ruthiebabie
April 29th, 2006, 14:11
This tale is only my experience and other people may well not experience the same problems as me. However this isn't the first time I have had problems with the staff at the Annual Passport (AP) office.
My Dream annual pass ran out after my last visit in December 2005 however as I wasnt returning to the park until February I decided to wait till then to renew it. There were 8 of us who all needed to renew our passes.
When I rang the UK bookings line to make a room only reservation (as I intended to buy a one day pass when I got there and exchange it for an AP as soon as I got into the park) they said why not get the room and ticket combo as you can get the ticket credited against an AP in the same way. At the time I said but you can only get a day credit and I'll be getting a 3 day pass with the package the girl on the phone said "no you can get the cost of the 3 day pass credited against the pass price". I didn't think this was correct at the time but decided to go along with it and see what happened. We also had received a letter from the AP office offering us 16 months for the price of 12 if we renewed our passports.
On arrival at DLRP we went straight into the park and to the AP office to arrange the renewal. As soon as we got there they said we couldn't use the tickets to credit against the cost of an AP as they had the wording "forfait" on the back rather than a printed value and that as such made them worthless for a credit. I pointed out that the UK office had told us that it was possible to get the credit for the pass and they just said "they told you the wrong information - you can't". Eventually after much argument they said that if we could get the price from the Hotel New York reception of how much the ticket was worth as an overall percentage of the package price we could have that credited against the pass renewal. We said that wasn't a problem but that we wouldnt be able to do that until the end of the day and that we would come back tomorrow - again the AP office said that would be fine.
When we got back to the hotel we asked at Reception only to be told we had to ring the UK office - we did this only to be told that they couldn't divide the price up but that the current price of a 3 day pass was 121 euros (approx at that time) and that "yes" you can get it credited against an AP. We verified this price with the concierge also.
The following day we went straight to the AP office and told them what we had been told. Again they refused to give any credit and also said that even if we were due any credit this would now have been reduced as we should have come on the first day of using the ticket. We pointed out that we had done that and they sent us away to get more info! They also said "well who ever you spoke to yesterday was wrong". At this point the CM who we had been dealing with just walked away from us.
Now 8 adult passes which we have all held for 5 years is a reasonable amount of repeat business for Disney - you would have thought there would have been some either flexibility or element of contrition that we had been given the wrong info (which we suspected all along) but they really were not even slightly interested. If they had offered us a one day pass credit against the cost of an AP that would have been acceptable.
However at this point one of the group really lost her temper (perhaps not the best idea but we'd been there an hour and a half by then so we'd nothing to lose) and said she wasn't prepared to accept "no" for an answer and could we speak to the Manager. This person is also a former CM herself.
Anyway the manager came along with 4 CM's so we now had 5 people all trying to listen to our explanation - all trying to say no in various ways and we were getting no where. One of our party who's French was better than our conversational French took over dealing with the manager. She explained again that we had been given this info in the UK, we'd verified it again the previous night on the phone on the advice of the AP office manager decided to ring the UK office to verify the price of a 3 day ticket which of course they said was 121 euros which was the same as we had told them. Anyway after this call the manager disappeared off into the back and 10 minutes later came back saying "I am prepared to make you an offer however you must accept this now as I will not make another offer".......so we waited to see what he said.
He offered us a 16 month Dream passport for 71 euros and 10 cents including all the usual stuff like the fasspasses/free gifts/hotel and restaurant discount vouchers. We took it like a shot!
This took over 5 hours and two visits in total to sort this out based on mis information given out by the UK team and the AP office.
My Dream annual pass ran out after my last visit in December 2005 however as I wasnt returning to the park until February I decided to wait till then to renew it. There were 8 of us who all needed to renew our passes.
When I rang the UK bookings line to make a room only reservation (as I intended to buy a one day pass when I got there and exchange it for an AP as soon as I got into the park) they said why not get the room and ticket combo as you can get the ticket credited against an AP in the same way. At the time I said but you can only get a day credit and I'll be getting a 3 day pass with the package the girl on the phone said "no you can get the cost of the 3 day pass credited against the pass price". I didn't think this was correct at the time but decided to go along with it and see what happened. We also had received a letter from the AP office offering us 16 months for the price of 12 if we renewed our passports.
On arrival at DLRP we went straight into the park and to the AP office to arrange the renewal. As soon as we got there they said we couldn't use the tickets to credit against the cost of an AP as they had the wording "forfait" on the back rather than a printed value and that as such made them worthless for a credit. I pointed out that the UK office had told us that it was possible to get the credit for the pass and they just said "they told you the wrong information - you can't". Eventually after much argument they said that if we could get the price from the Hotel New York reception of how much the ticket was worth as an overall percentage of the package price we could have that credited against the pass renewal. We said that wasn't a problem but that we wouldnt be able to do that until the end of the day and that we would come back tomorrow - again the AP office said that would be fine.
When we got back to the hotel we asked at Reception only to be told we had to ring the UK office - we did this only to be told that they couldn't divide the price up but that the current price of a 3 day pass was 121 euros (approx at that time) and that "yes" you can get it credited against an AP. We verified this price with the concierge also.
The following day we went straight to the AP office and told them what we had been told. Again they refused to give any credit and also said that even if we were due any credit this would now have been reduced as we should have come on the first day of using the ticket. We pointed out that we had done that and they sent us away to get more info! They also said "well who ever you spoke to yesterday was wrong". At this point the CM who we had been dealing with just walked away from us.
Now 8 adult passes which we have all held for 5 years is a reasonable amount of repeat business for Disney - you would have thought there would have been some either flexibility or element of contrition that we had been given the wrong info (which we suspected all along) but they really were not even slightly interested. If they had offered us a one day pass credit against the cost of an AP that would have been acceptable.
However at this point one of the group really lost her temper (perhaps not the best idea but we'd been there an hour and a half by then so we'd nothing to lose) and said she wasn't prepared to accept "no" for an answer and could we speak to the Manager. This person is also a former CM herself.
Anyway the manager came along with 4 CM's so we now had 5 people all trying to listen to our explanation - all trying to say no in various ways and we were getting no where. One of our party who's French was better than our conversational French took over dealing with the manager. She explained again that we had been given this info in the UK, we'd verified it again the previous night on the phone on the advice of the AP office manager decided to ring the UK office to verify the price of a 3 day ticket which of course they said was 121 euros which was the same as we had told them. Anyway after this call the manager disappeared off into the back and 10 minutes later came back saying "I am prepared to make you an offer however you must accept this now as I will not make another offer".......so we waited to see what he said.
He offered us a 16 month Dream passport for 71 euros and 10 cents including all the usual stuff like the fasspasses/free gifts/hotel and restaurant discount vouchers. We took it like a shot!
This took over 5 hours and two visits in total to sort this out based on mis information given out by the UK team and the AP office.