Money question

[Sam02]

My sister does not have credit cards or debit cards and doesn't want them either. If she puts a cash deposit on her KTTW card so she can still use it to buy things at the parks w/out carrying cash and then has money left over at the end of the trip, how does she get the refund?

Will it be credited back to her account, given to her at checkout, something else? Thanks for the help.

 

[captainkidd]

I am disputing that. It is just another amenity. Is it discriminatory that a Value guest gets a 260 square foot room and a guest at the Contemporary, a Deluxe, gets a 440 square foot room? Don't people paying less deserve just as much room?

Um, no. How you can't see that as being completely different is beyond me. You pay for a bigger room, you get a bigger room. Common sense.

It's not an amenity. The credit card example used above is pretty much spot on.

 

[captainkidd]

Rather than trashing a company AND accusing it of multiple felonies for rigging a sweepstakes on a daily basis, take 30 seconds to do a web search and learn how YOAMD is administered, and find out the winners of the big prizes and how they were chosen.

If you read the rules (if you bother to do so), the only thing not toally random about the prizes is the Castle Suite stay, but the only thing not random about that is the time of day it is given away. They tend to do that before Noon, only to make the prize worthwhile. It involves being in an afternoon parade, but also involves transportation back to wherever the winner is staying (or to the winner's home, if a local) so they can gather the necessities to spend a night in the castle. Can you imagine how ripped off you'd feel if you won the Castle Suite stay at 11:45 p.m., then had to schlepp back to your room to get PJs and a toothbrush and clothes for the next day??? It wouldn't be as nice or as much fun as getting that stuff done earlier in the day, so that you could enjoy the amenities of the Suite rather than just flop into bed and wake up and leave.

Blindly touting conspiracy theories is a lot easier than learning facts. To learn a fact, you must search and read and comprehend. To spout a conspiracy theory, you just have to sit and daydream.

I just lose patience when there are knowable FACTS, but people don't even bother with them and just believe whatever they concoct instead.

Wow - Touchy?

I'm not trashing the company. I'm not accusing them of any felonies. I'm simply saying, I don't believe some of the winners are random. I'm not saying they hand pick a person based on their race. I'm saying I believe they are told to pick out this many people at an exact time at an exact place. In other words, "pick out 4 people outside the teacups to give dream fastpasses to at exactly 2:37 PM." If a family of 3 happens to be there, will they win, or will they wait for a party of 4?

Newsflash - Just because Disney says something, doesn't make it a fact. They can tell you whatever they want.

 

[DisneyJoe]

There is a series of blog posts on allears from a Cinderella Castle Suite winner, it starts here:

http://land.allears.net/blogs/guestblog/2008/02/dreams_do_come_true_a_night_in_1.html

 

[Philo]

I'm saying I believe they are told to pick out this many people at an exact time at an exact place. In other words, "pick out 4 people outside the teacups to give dream fastpasses to at exactly 2:37 PM." If a family of 3 happens to be there, will they win, or will they wait for a party of 4?

I think that depends on the wording of the prize. If it says "pick the first family of 4" then they will pick the first family of four. However, this seems unlikly to be worded this way because it's not always easy to tell who is in a family and who isn't just by looking at the people leaving an attraction. It's more likly to read "the first person plus their group leaving BTMRR at 3.42pm"

Once again, what does Disney gain by discriminating?

 

[Rob562]

Wow - Touchy?

I'm not trashing the company. I'm not accusing them of any felonies. I'm simply saying, I don't believe some of the winners are random. I'm not saying they hand pick a person based on their race. I'm saying I believe they are told to pick out this many people at an exact time at an exact place. In other words, "pick out 4 people outside the teacups to give dream fastpasses to at exactly 2:37 PM." If a family of 3 happens to be there, will they win, or will they wait for a party of 4?

Newsflash - Just because Disney says something, doesn't make it a fact. They can tell you whatever they want.

I apologize in advance for the really, really long post, but of all the things that people can have a conspiracy theory about regarding Disney, the YOAMD giveaway is probably the stupidest one to have one about. So I felt I should dispel a few false notions...

Take a look at the rules sometime:
http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/disneyparks/en_US/index?name=YOMDGiveAwayRules08Page

For giveaways like the Mickey ears and the Dream FastPasses, they're typically given out in large batches, not specifically to just a single family. So for instance, it could be an entire truck full of people getting off the safari at a specific time, or everyone entering One Man's Dream starting at a certain time (both of which I have read as happening). They're given instructions of how to distribute them, and at what time. If it's something like the OMD example, the CMs stand there until all of the required Fast Passes have been given out.
For *Magical Moments* that aren't official prizes of the YOAMD giveaway, they can go by any selection criteria they want. So if they want to only choose a little boy of girl to be the "official animal spotter" on the safari who gets to ride up front with the driver, that's entirely up to Disney. They don't have to abide by the giveaway rules for prizes that aren't outlined in them.

For the large prizes like the Castle Suite, the DVC Memberships, Disney cruises, etc, the prize is awarded to one specific person. The criteria is very specific. In the instance of the first family to stay in the Suite, the prize was specifically awarded to the daughter, because she was in the correct seat in the correct row in the correct Star Tours simulator at the specific time outlined by the computer. In fact, she wasn't even the first person to be chosen for the Suite. On the first day they went to award it, the computer chose to give it to a mail-in entry. So they didn't actually award the Suite until the second day. (The mail-in entry was awarded a gift basket of prizes of equal value to the ARV of the Suite)
Plus, let's say that exact seat happened to be empty on that cycle of Star Tours. They don't just pick someone and say "Hey you! You're close enough. Congratulations!" The prize will be sent back to the computer, which will then choose another location to award it. They'll keep doing that until they have a winner.

Disney specifically hired an outside accounting firm to handle the prize giveaway. And they are legally obligated to follow the contest rules exactly. It's a sweepstakes, and they must follow certain laws in the handling of said sweepstakes. They'd be in all kinds of legal trouble with the state and the federal government if they didn't. They would also have a PR nightmare. They went through something similar back in the 80's or so, when an overzealous PR person found the "perfect family" in line outside the Magic Kingdom, and inserted them into the line so that one of the kids would be the 100-millionth Guest (or something to that effect), and won a bunch of prizes. The woman in line who ended up behind this family sued Disney and won because even though it wasn't a published sweepstakes like YOAMD, it was deemed to be rigging the contest.


To those who say that you only ever see the picture-perfect family in the parade.... As outlined in the rules, at Disney's discretion, they don't have to publicly show off the winner of the Suite each day. The only legal obligation to the winner is furnishing a one-night stay in the Suite, snacks in the room, dinner at CRT, photos with Cinderella, and VIP viewing for Spectro and/or Wishes. Anything beyond that is not officially part of the prize. In the rules it states "Each winner may also be celebrated in the Magic Kingdom® Park daytime parade (at Sponsor's sole discretion)."

If you take a cynical (and actually a fairly accurate) view at this last line, it means that if the winner of the Suite is so horribly disgusting that Disney wouldn't want to put them at the front of the parade, Disney is under absolutely no obligation to show them off. Strictly give them the prize as listed, and they would have met the legal obligation.

Also, sometimes the whole fanfare thing isn't done at the request of the winner. I know someone whose parent won the Suite stay. They're very shy and aren't fond of being the center of attention, so the prize experience was altered for them. They weren't in the parade, and the staff at dinner didn't make a big fuss with announcing them as the winners.

Lastly, to those who say it always seems to be given to a family... That's false, too. During the weekend of MouseFest, which has a lot of people from various Internet boards and chatrooms descend on WDW, one of the attendees won, and was a single person visiting WDW by themselves (though there for the MouseFest activities).

I went into the details of it in an older post months ago, but it's a matter of statistics. The combined mass of Guests visiting the WDW parks on any given day is made up predominantly of families. Let's say that 75% of people visiting WDW are part of a family visiting. If you randomly select someone out of that population, you'll get a member of a family 75% of the time.
Also, because prizes like the Castle are awarded to an individual person, EVERYONE in the park has the exact same chance at winning. But if someone in your family wins, it's like the WHOLE family has won.

So here's how you can put it to numbers. Let's say that it's just the Magic Kingdom, and we're just talking about the Suite. There are 30,000 Guests that day. Every single person in the park has a 1:30,000 chance of winning. The only way to increase your odds would be to have more "entries" into the contest. But the only way to do that is with more people.
If you're part of a 5-person family, each person has the same 1:30,000 chance of winning. But taken as a group, because despite there only being one person in the group who wins the prize, the rest of the family gets to "mooch" off of them and share in enjoying the prize. So the chance that SOMEONE in your group wins the prize is 1:6000 (30,000 divided by 5) So even though I'm a single person visiting the park by myself, my chances are the same overall, but if you'd compare me to that family, their chances of winning are better.
What do I do? I go and get 9 friends to visit the park with me, giving my group a 1:3000 chance of winning. Of course, as the Suite can only hold 6 people, 4 in my group would be out of luck.

You can also take the family aspect and apply it to the ears and FastPasses. Because most families tour as a group, it's very likely that if they happen to stumble across the magic location where they're giving out Mickey ears, the entire family will be there at that location and will all get said prize. (The only thing I *don't* know is what they do if they arrive at the end of the supply of prizes, and the Squad only has 2 fastpasses left when a family of 5 happens by)

So to those who say it's only given to families, I say: visit the parks with friends to increase your chances of winning!

-Rob

 

[TigerLily_CM]

Um, no. How you can't see that as being completely different is beyond me. You pay for a bigger room, you get a bigger room. Common sense.

It's not an amenity. The credit card example used above is pretty much spot on.

...and you pay for a deluxe resort you get a larger credit limit...common sense

 

[Wakkie Nu Nu]

My question, unrelated to the debate above, is how the nightly room charge is factored into your limit.

If you're staying at a value, for instance, for say a week -- is your 82/nt or so charged to your card when you check in for the whole stay and not part of the 500 KTTW limit, or is it charged day by day, or is it, like everything else, charged as a whole on the day of check out? How is it factored in?

 

[H20Babie]

My question, unrelated to the debate above, is how the nightly room charge is factored into your limit.

If you're staying at a value, for instance, for say a week -- is your 82/nt or so charged to your card when you check in for the whole stay and not part of the 500 KTTW limit, or is it charged day by day, or is it, like everything else, charged as a whole on the day of check out? How is it factored in?

For room only reservations, the balance is due upon check in.

 

[CleveRocks]

My question, unrelated to the debate above, is how the nightly room charge is factored into your limit.

If you're staying at a value, for instance, for say a week -- is your 82/nt or so charged to your card when you check in for the whole stay and not part of the 500 KTTW limit, or is it charged day by day, or is it, like everything else, charged as a whole on the day of check out? How is it factored in?

One has nothing to do with the other. From the moment after you check-in, you owe NOTHING for the room itself. If you booked a package, you had to pay for your entire resort stay IN FULL no later than 45 days prior to arrival. If you booked a room-only reservation, you had to pay for your entire resort syat IN FULL no later than the time of check-in.

In other words, you won't get handed your room key until you've paid in advance for your entire stay. Thus, you owe nothing after check-in. Thus, your room price is not charged to your KTTW card.

Make sense???

 

[Wakkie Nu Nu]

Great, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the reply.

So, as said above, you basically start by paying the room balance, checking in, and being given a 500 dollar spending limit (if in a value) and once you reach that limit it's charged and you start a new 500?