I have long disliked all the separate ticket events and of course when I found out about the event...I knew I would be down there at the time. However now after checking out my already made plans I find out I am being affected by this money grab from a company I used to greatly enjoy personally.
I would like to share how I spent a few hours this afternoon...
We are DVC for 15 years, so we know the planning months out and have always done this without problems. My wife says I am ridiculous as to how detailed my planning was in past years. However, I said I was not going to be involved in any of the planning this year and it was her time to experience all the fun... and so here I am.
Now for this date we had a dining ressie at 50s PT Cafe and the park was closing at 8 with a Fantasmic showing @ 8pm. Yes thats right, when I planned it out months ago(like WDW wants things done) they were open until 8 with a Fantasmic. Well now roughly 2 months before the trip, the stars aligned and this money grab falls on the day we planned to go to DHS.
Note to all who say this event does not inconvenience park day guests... you need to check the facts. It most certainly does. I wonder how many others are in my situation and how many others don't even know it.
Now due to this event, there is no Fantasmic(which the kids want to see)... which forces me to rearrange my plans for go to MGM another day. This in turn leads to my 50s PT Cafe(another kid's choice) ressie having to be canceled and guess what my options are now that it is only 10 weeks out... very early or very late and miss Fantasmic. So I call and explain the situation to WDW Dining who tells me there is in fact a Fantasmic but it is a Villians version and Fireworks...to which I reply I know but those are during the separate tix event. She basically checks, says yes it is and there really is nothing they can do. I call BS and they put me through to Guest Services who basically tell me to take the very early ressie(4pm), show up whenever I want and they will still honor my ressie. However by honoring my ressie, he means I will still have to wait when I get there and probably longer than those with ressies for that current time(when I show up). I wasn't born yesterday and know this would be a problem the day I am down there. There are only 2 days that I can switch out and neither have avalablity.
At this point I am quite PO'd about this event. If you are going to force folks to make ressies months out and then through no fault of their own... you mess them up, you should work with those that are inconvinenced by such corporate greed...just sayin.
So after looking into how I could possibly rearrange our plans further... I say enough with this crap. I am going to call back Guest services and take the 4pm ressie. If they do not honor it when we get there in Aug... other guests are going to have a pretty eventful dinner at 50s PT that night. I call and after getting a bit of a runaround by dining again(remember I have to explain the circumstances to each person I get passed to)... I get Guest Services again on the line. I explain the situation and he tells me he has never heard the advice that the other GS CM gave me being true. After he checks... what do you know... my exact desired time on the date I needed all along is magically available(gotta be some of that WDW Pixie dust magic as to how that time became available!
). He says if I did it the other way, there are way to many variables that could cause a problem the day of(which is why I was hesitant in the first place) He books it for me and all is right in the world again...
however took way too many phone calls and it seems all depts/CMs do not get the same info.
In the end, they did get me the ressie I wanted, but way too long of a battle to get there.
Sorry for the rant but I needed to vent I bit.
Another thing I wonder, is that week prior going to be more crowded overall due to this event? Are folks going to plan a weeks vacation around this or just a weekend getaway?
