This morning my alarm clock went off at 5:30am EST -- TODAY, the 180-day window to make our ADRs was going to swing wide, and I didn't want to miss it!
By 5:35am, I was downstairs with a reheated cup of coffee, resplendent in a fuzzy fleece bathrobe with scotty dogs embroidered on it, poised for action at my computer. I logged in to MyDisneyExperience, into the account I set up years ago, and double-checked that the resort confirmation number I'd linked back in June and the tickets I linked last month were displaying correctly, just as they should be -- and just as they had been during the dozens of times I'd obsessively checked the website to prepare for this moment. Before me on the desk was the printed list of restaurants, dates and times we wanted, prioritized from the most popular to the least. I had a pen to write down confirmation numbers, and a second pen, in case the first one failed, because one can never be too prepared.
I opened another window on my screen to display the exact time and surfed the web while I counted down the seconds to 6:00am. I was calm, cool and in charge. I was a sane, mild-mannered, Christian professional woman.
And then it happened. Error message after error message. Despite MyDisneyExperience correctly displaying our resort reservation dates, the website would only let me make dining reservations for our arrival day. No 180+10. In fact, the only thing over 180 in that room was my systolic blood pressure, as I conjured the same error messages over and over with mounting dread. The second day of our visit will be my daughter's birthday. The only thing she asked for -- INSTEAD OF PRESENTS -- was to have dinner in Cinderella Castle. As I frantically tried to book the meal over and over, getting error message after error message, the "available times" at CRT on her birthday dwindled from 6:00pm and 7:00pm to 5:15pm and 8:00pm and then just 4:20pm, and eventually it said that the restaurant was "unavailable" for that date, and shuffled it to the end of my search results as if fully booked.
By now, I was no longer the quiet woman in command of her senses who had sat so serenly at that desk some twenty minutes before. My bathrobe had been cast to the floor in a heap as I broke out in a sweat. My hair was standing on end. I, who don't generally curse for any reason, was flinging F-bombs at my computer screen with all the fervor and volume of a Disney World "Jersey Week" guest set aflame. I wept. I gnashed my teeth. I called the Disney phone line repeatedly, even though I knew no one would be there until 7:00am, as though I could summon someone simply by NEEDING them to answer badly enough.
By now it was 6:30am and I needed to start getting ready for work. I went upstairs and cried some more in the shower, thinking about how I'd have to tell my daughter that the ONE THING she asked for on her birthday wasn't going to happen. Because of technology! KILL THE COMPUTERS! KILL THEM ALL! I went and perched on the bed where my husband was sleeping sweetly and cried some more to him while he sleep-patted the shoulder of his bat$%*&-crazy wife. 7:00am came and after another desperate phone call to the WDW Dining reservation line, I was put on hold, which lasted for a torturous 20 minutes while I was mocked by the saccharine hold music of static-filled Disney anthems. These were the songs of happy people: happy people who were dining at Cinderella's Royal Table on my daughter's birthday instead of us. I just knew that for every second I sat on hold, ten more people were making reservations at all the restaurants we wanted, and they were doing it for parties of 50. As the moments slipped by, I was convinced that by the time someone finally answered, I'd be told, "Sorry, but the only available restaurant for all of your dates is Hollywood and Vine! Why don't we just set you up for dinner there every day?" As if to punctuate the misery of the situation, my hungry cat stood in the doorway and meowed relentlessly, sounding not unlike the violin shrieks in Psycho's shower scene soundtrack.
Just as my crazed horror reached its peak, the phone was finally answered by "Jessa." She asked how she could help me today, and I (also very helpfully, I'm sure) began to blubber incoherently into the phone. Jessa was calm and commanding, and had me talked off of my figurative ledge in moments. She proceeded to make ADRs for every last restaurant, date and time we wanted (give or take 30 minutes) -- EVEN Cinderella's Royal Table, which in fact had a 5:15pm slot available if we were willing to sit at split tables. By the time we were finished, I wanted to reach right through that phone and hug her, and I told her so. She bade me to "accept a virtual hug" from her. I asked her why I'd had the issue with making ADRs past my arrival date, and she said, "oh, sometimes our system just doesn't recognize the confirmation number as belonging to one of our resorts -- we're not sure why, but it happens a lot." Of course. A billion dollars thrown into NextGen and they can't get their system to recognize their own confirmation numbers "a lot" of the time.
The moral of the story: I hate Disney's unreliable computer technology. I love Jessa. Also, I may need therapy.
By 5:35am, I was downstairs with a reheated cup of coffee, resplendent in a fuzzy fleece bathrobe with scotty dogs embroidered on it, poised for action at my computer. I logged in to MyDisneyExperience, into the account I set up years ago, and double-checked that the resort confirmation number I'd linked back in June and the tickets I linked last month were displaying correctly, just as they should be -- and just as they had been during the dozens of times I'd obsessively checked the website to prepare for this moment. Before me on the desk was the printed list of restaurants, dates and times we wanted, prioritized from the most popular to the least. I had a pen to write down confirmation numbers, and a second pen, in case the first one failed, because one can never be too prepared.
I opened another window on my screen to display the exact time and surfed the web while I counted down the seconds to 6:00am. I was calm, cool and in charge. I was a sane, mild-mannered, Christian professional woman.
And then it happened. Error message after error message. Despite MyDisneyExperience correctly displaying our resort reservation dates, the website would only let me make dining reservations for our arrival day. No 180+10. In fact, the only thing over 180 in that room was my systolic blood pressure, as I conjured the same error messages over and over with mounting dread. The second day of our visit will be my daughter's birthday. The only thing she asked for -- INSTEAD OF PRESENTS -- was to have dinner in Cinderella Castle. As I frantically tried to book the meal over and over, getting error message after error message, the "available times" at CRT on her birthday dwindled from 6:00pm and 7:00pm to 5:15pm and 8:00pm and then just 4:20pm, and eventually it said that the restaurant was "unavailable" for that date, and shuffled it to the end of my search results as if fully booked.
By now, I was no longer the quiet woman in command of her senses who had sat so serenly at that desk some twenty minutes before. My bathrobe had been cast to the floor in a heap as I broke out in a sweat. My hair was standing on end. I, who don't generally curse for any reason, was flinging F-bombs at my computer screen with all the fervor and volume of a Disney World "Jersey Week" guest set aflame. I wept. I gnashed my teeth. I called the Disney phone line repeatedly, even though I knew no one would be there until 7:00am, as though I could summon someone simply by NEEDING them to answer badly enough.
By now it was 6:30am and I needed to start getting ready for work. I went upstairs and cried some more in the shower, thinking about how I'd have to tell my daughter that the ONE THING she asked for on her birthday wasn't going to happen. Because of technology! KILL THE COMPUTERS! KILL THEM ALL! I went and perched on the bed where my husband was sleeping sweetly and cried some more to him while he sleep-patted the shoulder of his bat$%*&-crazy wife. 7:00am came and after another desperate phone call to the WDW Dining reservation line, I was put on hold, which lasted for a torturous 20 minutes while I was mocked by the saccharine hold music of static-filled Disney anthems. These were the songs of happy people: happy people who were dining at Cinderella's Royal Table on my daughter's birthday instead of us. I just knew that for every second I sat on hold, ten more people were making reservations at all the restaurants we wanted, and they were doing it for parties of 50. As the moments slipped by, I was convinced that by the time someone finally answered, I'd be told, "Sorry, but the only available restaurant for all of your dates is Hollywood and Vine! Why don't we just set you up for dinner there every day?" As if to punctuate the misery of the situation, my hungry cat stood in the doorway and meowed relentlessly, sounding not unlike the violin shrieks in Psycho's shower scene soundtrack.
Just as my crazed horror reached its peak, the phone was finally answered by "Jessa." She asked how she could help me today, and I (also very helpfully, I'm sure) began to blubber incoherently into the phone. Jessa was calm and commanding, and had me talked off of my figurative ledge in moments. She proceeded to make ADRs for every last restaurant, date and time we wanted (give or take 30 minutes) -- EVEN Cinderella's Royal Table, which in fact had a 5:15pm slot available if we were willing to sit at split tables. By the time we were finished, I wanted to reach right through that phone and hug her, and I told her so. She bade me to "accept a virtual hug" from her. I asked her why I'd had the issue with making ADRs past my arrival date, and she said, "oh, sometimes our system just doesn't recognize the confirmation number as belonging to one of our resorts -- we're not sure why, but it happens a lot." Of course. A billion dollars thrown into NextGen and they can't get their system to recognize their own confirmation numbers "a lot" of the time.
The moral of the story: I hate Disney's unreliable computer technology. I love Jessa. Also, I may need therapy.
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