DISNEY FAIL

This whole situation is painfully mismanaged nationwide, and knee-jerk Disney as always takes it over the top…

Part of it is they have to. Especially in the modern sue-happy, social media-shaming, I-am-never-responsible-for-myself society we have allowed to grow to villainous proportions. There are too many people out to blame someone else for things that happen (even if they are at fault themselves, or it is a situation that cannot truly be controlled).

But in general people need to see what is perceived as aggressive action to provide safety, even if it is only an illusion. People ignore that simple-common sense interventions can produce far more quantifiable results, and should have been taking place for generations before this happened. How many people have you observed at WDW not wash hands after using the restroom? How many have you seen pick their nose and then touch a grabrail? There has always been a higher illness risk there.

Want to conduct thermal-scan screens? Okay, cool… How does that work with people using the non-air conditioned Skyliner or walking a significant distance in 100 degree/100% humidity Florida? Not an unreasonable screening tool, but non-contact screening is inaccurate at best with current technology. Force hand hygiene. Set up the stations like on DCL cruise kids clubs. You scan-in, you scrub-in. You must wash or sanitize before entering dining areas. Foam-in/foam-out of attractions. Have the scrubbers at restrooms, scrub-out before exiting. Bring cleaning procedures up to snuff. These are very reasonable interventions. This alone makes a huge difference.

Now as far as policies. No-penalty rescheduling for documented illnesses. You are sick? Stay home, see your doctor. Provide sufficient documentation, re-schedule your trip without penalty. If people are on the hook for months or years of hard-earned money, the “nothing is going to keep me from going” mindset is going to prevail. Promote sensible thought.

There is a reason I am not in a rush to book a next WDW. Because the next year or two is going to be saturated with this ridiculousness and I have zero faith that a visit to the ‘World will prove any less than aggravating, deflating, and devoid of magic. I deeply hope that once the media is done whacking this hornets’ nest, once the politics are removed from the situation, and once we can crunch some real data on what really has happened and what to expect in the future, we can return to the reality of disconnecting from reality, at the most magical place on Earth.

@starbee I think the biggest issue with DVC points is if the points were banked or borrowed. So we had borrowed 122 points from 2021 that we were going to use for our big Aulani trip in May. Well, when we cancelled that trip in April, we were supposed to get those 122 points put back into our 2021 use year. But because WE cancelled the reservation instead of waiting for Disney to cancel it, I was told by Member Services that the points would NOT get put back into our 2021 use year, and if we don’t use them in 2020, they’ll expire and we’ll lose them. At first I didn’t think it was that big of a deal because we booked a new trip in early July and used that 122 points. Of course, that trip was cancelled. We booked a trip for September (kind of in desperation to use those points), but got nervous about all the restrictions and changes and ended up canceling that. So lots of indecision on our part, for sure. But if Disney had just put those 122 points back into 2021 after we cancelled May, we probably wouldn’t have tried to rebook in order to not lose the points. We have our normal Thanksgiving trip booked already, using 2020 points, so my last hope is that we can somehow use those 122 points toward that trip, swapping out some of the 2020 points we used that we can then bank into next year, without having to cancel what we already have booked and rebook it because now there’s no more availability and we would likely lose our reservation. The problem with that is I have to call Member Services to do it. And calling Member Services right now is an absolute disaster. I’ve tried three times. The first two times I got only a busy signal. I finally got through on the third try, was told it was a 3.5 hour wait, and got disconnected after being on hold for almost 2 hours. So, I’m going to give it a couple weeks and hope that the influx of calls to Member Services dies down a bit. But with all this madness going on with everyone’s points, it might be a while for that. It’s just one giant cluster for sure.

@RIDisneyPinGuy I also completely agree!! Well said and like I commented in the feed yesterday, we are in limbo on what we what to do with our trip that we scheduled on DVC points for October cause we only have until July to bank those points for next year or we have to use them by December or lose them. We also rescheduled our trip from May for December and not sure what to do there yet either. Probably going to keep that one just to “test the waters” so to speak.

I agree with @RIDisneyPinGuy that most every company/government entity has sorely mishandled this situation.

I work for an engineering firm and they have flip flopped so much it is unreal, expected me to go and visit a job site that would require a flight/rental car/hotel shortly after all this started when everyone was being asked to stay home. I flat out refused, especially after I asked management what happens if I get COVID, or yet what if I pick it up and infect the client? All I got at that time was, “it is important that we meet with our clients face to face.” Needless to say i was and was not going to go even at the chance of loosing my job. But a week later different story, work from home and use TEAMS. So I see the knee jerk reactions.

I am looking at this COVID deal like a rock thrown into a pond, it starts with a splash, that is all the flailing about people/companies/governments are doing right now, then that becomes waves, once we understand how to handle the situation, that go out starting large and eventually loosing their magnitude until the pond is once again calm. WOW! That was quite zen of me.

Having followed Disney for nearly 5 decades now I have definitely seen them make some pretty bone head moves, hum can anyone say John Carter of Mars. And how much derision had Stitches Great Escape brought. But usually they manage to recover from them and make good. Now if we could only get them to bring back 20,000 Leagues and Mr. Toad to Florida!

I would hope that they get the DVC issues resolved and offer refunds or reschedules of points to make good. Hopefully they can do so without a class action lawsuit or threat there of. Really, I think they will have to defer the points at some point since I don’t think the math of reduce capacity at all the DVC resorts versus outstanding points for this year come out to a balanced equation, that is outstanding DVC points > DVC rooms to be had.

@starbee you are correct, I had my “falling out” with Disney from around 1990-2004. Why? I seriously don’t even remember!

@Nascfan if everyone did the right thing then the police and half the government would be out of business.

One other DVC issue with all of this…they are now only allowing members to borrow 50% of their next year’s points to make a reservation. I get that, they’re trying to have some kind of control over how many points are in play after 2020. BUT, the problem is that they will let you make a reservation initially by borrowing more than 50% of your points, and then they’re coming in later (usually within about a week, from what I understand) and cancelling that whole reservation. It’s ridiculous! Why even allow the reservation to be made in the first place?

@RIDisneyPinGuy PREACH IT!!!!

RIDisneyPinGuy wrote:

This whole situation is painfully mismanaged nationwide, and knee-jerk Disney as always takes it over the top…

Part of it is they have to. Especially in the modern sue-happy, social media-shaming, I-am-never-responsible-for-myself society we have allowed to grow to villainous proportions. There are too many people out to blame someone else for things that happen (even if they are at fault themselves, or it is a situation that cannot truly be controlled).

But in general people need to see what is perceived as aggressive action to provide safety, even if it is only an illusion. People ignore that simple-common sense interventions can produce far more quantifiable results, and should have been taking place for generations before this happened. How many people have you observed at WDW not wash hands after using the restroom? How many have you seen pick their nose and then touch a grabrail? There has always been a higher illness risk there.

Want to conduct thermal-scan screens? Okay, cool… How does that work with people using the non-air conditioned Skyliner or walking a significant distance in 100 degree/100% humidity Florida? Not an unreasonable screening tool, but non-contact screening is inaccurate at best with current technology. Force hand hygiene. Set up the stations like on DCL cruise kids clubs. You scan-in, you scrub-in. You must wash or sanitize before entering dining areas. Foam-in/foam-out of attractions. Have the scrubbers at restrooms, scrub-out before exiting. Bring cleaning procedures up to snuff. These are very reasonable interventions. This alone makes a huge difference.

Now as far as policies. No-penalty rescheduling for documented illnesses. You are sick? Stay home, see your doctor. Provide sufficient documentation, re-schedule your trip without penalty. If people are on the hook for months or years of hard-earned money, the “nothing is going to keep me from going” mindset is going to prevail. Promote sensible thought.

There is a reason I am not in a rush to book a next WDW. Because the next year or two is going to be saturated with this ridiculousness and I have zero faith that a visit to the ‘World will prove any less than aggravating, deflating, and devoid of magic. I deeply hope that once the media is done whacking this hornets’ nest, once the politics are removed from the situation, and once we can crunch some real data on what really has happened and what to expect in the future, we can return to the reality of disconnecting from reality, at the most magical place on Earth.

Well said