Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Annoyed at Disney

My note to Disney tonight. I think it's pretty rational.

I was getting kinda frustrated dealing with arranging my dining reservations. So, I decided to click the Contact Us button. Here's where I went:

It is so difficult to deal w/ dining reservations. None of them are connected to my lodging reservation or at least it appears so on the 'net. Why do I have to access each one individually? I'd like to go to 1 spot that has all of the info at-hand. Otherwise, what is the point of having it? I have to manage each dining reservation individually.

Why is it so difficult to manage? It's just silly!

As a database person, I'm trying to understand why you're not householding dining reservations w/ the lodging reservation. How about having a calendar planning tool that shows me what my schedule is?

Is that weird? Are calendars an odd idea?

If I have a username & ID, why do I have to go to my other email & pull up the reservation number to input on here? Why isn't my stored reservation securitized by my login?

I've been thinking about tattooing the reservation numbers on my arm, but I'm running out of room. What's the point of having a secure login if you have to put in your DNA sequence?

This is my 3rd Disney vacation in 1 year & it is so frustrating to navigate the website. And to pull up every single email with confirmation & reservation numbers for every individual event is extremely frustrating. We're not dealing with my bank account & health insurance here. They're frustrating enough, why is my vacation planning so much more difficult? Especially given the fact that your DRC is not 24/7 and it's not a toll-free call, the online tools should be easy to use. I have had several great calls w/ your reservation agents, but why don't you leverage technology better?

The Interweb has come a long way, baby. I can check all of my credit card transactions, my health care claims & access my cats' veterinarian. But to deal with my Disney vacation, it's 18 layers of security.

I'm going with extended family & I said I would work on the dining reservations. Writing everything down, keeping track of the changes after we discussed itinerary changes & planning our days has been difficult to handle. We divided a couple of things up in terms of reserving things but there's no way to consolidate our reservation plans. Doesn't that seem silly? If my sister-in-law makes plans for Chef Mickey's Breakfast and I make plans for 1900 Park Fair for the same day for all of us, shouldn't there be a flag that gets triggered to alert us? Why can't we connect our reservations? And maybe some partnerships w/ Google Calendar or Outlook to help a bit?

Planning a Disney vacation is somewhat easy until you come to the eating part. If you want to eat at the Quick Service restaurants, easy enough. But going to the character breakfasts, Cinderella's castle, the Brown Derby - they're in high-demand. They demand reservations! Setting them up is somewhat complicated...Hopefully, I've done it well!