Does WDW do your airline departure check-in?

[mrmcgiv]

and seat selection. We flew airtarin and we did not pay the extra $6 pp to pick seats, so we had to check in 24 hours b4 flight time to pick seats. Well, when we tried it was about 10-20 mins past the 24 hours prior mark and it kept saying that we had already checked in. It was annoying b.c we were doing it by cell phone w/ internet access at DHS. APparently somehow we were check in by WDW. We did use DME, maybe that was a feature. HOWEVER, it was Me, Dh and 4yo and 7yo. They had us all over the darn plane. Seriously we were all 4 in completely different areas. I had to waste over 30minutes trying to fix this and then had to call and get re-seated. Hopefully they did not charge us the $6 per seat fee afterall.

Should I have known they would do this? Is this standard?

Just Wondering........

[teambricker04]

I don't think WDW technically just checks you into your flight. When you do DME, you can utilize the services to check it, but from my experience you have to go to the counter at the lobby to do it.

[CleveRocks]

I don't think WDW technically just checks you into your flight. When you do DME, you can utilize the services to check it, but from my experience you have to go to the counter at the lobby to do it.

The following applies whether or not you ride the Disney's Magical Express bus.

In each resort lobby, there is a Resort Airline Check-in desk. People flying on one of the "participating airlines" can use this RAC service to actually check-in for their flight, as well as check their luggage through to their final destination.

RAC is exactly like curbside check-in, except that it's in your resort lobby and not at the airport. Just like at curbside check-in, you have to have all members of the party present with ID, you get your real boarding passes, you check your luggage and won't see it again until it's on your home airport's baggage claim carousel, and you can (and should) tip the attendant.

Again, it's exactly like curbside check-in.

The RAC desk at each resort is open daily from 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. You have to check-in a MINIMUM of 3 hours prior to your flight. In other words, if your flight leaves MCO prior to 8:00 a.m. then you are ineligible to use RAC.

The current "participating airlines" are Alaska, AirTran, American, Continental, Delta, jetBlue, Northwest, United (including TED) and USAirways.

Again, this has nothing to do with Disney's Magical Express. DME and RAC are two completely separate services. You can use the services of RAC without using the DME buses, and you don't need any sort of reservation or appointment to use RAC.

But you can't use RAC any later than 3 hours before your flight, and you must do it the same day as your flight (in other words, you can't check-in on Sunday for a Monday morning flight).

[thumperbug]

the airline I fly does not participate in the RAC but on one trip I had to use another airline that did participate and the experience left me a little leery. Our flight home was going to be at 9 pm. On that particular day, there was snow at home. Not a lot, but enough to mess up things for a few hours.

So, silly us, we go to check our bags with the good folks at RAC first thing in the am, who just come right out and tell us that all flights for our airline for that day were cancelled b/c of the weather. Ok, thinking we have a big problem, we rush to make other arrangements to stay another day, find another flight on the next day...yadda yadda...anyhow....we FINALLY got thru to the airline to get a credit for our "cancelled" flight and they told us, "no", the flights were never cancelled...just slightly delayed.

Anyway...the moral is, I am sure it is a fantastic service, but don't rely 100% on others. Check with your carrier directly.