattle)

Another perspective

 

[Ambear]

Anytime you call programming with dates simple, you're bound to wind up with something like no one being able to book a FP+ after 9:05 in the morning, since, after all, the park closes at 9.

Dates are among the more notorious sources of bugs.

Yes, dates are definitely complicated. I develop for a scheduling system that allows recurring events and all that. Not sure why there'd be confusion with 9am or 9pm if that's what you mean... A system shouldn't be storing dates as 9am and 9pm.

But I was thinking more of a way to just block these dates/times from even showing up. That really shouldn't be that complicated for a company like disney. But yea, we don't really know what the system is like or anything... Just doesn't seem that difficult to prevent the frustration customers are now facing.

 

[GaryDis]

A system shouldn't be storing dates as 9am and 9pm

It's not a matter of how it's stored. It's how the time gets communicated, both for the park manager telling the programmers what to do and for the UI that allows some administrator to enable or disable FPs for a particular date and time. Tell some non-native junior programmer that you need to be able to limit FPs by time of day and you might want up with a UI that requires the admin to enter the times as Greenwich time.

 

[larryz]

It's not a matter of how it's stored. It's how the time gets communicated, both for the park manager telling the programmers what to do and for the UI that allows some administrator to enable or disable FPs for a particular date and time. Tell some non-native junior programmer that you need to be able to limit FPs by time of day and you might want up with a UI that requires the admin to enter the times as Greenwich time.

Of course, the outsourced personnel will be very familiar with the 24-hour clock, vice the 12-hour clock we routinely use in the U.S.

 

[Ambear]

It's not a matter of how it's stored. It's how the time gets communicated, both for the park manager telling the programmers what to do and for the UI that allows some administrator to enable or disable FPs for a particular date and time. Tell some non-native junior programmer that you need to be able to limit FPs by time of day and you might want up with a UI that requires the admin to enter the times as Greenwich time.

Hmm... I guess it just doesn't seem complicated but I know sometimes something seems simple and then developing turns into a nightmare lol. But I mean, this could use unix timestamps backend, and then convert it to est time for the admins. Cause I think they'd only need to care about est time unless im missing something. And making admins use 24 hour clock is not the end of the world if you want to limit the number of conversions and get rid of the day/night mess.

But yea we could discuss this all day and it is fun actually lol, but probably not very relevant to the thread anymore so sorry for the diversion.

 

[GaryDis]

I'll make it simple:

Programming is easy.
Programming to do what the programmer actually wants is a bit harder.
Programming to do what the programmer's manager actually wants is harder still.
Programming to do what the end user told the programmer's manager he wants is much harder.
Programming to do what the end user wants, and not just what he said he wants, is harder still.
Programming to do what the end user really needs, and not what he thinks he wants, is a miracle.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I'll make it simple:

Programming is easy.
Programming to do what the programmer actually wants is a bit harder.
Programming to do what the programmer's manager actually wants is harder still.
Programming to do what the end user told the programmer's manager he wants is much harder.
Programming to do what the end user wants, and not just what he said he wants, is harder still.
Programming to do what the end user really needs, and not what he thinks he wants, is a miracle.

And all of this is Disney's responsibility to get taken care of. If they were capable of doing it in the same-day kiosks last November, they are capable of getting it accomplished for the prebooking system. This isn't a newly decided upon policy. They've had at least 8 months to figure it out, if not more.

 

[mom2rtk]

Yeah. If programming is that complicated, then maybe it was a bad idea to run ride access through a system that requires so much programming.

 

[JoshuaShaw]

I would have more sympathy for Disney's IT problems if they were a 12-person start-up, not a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate.

 

[DisneyWisher]

I don't know if this helps. My daughter decided last night to go to MK today. I made her FPs (talk about last minute) I was able to book her 7DMT and A&E. My other daughter and I decided to go Tuesday. Again got 7DMT and had chance at A&E but she's 22 so no character M&G. I broke us up into singles. Going 9/11-9-14. 2 MK days with my oldest daughters kids. For 9/11 and 9/13 able to get 7DMT on both days. Split everyone into singles again we share a 35 minute window.

 

[GreatLakes]

Except they didn't actually implement that new rule. Even after they cancelled FP+'s after 6:30, you could still go back in and book those same fastpasses. I had mine cancelled twice after I rebooked, and I could still have gone in and rebooked them a third time. So, the rule wasn't enforced even after they processed it.

Right. Management implemented the new rule, Disney just hasn't integrated that rule into FP+ yet and may not for a while.

I suspect the new policy was decided at some point by management and at a later day communicated to the PM for the FP+ system (or the MyMagic+ PM). The PM for the system would add this change to the end of the enhancement road map. I have projects with road maps already well into 2017. If a change is requested for one of those projects, especially a change in scope, that is the earliest it will be done.

Until that change is made, or the policy is amended, the new policy will be enforced not by the system blocked the ability to book FP+ past the 6:30 window, it will be enforced after the fact by simply erasing them.

Or it is a bug and will be fixed more quickly. I'm just making some educated guesses here.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I suspect the new policy was decided at some point by management and at a later day communicated to the PM for the FP+ system (or the MyMagic+ PM).

Given that this policy was in place in the parks last November, how could this be considered a new policy?

 

[GreatLakes]

Given that this policy was in place in the parks last November, how could this be considered a new policy?

That doesn't matter really. Was it enforced by the FP+ system last year? My understanding is that it wasn't. The policy could be 20 years old but if the enforcement of the policy is new to the FP+ system the day it was added to the scope is the day the policy came into existence from FP+'s point of view.

I am only looking at this entire question and thread from the project management point of view. I tend to look at the entire MyMagic+ system from the point of view of someone who would be managing it through the entire SDLC life cycle. It is a really interesting system as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Angel Ariel]

That doesn't matter really. Was it enforced by the FP+ system last year? My understanding is that it wasn't.

I was in MK on the day of the first MVMCP last year. We went to get a fp+ at a kiosk in the park, and there were no fp+ time slots past the 5:30-6:30 window. The CM working the kiosk informed us (when we asked why) that the last fp+ window available on party night's was 5:30-6:30. This is what we experienced using the fp+ in park system last November. They clearly had it in place at the kiosks at that time.

 

[ParrotBill]

You know how Disney handles new movie and setting ideas by allowing the animators to study the real life subjects? Like animals for Lion King, and taking designers to Africa for Animal Kingdom? MyMagic+ seems to have commited the all-too-often error of failing to live in the end-user's shoes for a while before and during the system design, and early testing (before release to users.) We can see this with some of the biggest issues the system had early on: Big problems with split stays; Lack of security on purchases. The user interfaces were oversimplified in a misguided attempt to make them easy - so everything took so many clicks and keystrokes that planning a week long vacation was an awful chore. Then came the things that should have been within their control: System performance/capacity overloads. Lack of synchronization with their own calendar causing cancellations that should not have happened. But to then cancel and reschedule with nonsense many hours away is just plan bad customer service. If these things happen to you, call, or go to guest services, and be polite but explain how bad this is. Usually you will at least end up with a "use any time" fastpass. Sometimes better.

 

[serenitynow]

Maybe the ride will just go "down" mysteriously before the party