Why would a tech savvy co. Have such a tragic web site?

[Pile o kids]

I don't get the Disney cruise web site. How could a brilliant company have a site soooo crappy.
Maybe it just me and my extended family or maybe Disney can hire a high school student to improve the site.

 

[jane01jp]

Yeah. I think it is clunky.

 

[Disneypeach]

It's not just you. I used to work in IT for a large company and worked a bit with our website team. I had to fight with programmers to get designs that would make sense to our customers. My company's sites are ok but not as good as they should be. Disney's sites are not very well done in my opinion. It surprises me because they are so good in other IT areas. I suspect it comes down to money and "turf wars" (my company suffered from this). Each branch of the business doing their own thing rather than having a good consolidated baseline structure for the "Disney" brands overall. Shanghai's fault....

 

[Ofinn]

It's not just you. I used to work in IT for a large company and worked a bit with our website team. I had to fight with programmers to get designs that would make sense to our customers. My company's sites are ok but not as good as they should be. Disney's sites are not very well done in my opinion. It surprises me because they are so good in other IT areas. I suspect it comes down to money and "turf wars" (my company suffered from this). Each branch of the business doing their own thing rather than having a good consolidated baseline structure for the "Disney" brands overall. Shanghai's fault....

Disney's websites have been bad long before Shanghai.

 

[KalamityJane]

Yup, bad.

 

[bumbershoot]

Shanghai's fault....

oh my gosh no.

Disney's main websites have NEVER been good. And it has taken them years to get this far just with WDW (which is still awful), and then they started messing with DCL's.

 

[KashasMom]

I can't believe how many really awful websites are out there, including DCL's. My theory is that those who design/develop are not users.

 

[Anisum]

Not speaking to the design (which is meh) but the development aspect is certainly not what most developers would want. Backend web developers value speed and efficiency over everything else and most of Disney's websites have neither. The response time alone is not what anyone in the industry would deem acceptable.

 

[Hundredacre]

I don't get the Disney cruise web site. How could a brilliant company have a site soooo crappy.
Maybe it just me and my extended family or maybe Disney can hire a high school student to improve the site.

Because they hire novices on H1B visas to run it.

 

[Disneypeach]

oh my gosh no.

Disney's main websites have NEVER been good. And it has taken them years to get this far just with WDW (which is still awful), and then they started messing with DCL's.

I was just joking on the Shanghai riff... Totally agree with your assessment on WDW and DCL...

 

[cgolf]

After booking on RCCL recently and researching other lines including DCL all I have to say is that they are all clunky, just in different ways. There really wasn't one that was stood out as wow that was a great site.

 

[stitch'sgirl]

Don't know if this will help anyone, but when I called in to DVC for something else, they told me to always use Chrome when accessing any Disney website for better performance. That being said, I have been getting the "We're working on it" error message on the DCL website for almost 2 weeks when trying to access military discount dates. Frustrating. The old site was just plain easier to use.

 

[KashasMom]

Don't know if this will help anyone, but when I called in to DVC for something else, they told me to always use Chrome when accessing any Disney website for better performance. That being said, I have been getting the "We're working on it" error message on the DCL website for almost 2 weeks when trying to access military discount dates. Frustrating. The old site was just plain easier to use.

I use Chrome and it's really not any better. Must be the standard reply since people probably complain a lot.

 

[truck1]

Ive used Chrome, Edge, and Internet Explorer and have the same issues with all 3. What its coming down to at Disney is what is easier for them to throw together, not what works best for the end user. And it started with the websites, and continued thru MDE. To this day we are still having problems with that stuid system. They come up with a really good idea, rush it, run it over budget and to save face launch a half a system. then over the course of the next 5 years keep tweeking it, until something new comes out and they start again.

 

[Laura24]

It Is not as user friendly as it had been. Checking room locations and giving room options was must simpler with the prior format. Change isn't always a good thing unless it improves the product. Big fail.

 

[darnheather]

After booking on RCCL recently and researching other lines including DCL all I have to say is that they are all clunky, just in different ways. There really wasn't one that was stood out as wow that was a great site.

No kidding. I've looked at three or four in the last few days and no one of them are easily navigable.