Originally published at: Disney yawns at lawsuit over Magic Keys | Boing Boing
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Disney may be honoring the specific requirements of the fine print but I do understand the frustration of pass holders who based their (very expensive) purchase of a specific pass on which days were theoretically available, then only discovered after their purchase that reservations for the days they wanted were fully booked weeks or months in advance. The reservation system is something new that longtime pass holders had no prior experience with and Disney could have handled this better in terms of managing expectations, if nothing else.
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What a Mickey-Mouse operation!
(I’m sorry. Someone had to.)
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It’s close to certain that Disney’s fine print also had provisions against class actions, as well as removing your right to sue in court, favoring arbitration. I feel for the claimant, but Disney’s got the whitest-shoe lawyers on the planet. It’s best to just not do business with them that requires any sort of long term relationship.
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A sarcasm tag helps to delineate that you’re being sarcastic.
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Your analogy was… not great. Disney is not selling passes that don’t let people into Disneyland. They are selling passes that include limitations on when people can visit Disneyland.
The business model you claimed to engage in would just be straight-up fraud.
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This is top of my mind since I just moved to Orlando. But I don’t buy this - the reservation system is now nearly 18 months old - the idea that people who visit Disney often enough to want annual passes but don’t understand the park pass system is suspect to me.
It has not been that difficult to plan a few days ahead to make sure we have reservations (though not right now, locals are blocked out until the new year because the park is stuffed full of vacationers. That’s fine, that’s what I get for paying less for the privilege).
I’ve been to WDW perhaps 10 days total since we moved here about two months ago (often for dinner but that’s not relevant here). On two separate occasions, we changed what park we wanted to visit based on what reservations were available. This is no different, frankly, than the process, one goes through to try and get a dining reservation in the parks (which used to be 180(!) days out but is only 60 now), or a virtual queue spot for Rise of the Resistance - Disney fans are used to dealing with queues, and none of those queues have ever given preferential treatment to AP holders.
I mean, I moved here in part to get better access to Disney World, but I did it knowing full well what was required to do that - I’m not going to go stomp my feet because I couldn’t get into EPCOT for dinner - I’ll just go another day. That’s the beauty of being so close in the first place. More importantly though, Disney was super, crystal clear on the tin that this is how APs would work in the era of Park passes, too.
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[squints at avatar picture]
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The user should have better anticipated what the author of the ‘article’ would do.
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The Orlando experience may be different from what Disneyland pass holders are experiencing. But people are paying extra for the level of passes that theoretically have fewer block out dates and would allow them to travel to the park on weekends, and then finding that weekend days are often fully booked 3 months out. That’s a different prospect from the way it used to be where you knew exactly what you were buying with all block-out dates known in advance. For example, the “Believe” level key is supposed to be good for most weekends, but right now every single weekend in January is fully booked. Someone who spent the $949 on it when they first started selling them might have done so with the expectation, correct or not, that they wouldn’t need to book reservations months ahead of time in order to go on a weekend.
When people first bought these the only concrete information they had was the block out dates, with absolutely no way of knowing how difficult it might be to get a reservation on any given day. (Even those who were super familiar with the reservation system that started on April 30 2021 wouldn’t know, because they release arbitrary and secret numbers of reservations for pass holders that are different from the number they make available for one-day ticket holders) Like I said, Disney could have managed expectations better.
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Isn’t this like complaining that paying for a cheap coach ticket doesn’t give you as many seat choices in the airplane as if you had a more expensive ticket?
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only in this case, you spring for the expensive ticket and get treated like 3rd class steerage
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They didn’t tho. They didn’t pay $1400 to go once, they paid $1400 to presumably go more than 8x and get more than 1:1 value on admission.
They bought a discount club card. Just because you bought the big discount club card doesn’t mean you should be treated like you are paying full price.
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They do understand that Darth Vader now works for Disney, right?
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That’s what it sounds like to me. In the LATimes article, this is the key takeaway for me (bolding mine):
Under the previous annual pass program, reservations weren’t needed and annual pass holders could visit as often as they wanted, as long as it wasn’t on a day marked as blocked by their annual pass
I’m not going to defend Disneyland or Disney because I don’t think they are good neighbors in Southern CA, but I also don’t see where this lawsuit has any real chance…
I also don’t get going there all the time like some people do. What it costs to take a family to Disney you could take a real vacation to somewhere actually interesting. But that’s just IMO.
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Disneyland’s Magic Key website currently uses the word “reservation” 40 times and when you click the link to actually buy the thing, the very first thing that comes up is this disclaimer:
We recommend that you check to see if your desired theme park reservations are currently available before purchasing your Magic Key pass. Please note that reservation availability may change after you view the access calendar, and dates that are available at this time may be unavailable in the future. It is recommended that you make your reservations early as availability can change until the park reservation selection is finalized. Park reservations are limited, subject to availability, may not be available on select holidays or popular dates, and are not guaranteed for any specific date or park.
Maybe Disney changed it due to complaints (or this lawsuit), but if not then I don’t have high hopes for this lawsuit.
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Sure, but there was still really no way for the early purchasers to know in advance exactly how hard reservations would be to come by. Generally they are less available than the one-day ticket reservations that guests who were visiting earlier in the year would have had experience with, so just having a general familiarity with the reservation system wasn’t enough to let you know what the situation would be.
People buying the passes now have no reason to complain because they can see the reservation calendar in advance and know about what to expect.
Per the disclaimer Disney could arbitrarily reduce the number of available reservations to whatever they want. Surely there’s a number low enough that most people would agree seemed unfair and deceptive to the people who paid for a pass with the expectation to occasionally visit on weekends, right? People will come to their own conclusions as to what a fair number would be.
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Coming right after the Herzog clip, this comes across very well. 
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