Disneyworld.com sucks - Tell them!

mousermerf

mousermerf

Account Suspended
Most of us know that Disney.com sucks. It's horrible, inaccurate, and the people who make their living off of it should be ashamed of themselves.

Broken links (for a year now!) and inaccurate information make it harder for anyone trying to plan a trip to WDW to really understand the place prior to arrival. Not to mention showing them images of the old rooms at the Contemporary is just wrong.

So, I beg you, please.. Tell Disney their website sucks. I know many people feel this way but not many people tell Disney the truth about their website. Without signifigant statistical evidence that something is wrong Disney will not move to right this problem.

So i'm providing the link to Disneyworld.com and at the bottom of the page, please click: "Tell us what you think"

http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/index

And this link might work to go right to the survey...

https://secure.audienceprofiler.com/ussurvey/dis950a_feb/index.asp
 
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unkadug

unkadug

Follower of "Saget"The Cult
hcswingfield said:
Everything on the internet, including the WDW website, is designed to force you to get a new computer every few years. The website was really slow and hard to navigate on my computer I bought in 2003, but works great on my new one.
Click to expand...

I agree the site does load fine on my NEW computer that I got in January, however the content of the site STILL needs work.
 
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R

rdour@techminds

New Member
Standards are good.

First, I filled out that survey. I was happy to do it. Thanks for twisting my arm Murph.

Now, I can actually give you a description of why disneyworld.com sucks. It is simple. They don't follow standards.

There is this wonderful organization known as w3c that provides the standards for most of our best web based technologies. The idea is that if people design the browser to work with standards, and the pages follow the standards, all will work without question.

Ah, but then there is this thing called Flash. Flash isn't a standard, it is a cancer on the web. Same with JavaScript. JavaScript isn't even Java. It is a hack of a scripting language to put the strain on the user's computer instead of the server. It also has no real standards, and thus the reason people have to test their JavaScript on different browsers.

Ever wonder why you open FireFox and some site tells you that you must use Internet Explorer? Simple, the lack of standards they choose to use pretty much shows their ignorance of true web development. Anything outside of the standards is just a hack, plain and simple.

So, as for Disney's site, it is a hack. In fact, not only is it a hack, but even if they followed standards there is nothing appealing that would be cause for a return visit. The idea behind any consumer targeted site is that you want return visits. You want to entice your potential customer to purchase a travel package. The lack of dynamic content severely reduces the chance of a return visit by the casual surfer. Unless you are going to the site for specific goals such as planning your semi annual Disney fan trip, you're just not going to visit often.

One final note. This site sucks for blind people like myself. I am dead serious. If you think using those tools is difficult normally, try it with a screen reading software like Voiceover on the Mac or JAWS on Windows. Because of the lack of standards, both fail to access most of the actual tools. Park information like the small descriptions of attractions works, but they have failed to make booking a trip possible using the screen reader. This standard is defined very well. Also, they do fail to be ADA compliant for the web. Too bad that isn't a legal requirement yet for businesses. You have to add a ramp to your building and braille signs, so why does your website ignore these facts by not providing simple text alternatives for graphics and Flash? Lazy, just lazy.

Any of you who have designed websites know that it does take a lot of work. If you code using an editor, you can get away with knowing next to no code. However, you really aren't making much other than what are called static pages. Dynamic content is provided when you use tools such as RSS, forums, blogs, php, asp, real Java applets, etc.

About the slow site, there is just no excuse. Open the source for a page sometime, it is simply bloated. Garbage client side scripts everywhere. The backend must also really suck, as page load times are terrible. Why no excuse? Simple. WHen you bank with someone like Chase, you and potentially hundreds of thousands of people are using their online application suite at the same time. It runs lightning fast. The reason is simply good planning. The development and testing is extremely high quality. They also pay very close to standards, and they do make this quite public. They don't have issues with incompatible browsers or Flash, they simply just don't use this garbage. When they use Java, they use classes that are known to be compatible with the entire JVM, so no real garbage there either.

Rant over, probably a bit teched out, but I really do hate their site. If anyone from Disney is reading this, I'd love to take your Project Manager's position over there and turn this mess around through good use of standards. We can still have our imagination even if we are within the confines of web standards.
 
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Figment4Ever

Figment4Ever

Member
Sorry this is a long rant cause it really BUGS me.

Someone earlier mentioned that the site has not gained any functionality over the years and seems to have the same features as it did in 1998...
I think it's actually lost functionality!
I go on there when I'm initially planning a trip, to check my prices and eventually to book (cause I hate talking to their travel agents even more)...but once it's booked, I don't touch the site.

2 years ago when I went to Disney with two other couples, they had a Magical Gatherings feature that allowed you to share your itineraries with other people without having to share your password...so you could all have the confirmation numbers, check what you were doing on each day, etc. (and it was available to everyone, not just Grand Gatherings)...when we went in May with the same two couples, we were dismayed to find we couldn't use the same feature (which was pretty much the only reason we used the disney.com site for ANYTHING after booking)...but THEY STILL REFERENCED THE SOFTWARE ON THEIR SITE. (it said something like "click here to get this valuable planning tool" and then when you clicked, you got redirected to their generic itinerary planning tool that can't easily be shared with other people)

We also had difficulties accessing other features more than half the time. Even booking my most recent trip for the free dining plan was complicated - I couldn't click on the graphic on the front page for the free dining plan...it would get me to the next page, but then when I clicked "book now" or whatever, I just got a 500 error. Instead I had to go through tickets & reservations, then click on special deals, then click on free dining, and then click book now. And I was checking availability just about every day for a month for various friends, and on different computers besides, so I know it didn't work the way it was supposed to.

I guess I just expect more from a customer service perspective from Disney, especially as it relates to getting people in the door to the parks and getting them to spend money before they get there (as well as once they're there, but that's a whole other rant ;)) It's not the worst site I've ever been to, but for a large corporation that prides itself on customer service as well as innovation, it's pretty up there.
 
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