Having to fenagle the search

[WondersOfLife]

Does anyone else get super annoyed when having to fenagle the search to look for the rooms that ARE available but Disney marks as NOT available?

I put in regular, and a selection of resorts pop up. I change it to florida resident discount, and a different selection of resorts pop up. I change it to annual pass discount and a different selection of resorts pop up.

And finally, in my case... There are 3 of us going just for a 2-night trip. But it's an interesting dynamic. It is myself, a friend/co-worker of the opposite gender whom I am not dating, and a high school student intern. So I am trying to find a family suite at Art of Animation with the private room...

...But the only way I was able to do that was to figure out: 1). Put it under annual pass discount and 2). Lie about the guest count being 5 guests.

In the end, I figured it out... And I get it, Disney is trying to hide some resort rooms to maximize profits here and there... But by golly gee is it ANNOYING.

 

[dmc493]

Absolutely 100% yes I HATE THIS part of the website.I have my method for how I click thru and evaluate, but it just means I have to cumbersomely click thru and review all the resorts available for like 4-5 different discounts at any given point in time. It's one of the most unfriendly systems I've ever used

 

[monorail81]

Yup. It’s awful. I usually end up stalking the site multiple times a day to see if other rooms have opened after I have booked. Why can’t they show all of the prices like Marriott or Hilton does?

 

[Raxel7851]

I tried to do a split stay at Pop and FQ. I wanted 2 days at Pop, then 8 at FQ. I got the FQ room no problem. But Pop showed unavailable for the 2 days, both before and after our FQ stay. But when I added an extra day to Pop, BOOM, amazingly it was available. I called thinking the reservation CM could help, but to no avail. So I sucked it up and went with the 3 days.

 

[WondersOfLife]

I tried to do a split stay at Pop and FQ. I wanted 2 days at Pop, then 8 at FQ. I got the FQ room no problem. But Pop showed unavailable for the 2 days, both before and after our FQ stay. But when I added an extra day to Pop, BOOM, amazingly it was available. I called thinking the reservation CM could help, but to no avail. So I sucked it up and went with the 3 days.

I found out quickly a few years ago that all the phone line CMs can do is quite literally just the same thing we can do on our end.

 

[networkpro]

Its not finagling anything. You are literally looking for a hole that corresponds to the peg that you shaped by supplying the date, resort and number of days. You change the shape of your peg and there now might be a hole that fits. Its not magic, its that you don't want to buy what the resulting rooms are at the time you searched. By adding a day, you've fit into an available block for the resort. The CMs do their best but its a constantly changing inventory. The systems try and not strand any room so that its full, empty for one night, and then booked again it prefers a solid block of reservations.

 

[WondersOfLife]

Its not finagling anything. You are literally looking for a hole that corresponds to the peg that you shaped by supplying the date, resort and number of days. You change the shape of your peg and there now might be a hole that fits. Its not magic, its that you don't want to buy what the resulting rooms are at the time you searched. By adding a day, you've fit into an available block for the resort. The CMs do their best but its a constantly changing inventory. The systems try and not strand any room so that its full, empty for one night, and then booked again it prefers a solid block of reservations.

Nah it should be simpler.

 

[dmc493]

Its not finagling anything. You are literally looking for a hole that corresponds to the peg that you shaped by supplying the date, resort and number of days. You change the shape of your peg and there now might be a hole that fits. Its not magic, its that you don't want to buy what the resulting rooms are at the time you searched. By adding a day, you've fit into an available block for the resort. The CMs do their best but its a constantly changing inventory. The systems try and not strand any room so that its full, empty for one night, and then booked again it prefers a solid block of reservations.

Incorrect. I'll give my example from idk something like 6-8 months ago.

I am a GA resident, annual passholder, and disney+ account holder. there was a point in time where there were two standard offers going, an offer going for annual passholders, and an offer for disney+ account holders. I went to the home page and searched a window of dates. I am very open to many resorts, so I chose all, and hit search.

off the bat - disney pulls up one rate per resort based on what it probably thinks is the best deal for me (or some type of criteria). in this instance, this means it chooses one of the four offers I am allowed to utilize, and shows me the rate for each resort using that offer. IF a resort does not have any rooms left for that offer (very often the case), then those resorts show up as "rooms unavailable".

To the average Joe - they might think that those resorts are completely sold out. I have educated myself to know that I have to manually coach the website to show me different offers. So what do I do? I click on a resort with availability, which then shows me the room rates under that offer, but more critically, allows me to click on the type of offer at the top. So, I choose one of the other offers, then hit the "View All Resorts" on the top right. By doing this, Disney now shoes me all the resorts available under the new offer that I had selected. I then repeat these steps and manually view which resorts are available under which offers and what makes the most sense for me.

This single handedly is the most inefficient process ever. I make a spreadsheet every single time. Very very often I find that rack rate at Pop Century is cheaper still than an offer for POFQ or Caribbean Beach, and based on my limited opportunities to visit and stay at the resort means that it's financially smarter for me to book rack rate. I would not know any of this unless I manually clicked at least 15 times to review all the different rates available.

To address what you're saying - yes of course changing and tweaking dates and durations will affect availabilities. I'm not denying that at all. But that is not the main pinch point. It's that Disney makes viewing all available room rates under available offers at any given time nearly impossible to browse and review.

 

[networkpro]

Missed my point because I didn't state it clearly enough: Your criteria , including discount offer group, determines what results are displayed. I do agree that if it were better you'd be able to add multiple discount entitlements to shape your results into more of a 'show me every combination I qualify for' list. So you do have to play go fish on the inventory multiple times to cover all entitlements, but it's not obtaining the results through trickery, deception, manipulation, or cleaver persuasion (ie finagle)

 

[dmc493]

Ok sure finagle is the wrong word. But yea my sentiment is - evaluating all options available to me sucks

 

[osian]

I'd like to just echo that I too find it really difficult. Finding flight availability on airline web sites is equally awkward.

I think the internaional/UK site and offers work differently from the US site (I'm not sure I've seen offers for DVC, annual passholders, Disney+ etc) but even just trying to find availability for a particular resort and room type is difficult. So many combinations of dates and length of stay. If I'm looking for, say, Pop Century for sometime in September then trying to hit that perfect combination of start date and length of stay so that rooms at Pop Century actually become available is time consuming and complicated. And I won't know that rooms at Pop Century are indeed available at all in September unless every single combination is tried. Might be futile anyway because for any given point in time, some resorts might not be participating in the current promotion and Disney don't release those rooms to the international agents at all. (When Disney IUnternational releases package offers in the spring for the following year, many resorts are completely unavailable).

Depends how much hand-holding we expect the web site to do for us, but it's not beyond the capability of programmers to allow you to enter a target resort and room type with a month of the year and a range of how many days you would be willing to book (like when searching for a house - min number of bedrooms, min and max price etc) and then it returns possible combinations with all the relevant offers and discounts applied that would be relevant.

Maybe even that could be an AI job, you never know!

The current web search facility assumes that your dates are fixed and your choice of resort is flexible. It's very often the other way around.

Also, CMs and travel agents can't get inside your head to the extent that they'd know what combination of things you'd be willing to book if your "perfect" request didn't turn up anything (would a preferred room at Caribbean Beach be an acceptable alternative to a king bed room at Coronado Springs, or would you be willing to try again with one day less???). All you can do is give them the same search criteria that the web site currently offers and that you would use yourself in a search.

It should just be a question of providing a useful selection of search criteria in the web site and displaying the results.

 

[WondersOfLife]

Missed my point because I didn't state it clearly enough: Your criteria , including discount offer group, determines what results are displayed. I do agree that if it were better you'd be able to add multiple discount entitlements to shape your results into more of a 'show me every combination I qualify for' list. So you do have to play go fish on the inventory multiple times to cover all entitlements, but it's not obtaining the results through trickery, deception, manipulation, or cleaver persuasion (ie finagle)

One of the easiest fixes would simply just be to add the different discount/rate options as a drop down selection when you initially search.

But by golly gee, even IHG (holidy inn brand) just has you select a room and see all of the options available to you.

 

[networkpro]

One of the easiest fixes would simply just be to add the different discount/rate options as a drop down selection when you initially search.

But by golly gee, even IHG (holidy inn brand) just has you select a room and see all of the options available to you.

IHG wrote their own search. Very familiar with them, as their NA HQ is in the same office complex that I work out of.

 

[WondersOfLife]

IHG wrote their own search. Very familiar with them, as their NA HQ is in the same office complex that I work out of.

I feel like Disney should be capable of doing this as well.

 

[JIMINYCR]

There are so many things Disneys bookings and reservations make so dang difficult. You would think they would want to make it simple to arrange a trip and get you verified as having a room on their property. If a guest wants a room and there is anything availability at the time of your call, they should be able to arrange a booking at that time. It's a guaranteed paid for spot that Disney has sold. Holding back rooms does not guarantee at some point they will bet sold.

 

[Ayla]

I feel like Disney should be capable of doing this as well.

They 100% are, but for some unknown reason, Disney has the worst IT imaginable.