wuffingas saxon
January 16th, 2008, 17:42
There is so much on DDP here that I hope you will forgive any duplication;
As many of you will know DDP has changed; the headline is no starters (appetisers) and tips not included on the basic plan.
We have just come back from POR after 10 days on DDP and found the effects to be rather more wide reaching than this
First staff seem to hate the new plans and think they are too complicated.
Second WDW do not seem to be honouring old DDPs. We checked in on 29/12 and so we were on the old (3 courses + Tip) system but we were told that if we had checked in on or after 1/1 we would have been on the new plan notwithstanding that we had been sold the old one! There were plenty of guests checking in after 1/1 forming queues at reception in the resort complaining about how they were now having to buy unexpected starters and pay for (compulsory) tips.
Third snacks have been curtailed. This is now a single snack of less than $4 including taxes. Gone are boxes of donuts, turkey legs etc.
Fourth trading credits has gone. I gather that it was unofficial but tolerated policy to allow guests to exchange 1 CS for a couple of snacks or 1 TS for a couple of CS. That has all gone although you can apparently trade a CS for one snack (unofficially). How generous.
Fifth the computer system was a disaster. This may just be teething troubles but several times we were told that we did not have enough credits to pay for meals when we knew we did and consequently had to spend time on the phone sorting this out instead of enjoying our holiday. The best example was our last morning when our waitress at Park Fayre told us (rather rudely and insistently) that we had no credits for our breakfast. We knew we had enough and so ..back on the phone to be told we had something like 25 TS left (on our last day of a party of 4!!). We avoided the temptation to rush back and have more breakfasts and spent half an hour (time ticking away before flight home) sorting it out to the correct figure of 8. We than went into MK and decided to buy snacks to use up the rest of our (corrected) unused snack allowance and allow us a lunch at the airport. The shop assistant told us we had no snack credits left!! Aaarghh! On that occasion we simply did not have time to sort it out as we had a flight to catch and so left with about 8 unused snack credits.
Of all of these the biggest concern must be whether guests are getting what they paid for. If you booked an old style DDP how can WDW justify giving you something less than you ordered? Surely this should have been a phased introduction based on booking date. I cannot believe that with WDW resources this presents an insurmountable logistics/IT problem.
As many of you will know DDP has changed; the headline is no starters (appetisers) and tips not included on the basic plan.
We have just come back from POR after 10 days on DDP and found the effects to be rather more wide reaching than this
First staff seem to hate the new plans and think they are too complicated.
Second WDW do not seem to be honouring old DDPs. We checked in on 29/12 and so we were on the old (3 courses + Tip) system but we were told that if we had checked in on or after 1/1 we would have been on the new plan notwithstanding that we had been sold the old one! There were plenty of guests checking in after 1/1 forming queues at reception in the resort complaining about how they were now having to buy unexpected starters and pay for (compulsory) tips.
Third snacks have been curtailed. This is now a single snack of less than $4 including taxes. Gone are boxes of donuts, turkey legs etc.
Fourth trading credits has gone. I gather that it was unofficial but tolerated policy to allow guests to exchange 1 CS for a couple of snacks or 1 TS for a couple of CS. That has all gone although you can apparently trade a CS for one snack (unofficially). How generous.
Fifth the computer system was a disaster. This may just be teething troubles but several times we were told that we did not have enough credits to pay for meals when we knew we did and consequently had to spend time on the phone sorting this out instead of enjoying our holiday. The best example was our last morning when our waitress at Park Fayre told us (rather rudely and insistently) that we had no credits for our breakfast. We knew we had enough and so ..back on the phone to be told we had something like 25 TS left (on our last day of a party of 4!!). We avoided the temptation to rush back and have more breakfasts and spent half an hour (time ticking away before flight home) sorting it out to the correct figure of 8. We than went into MK and decided to buy snacks to use up the rest of our (corrected) unused snack allowance and allow us a lunch at the airport. The shop assistant told us we had no snack credits left!! Aaarghh! On that occasion we simply did not have time to sort it out as we had a flight to catch and so left with about 8 unused snack credits.
Of all of these the biggest concern must be whether guests are getting what they paid for. If you booked an old style DDP how can WDW justify giving you something less than you ordered? Surely this should have been a phased introduction based on booking date. I cannot believe that with WDW resources this presents an insurmountable logistics/IT problem.