Very disappointing experience making ADR's - Fixed by DVC peeps

[VTNuke]

So I called Disney Dining at 7:00 this morning at my 90 day window to make dining reservations for our late Jan 2010 trip. It was not a good experience.

First, I tried to book online, but my reservation # wouldn't pull up for me to make a 90 +10 reservation, so I had to call. Not that big of a deal for me since I preferr to call anyway. BTW, the DVC site did have my reservation, as did the DVC system when I called.

Secondly, I found out I couldn't add my dining plan to my room reservation, so I had to pay for the Cinderella's Castle meal. She did tell me I could call back and change this once the dining plan was added. BTW, this was not exactly correct. I wasn't her fault I hadn't added the dining plan, but in the end, I had to cancel this reservation and re-book under the dining plan so my card wouldn't be charged.

Thirdly, we are a party of six, four adults and two kids. I told her this about 10 times and I would hope it could be pulled up when I gave her my confirmation # for the room. She booked everything with two adults and two kids. I had confirmed with her at least three times that there were six of us. I didn't discover mistake this until AFTER we hung up and I pulled the confirmation numbers up on the Disney site to make sure they were in there. Luckily, after talking to her for 10 minutes, I had decided to only book the three meals I thought would fill up the quickest with her and then switch over to DVC customer service to do everything else.

Fourth, she was less than the normal Disney happy. I'd say she was "just doing her job" and I was fine with it, but she didn't do her job and more than kind of pointed me in the wrong direction with the reservation for Cinderella's Castle.

As I said, after 10 minutes, I decided I'd have a better experience with DVC than with the dining group, but they didn't open until 9 am. In between the dining call and the DVC call is when I found out she had messed up my reservation.

Finally 9:00 rolls around and I call DVC member services. I added Magical Express, the Dining Plan, made the rest of the dining reservations, and fixed the reservations from the first call. I actually had to cancel the Cinderella's Castle reservation and re-book it with the dining plan paying for it instead of me. My DVC person was great, patient, and helped me with everything I needed.

This is my issue with the entire experience: It's disorganized. I know DVCer's are "different" when it comes to how we do just about everything, but it should be for everything or shouldn't be different at all. I really think they should add the ability to make dining reservation from the DVC website. That alone would make life a lot easier. Also, I'd bet Cinderella's Castle is one of, if not THE, hotest tickets in town. Why does it casue so many problems by needing to be pre-paid. It pretty much makes it so you have to call in to make that reservation.

I just can't imagine how I'd feel if I didn't have DVC member services available to me. I'd be very frustrated right now if I had made ALL of the reservations with Disney Dining only to find out all of them had only 4 people instead of 6.

 

[DebbieB]

I did online dining reservations last month with my DVC reservation. You must retrieve the reservation from a restaurant page. Say for example, you want to book Tony's Town Square. Go into dining and pullup Tony's Town Square and click make a reservation. On the next screen, on the line above the date box is where you can retrieve your reservation. It will then open up the calendar for the length of your reservation.

Only DVC Member Services can add the dining plan to a DVC reservation.

 

[Connears]

I did online dining reservations last month with my DVC reservation. You must retrieve the reservation from a restaurant page. Say for example, you want to book Tony's Town Square. Go into dining and pullup Tony's Town Square and click make a reservation. On the next screen, on the line above the date box is where you can retrieve your reservation. It will then open up the calendar for the length of your reservation.

Only DVC Member Services can add the dining plan to a DVC reservation.

I did the same for my 12/27-1/1/10 trip on 9/27 and had no problem doing 90+10 days online with my OKW reservation. I found the online stuff very good..got email right after with all the numbers confirmed. MS has always been great for any of my adr's before, but thought I'd try the online because I could do it at 5am instead of waitng unitl 9am because it was xmas week and NYE reservation were very important for me...and it worked great.

I think the trick is to do adr's as above at least for dvc.

Connears

 

[shellybaxter]

You must be arriving on January 23rd - just like me. Today was my ADR day too. I couldn't get my reservation to attach when using Internet Explorer. Someone recommended downloading Firefox - worked like a charm. I was able to book for 11 days even though I have two DVC ressies (one week at AKV and one week at BLT). I had no problem getting what I wanted.

I'm sorry you had so much trouble. Try Firefox