My Disney Experience, Getting better?

[Disney Doll]

We just returned from a 7 day stay and I have to say after reading all the negative feedback I was nervous about this new system. It wasn't perfect, but overall it was better than expected. Maybe things are looking up?

1. We had a large group (multiple families) some with APs and some without. Getting everyone set up before we left home and getting all the tickets linked to bands took some serious doing. There were a few phone calls made for help and CMs weren't always super knowledgeable especially because our situation was a bit out of the norm. That part was frustrating.

2. Making fastpass selections and changing those selections was super easy and I really liked being able to make last minute changes from my phone in the parks. If you don't have a smart phone that can support the app I would not be happy to stand in line to make fastpasses from a kiosk in the parks. They had lots of kiosks and lots of CMs to help, but some guests are just not ready to do everything online. That's a huge drawback if you can't use your phone.

3. I absolutely hated that we couldn't make fastpasses for both Soarin and Test Track. Both of those rides tend to have long lines and really require fastpass to be manageable. We did the fastpass for Test Track because it was down the last time we went and my boys wanted to be sure to ride it this time. In hindsight I think it's better to make the fastpass for Soarin and do a standby for Test Track first thing in the morning.

3. Magic bands were fabulous. I loved the convenience. I didn't have any trouble with anyone in my party and I didn't notice any log jams in the line to enter the parks. My 4 and 6 year old thought it was the coolest thing ever and loved scanning their bands. I lost mine in MK which wasn't a huge deal since I still had a back up AP card. I wasn't planning to stress about getting it back, but we checked guest services and they were able to tell us that it had been found and we picked it up at City Hall. It had been deactivated for security and they were able to reactivate it within minutes. I expected that to be a huge ordeal, but it wasn't.

4. Dinning reservations from the My Disney Experience app were a nightmare. I didn't link a credit card to because we don't typically charge to the room. Because you have to leave a credit card to make a dining reservation, having a credit card linked would have been really helpful. As it was I had to enter credit card info from the app on my phone which took forever. It would process incessantly and we never did get that to work. Luckily, we were able to get walk up seating a couple of times and the other time we ended up calling to make a dining reservation. That was an unfortunate experience because the ease of making last minute dining reservations was what sold us on the old app.

5. We did experience a couple of glitches with the app. Some "unexpected errors" and some "blips in the system" . Enough that the unexpected errors weren't all that unexpected, but usually a quick retry and it was working again. Irritating, but not a huge frustration.

[Melanie]

The majority of your points are negative though?

[yankeesfan123]

Just curious, do you have an iPhone?

Was this before or after the update that was released two days ago?

[ginger19]

I found that the app often did not work on my phone which was maddening. I also found that multiple times the kiosks didn't work or were very slow. We lost about an hour at one with 14 of us in EPCOT one day and I really almost just walked out of the park out of frustration.

That being said....I loved that I could change my fast passes from my room if things changed, loved skipping rope drop for TSM, and I really liked not having to pull out 4 tickets everywhere we went. I think that there is a lot of good, they just have to fix the fast pass + issues.

[DizneyFreak2002]

If your experience means things are looking up, then WDW is in trouble... LOL... all of your points were negative...

The system is poor, still flawed and a huge disaster and mess...

[1DisneyNut]

Still sounds like an aggravating mess to me. One of the things that will be keeping me away is that I have been staying offsite lately and I am not about to stand in line at a kiosk for an hour trying to get FP's. I never was a big user of them anyway but if it was busy I would get one or two on the fly when needed. It is absurd that they are forcing offsite and locals to use kiosks instead of simply using their smartphone app once in the park......that is just stupidity at its finest.

[vicster]

It is absurd that they are forcing offsite and locals to use kiosks instead of simply using their smartphone app once in the park......that is just stupidity at its finest.

We always stay onsite and like the idea of getting a little perk to staying on property.

[Bruegge]

We always stay onsite and like the idea of getting a little perk to staying on property.

I agree... there has to be SOME advantage to staying onsite besides just parking the car for a week...

IMHO

Scott

[1DisneyNut]

We always stay onsite and like the idea of getting a little perk to staying on property.

I can understand that and don't have a problem with it. What I think is absurd is they are using out of date technology, plus paying extra CM's all over the park to man these FP+ kiosks instead of simply using the technology and allowing offsite guests and AP holders to use their App once inside the park. It wouldn't be very difficult to add a couple of lines of code to activate access once the guest has gone through the park entrance. It is another example of bad implementation of the technology.

[yankeesfan123]

I can understand that and don't have a problem with it. What I think is absurd is they are using out of date technology, plus paying extra CM's all over the park to man these FP+ kiosks instead of simply using the technology and allowing offsite guests and AP holders to use their App once inside the park. It wouldn't be very difficult to add a couple of lines of code to activate access once the guest has gone through the park entrance. It is another example of bad implementation of the technology.

Agreed. I stay on site, but I don't know why the FP+ feature of MM+ doesn't activate once you scan your magic band to get into the park for off site guests.

But it's still "in testing" so keep your fingers crossed.