Member Experience Specialist Team pilot program

[Doberge]

Blasted! I apparently had linked mybresoet reservation but had not selected pre-checkin. In such a small trial I'm curious if one requirement is pre-check. @Darstarr Had your fiend gone through pre-checkin steps?

Unrelated to the main topic, this was the first time the earliest expected arrival time was only "before 4 p.m." We do a lot split stays and used to put a noon arrival. It was nice to be leaving first resort around 11 and soon after get a room ready notification. It's clear enough that bad apples selected earlier arrival times hoping to have rooms ready earlier but then they didn't actually show up early. I'm sure Disney keeps track of resort arrival and knows when first enterring room. My hope was that those abusing would just have future requests ignored, but here we are that it's spoiled for everyone.

 

[Disstevefan1]

My family will be vacationing with two other families in July, 13 people total. One of the other families used their points to get the booking window so the following emails were sent to her.
This one arrived a couple weeks ago:
View attachment 712858
We are not planning a lot of ADR’s and we had already purchased tickets and linked everyone through MDE but we wanted to make sure our two rooms were close together. We also requested two hard to get ADR’s (Space 220 and Roundup Rodeo).
View attachment 712859
View attachment 712857
I will let you all know if it works out. I wish I had known sooner as getting all 13 of us linked was a challenge and required a few calls to MS.

This is great to see! I am not a DVCer, but I have always said, DVCers should get the perks! DVCers are truly invested, dedicated Disney vacationers.
I hope this turns out to be real and gives true perks to DEVers.
It's really exciting to be in the pilot program as they will be doing their best during the pilot.

Huge questions I have are:
Will this be free as part of your DVC membership or an upcharge?
Will this be grandfathered in for existing DVC members or will only NEW members get it?

@Darstarr , we expect a full report of course

 

[Doberge]

Huge questions I have are:
Will this be free as part of your DVC membership or an upcharge?
Will this be grandfathered in for existing DVC members or will only NEW members get it?

Like you said, it's a pilot program so we don't even know if this will expand beyond that. It could be axed so all we can do is guess. Because it'd require multiple dedicated cast members I don't see it being free for all. They've always been good about grandfathering so I wouldn't worry about the second part of your question. It might be a blue card benefit but for thoae getting those benefits now I think they'll be okay in the future.

 

[tommcp516]

Out of curiosity, is one of the two rooms that've been booked a 3BR Grand Villa? I saw a post on another board from a DVC member who'd received a similar email offering that service after they'd booked a reservation for 12 people in a grand villa.

My guess is they're rolling out this pilot program for confirmed large (12 or more guests) bookings as a way to either encourage more grand villa bookings (in case Disney has been dealing with a number of unoccupied nights in them), or they're trying to minimize cancellations of large bookings from people throwing in the towel early trying to wrangle multiple ADR's for their party for every meal:

"So half of you want Victoria & Albert's and the other half of you insist on Garden Grill lunch at 10:15 am. FINE--I'M CALLING THE WHOLE THING OFF...!!!"

Maybe your calls trying to link 13 MDE accounts wound up putting your super-sized party on Disney's radar for this service and they didn't want to lose all that potential guest spending.
Either way, I think your party owes you a cocktail or two or thirteen...

 

[nickys]

Out of curiosity, is one of the two rooms that've been booked a 3BR Grand Villa? I saw a post on another board from a DVC member who'd received a similar email offering that service after they'd booked a reservation for 12 people in a grand villa.

My guess is they're rolling out this pilot program for confirmed large (12 or more guests) bookings as a way to either encourage more grand villa bookings (in case Disney has been dealing with a number of unoccupied nights in them), or they're trying to minimize cancellations of large bookings from people throwing in the towel early trying to wrangle multiple ADR's for their party for every meal:

"So half of you want Victoria & Albert's and the other half of you insist on Garden Grill lunch at 10:15 am. FINE--I'M CALLING THE WHOLE THING OFF...!!!"

Maybe your calls trying to link 13 MDE accounts wound up putting your super-sized party on Disney's radar for this service and they didn't want to lose all that potential guest spending.
Either way, I think your party owes you a cocktail or two or thirteen...

That’s a possibility although I’ve seen reports from people booked in smaller rooms, so that’s not the only criteria. But is very odd how sparse the reports are spread over at least a year. Initially it seemed that they were only selecting people booked at Riviera and people thought it was to boost sales. Not the case anymore though.

 

[Darstarr]

@Darstarr Had your fiend gone through pre-checkin steps?

I will ask her but I don’t think so.

@Darstarr , we expect a full report of course

Of course!

Out of curiosity, is one of the two rooms that've been booked a 3BR Grand Villa? I saw a post on another board from a DVC member who'd received a similar email offering that service after they'd booked a reservation for 12 people in a grand villa.

Yes, we have a GV and a studio.

My guess is they're rolling out this pilot program for confirmed large (12 or more guests) bookings

That was my guess as well. Trying to help the large parties part with large sums of money!

I think your party owes you a cocktail or two or thirteen...

Tell me you know me without telling me you know me

 

[Darstarr]

Update:
Tomorrow is our 60 days to go, otherwise known as, ADR day. Today my friend got the email that all our ADRs had been booked at the times we requested.

We had asked for Space 220 which my friend and I decided this past week we do not really want. We are thirteen people and half of them (the kids and half of my friend’s husband) wont be impressed so it is not worth the time or money. They did book it for us but we let them know to cancel as we will not be needing it.

We also requested Woodys Round up bbq or what ever the name is. You all know what I mean. We got that too at the time we wanted.

We had been planning on bbqing our first night at the grills near one of the quiet pools but there is currently an open flame ban at wdw because lack of rain, (I grew up in LA- talk about lack of rain!) so we booked a reservation at Homecomin’ we are both going to be there a few days early but separate so we were able to book this on our check in day as it was also our check out day
Anyhow, my friend booked 10 and 3ppl (my MDE was glitching if you could imagine that) but the times were 35 minutes apart. The member experience team was able to move one of the reservations so it aligned with the other.

Lastly, inspired by the Champagne story in Disney Files, we requested graduation ears to be in the rooms for the five graduates. We were told to contact Shop Disney.

Moving forward our questions to the member services team are about park days. Will they be able to get us virtual ques? It would be nice to be snoozing or showering or doing anything else than the VQ dance.
When using Genie+ you can only reserve for 12 people at a time. Will they be able to help us with that 13th person if we need it?(I know GS can help but for research purposes we want to know. Don't you?)


I will post more when I know more.
But for now…

60 days.
(Also, there is a story behind Andrew Toles. Google it, it is both sad and heart warming)

 

[Doberge]

Last week @lentesta was looking for folks with experience to write to him. I haven't listened this week to see if anyone beat to the punch.

I did not call the number as discussed. Was so tempted but decided to stay in bounds of the trial.

The Toles story is pretty neat. I thought the Saints were doing similar with Foster Moreau last week and then saw the money commitment so they're expecting him to play, which is also cool.

 

[nickys]

Update:
Tomorrow is our 60 days to go, otherwise known as, ADR day. Today my friend got the email that all our ADRs had been booked at the times we requested.

We had asked for Space 220 which my friend and I decided this past week we do not really want. We are thirteen people and half of them (the kids and half of my friend’s husband) wont be impressed so it is not worth the time or money. They did book it for us but we let them know to cancel as we will not be needing it.

We also requested Woodys Round up bbq or what ever the name is. You all know what I mean. We got that too at the time we wanted.

We had been planning on bbqing our first night at the grills near one of the quiet pools but there is currently an open flame ban at wdw because lack of rain, (I grew up in LA- talk about lack of rain!) so we booked a reservation at Homecomin’ we are both going to be there a few days early but separate so we were able to book this on our check in day as it was also our check out day
Anyhow, my friend booked 10 and 3ppl (my MDE was glitching if you could imagine that) but the times were 35 minutes apart. The member experience team was able to move one of the reservations so it aligned with the other.

Lastly, inspired by the Champagne story in Disney Files, we requested graduation ears to be in the rooms for the five graduates. We were told to contact Shop Disney.

Moving forward our questions to the member services team are about park days. Will they be able to get us virtual ques? It would be nice to be snoozing or showering or doing anything else than the VQ dance.
When using Genie+ you can only reserve for 12 people at a time. Will they be able to help us with that 13th person if we need it?(I know GS can help but for research purposes we want to know. Don't you?)


I will post more when I know more.
But for now…

60 days.
(Also, there is a story behind Andrew Toles. Google it, it is both sad and heart warming)

That’s great. So that confirms they can book ADRs early.
Have you asked them about the VQs? I wonder too whether they would be able to book ILLs? Seems like for both it would be possible to reserve those in the system.

 

[Darstarr]

That’s great. So that confirms they can book ADRs early.
Have you asked them about the VQs? I wonder too whether they would be able to book ILLs? Seems like for both it would be possible to reserve those in the system.

We have not asked yet but we will.
Also, today we asked them to find us an Oga’s reservation. We will see if they can.

 

[Darstarr]

Last week @lentesta was looking for folks with experience to write to him. I haven't listened this week to see if anyone beat to the punch.

I did not call the number as discussed. Was so tempted but decided to stay in bounds of the trial.

The Toles story is pretty neat. I thought the Saints were doing similar with Foster Moreau last week and then saw the money commitment so they're expecting him to play, which is also cool.

I did hear that on his podcast and was going to tag him here instead of writing him directly but forgot. Thank you for doing that!

 

[Dischris11]

I did hear that on his podcast and was going to tag him here instead of writing him directly but forgot. Thank you for doing that!

How did the rest of your trip go? I am going in November with 12 people and I wish I got a trial (I booked a GV too).