Free dining opens today for UK people. I thought I’d take a look at my options for 2020.
Then this happened:
Isn’t that both bizarre and pathetic?
Disney can’t handle a large number of bookings? Really? It’s a multi-billion dollar corporation. There are only 27,000 or so people in the queue. That’s not beyond the wit of modern computers to handle is it?
And why is everyone frantically booking today? Has Disney ever run out of reservations?
Needless to say, I will not be queuing.
I think there is a paid FPP option to skip the queue
Thank you SWGE, I guess.
For full disclosure, I’m American. I’ve never seen a queue to book a Disney vacation.
Wow…got a queue yesterday on the US side, but the longest wait I had was around 2 minutes.
Last year it was fine in the morning but by the afternoon, the page wouldn’t even load to the point where it gave you a ‘Stitch ate the page’ or other jaunty and annoying excuse for poor IT. I assume this is supposed to combat that. TAs have been quoting for a couple of weeks and have been warning people that availability will be limited, so I’m not surprised to see high traffic on day 1. It’s always busy.
I usually stay up late. I’ll try at midnight or something.
I’m in Canada and got the same thing yesterday (a timer starting at 2 minutes). I’d never seen it before!
Wimp! 
There are 71k people trying to book a vacation. Since rooms are limited and you wouldn’t want people to try to check out and not get one of those “it’s no longer available in your cart” messages this totally makes sense.
FWIW, it’s the same system / software that was used when I bought Harry Potter and Cursed Child tickets in London two years ago and Hamilton tickets this year.
Actually I first looked this morning at about half past eight. I joined the queue and left the tab open on the waiting page and checked it from time to time. Then I got bored and had other things to do. I remembered it again at about 3pm. It said I had reached the front of the queue at 11.30am but had lost my place though inactivity.
In other words, the queue time was three hours. Good practice for off-site FOP riders, I guess.
It’s a relatively new thing and I like it. I don’t have to sit on hold for forever anymore. I can go about my life
Wait… you have a life apart from waiting for Disney reps???
Sounds like utter shenanigans, to me.
At last viewing 80,000 had been in the queue. If we guess an average of $5,000 a booking (the major offer promotes a 14 day stay) that is a $400,000,000 pay day for Disney.
Not a bad day at the office.
But how many of that 80000 are travel agents checking on deals, guests comparing deals, bloggers blogging about deals, curious dreamers wishing to go…
Well it’s only a hypothetical so who cares but travel agents will have their own access to the system - for example you can book direct through many of them and not have the queues. And the number of dreamers will be severely cut by the fact it’s a two hour queue to see. Whatever the sales, it’s an interesting measure of interest given it’s just the UK, not the kind of thing we normally get an insight into.
I doubt many are only $5000. It cost me £4000 just for me and DS for this summer at POFQ.
But then I only spent £2,400. And only paid £50.
What percentage would you guess are solo travellers? I bet it’s less than 1%. You are a statistical anomaly.
Absolutely. This. (Still mad about it happening to me.) better to have a queue than work under false pretenses.
