Stupid Guest Tricks

Occasionally, all hell breaks loose at a resort and its not even a guest or a CM that is at fault. Chances are then its the fault of a travel agency or a guide company.
An example is when a company (and I make no pretense about being PC here, but I've only seen this with eastern or southern european companies) has promised things that Disney cannot meet or given guests incorrect information about stuff. Want a few examples? I know you do.

A southern european company once had arranged for flights and hotel rooms for a group of about 50 guests, but had not arranged for any transportation between the airport and the park. Them not having reserved a local guide thus resulted in te group first spending a few HOURS in the airport while at first strolling through it at random without knowing where to go and what to do and then trying to contact the travel agency. The agency, in turn, phoned Disney and had the audacity to complain to Disney about how difficult it was to get to the park! In all the confusion, however, they neglected to mention this was regarding a group that wa salready in place! Thus, the puzzled Disney employee gave them the standard answer about there being regular buses from the airport to the park. :roll:
SO, the whole group of 50 people mobbed the shuttle service and they all had to pay the quite large sum perperson for the bus ride. They were NOT happy, and even less so when they discovered that the travel agency had booked their guided tour of the park for the LAST day of their four-day stay there... Can you say "DOH!"...? The DLP staff rectified all of this of course, but as usual got no gratitude from the guests, who could not see the difference between Disney and the two-bit travel agent they had bought their trip from...

Another travel agency had simply told their travellers that Mickey would meet them at the airport (they denied this even though the guests all said the same thing) and that there would be characters present at every breakfast (character breakfast every day at the cheapest hotel in the resort?). Nice going. To top it off, they had given out "vouchers" for "character photographs" to families with children. Turns out, those vouchers were for some other Disney resort that the agency had arranged a trip to two years earlier.

My favourite agency, however, has to be the one whose guide apparently had to keep up a lot of false facades in front of his group of travellers. He was constantly trying to persuade the FastPass attendants to let his "VIP" group enter the attractions through the fastpass entrance without fastpasses, and according to my Finnish friend who worked at the three-star hotel where they were staying the guide kep asking for free stuff and special treatment at the hotel since the agency had told the guests that they were booked in the best hotel in the resort!
Way to go - I hope the guests didn't ask any embarassing questions when they passed under the Disneyland Hotel on their way into the park every morning... Having worked at a travel agency myself, I can totally relate to this poor guide's troubles - the whole travel business is a web of constant tries to tell your customers semi-truths and renaming rooms to suites etc...

This reminds me of something that Mark Evanier (a screenwriter and animation historian, as well as one of the creators of Groo the Wanderer, for you comic book types) once posted on his site. For copyright reasons, I obviously won't be reposting the whole story here, but here's a link...

http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL248.htm

Let's just say that some travel agencies can make even passholes seem smart...

All I can say is wow. I mean it was kind of funny until I got to the phone call he made. She outright and knowingly lies several times.

wow that makes me sad, i think that we should call and complain about some people that took that tour and yelled at us because they didn't get to do everything, and then yell at them for being lying assholes. jerks, companies like that cause little kittens to die, and i hope i get an e-mail from "mike" about it. they're going to purgatory, hell is too good for them.

Amazing. Funny and tragic at the same time. Almost makes me sympathetic for the guests who then get irate and take out their frustrations at the park.

Hey, I said "almost." But on reflection, not really. You'd have to be some kind of gullible to fall for that -- like the story said, how long does it take to do the math?

All I have to say about that link is....wow. Just...wow. I cannot believe that someone would even BOOK one of those tours, or be suckered into getting one.

As for travel agents setting false promises, this may not be from DLP but at Innoventions, we used to have the Xerox stop, where you got your picture taken and printed on super-high-glossy Xerox paper. The Brazilian Tour Troup Companies, knowing this, promised every tour group a group photo AND individual photos. So whenever Innoventions heard the chanting girls coming our way, we knew what was going to happen....thats right, the complimentary photos came from Xerox's pavilion. When they told the Brazilians that they could only be in ONE picture, not a group and then individuals, they got pissed at US because their travel agency promised them that they could do this.

I am wondering, is this the same travel agency that tells them that they can chant as loud as they want, or to cut lines, or to 'relieve theirselves' in the middle of our merchandise locations?

I read something in his article that has me wondering. Is this true, or another urban legend:

Now, in fairness, not all the waits are that long. And one of the deep, dank secrets of Disneyland is that when they post a 60 minute estimate for a queue, the actual wait-time is usually less. They deliberately exaggerate because, first of all, they want to discourage you from hitting the most popular attractions at peak hours. Second of all, they don't want you complaining if something breaks down and it takes longer than expected for you to reach the boarding area.

RebuildtheKingdom wrote:I read something in his article that has me wondering. Is this true, or another urban legend:

Now, in fairness, not all the waits are that long. And one of the deep, dank secrets of Disneyland is that when they post a 60 minute estimate for a queue, the actual wait-time is usually less. They deliberately exaggerate because, first of all, they want to discourage you from hitting the most popular attractions at peak hours. Second of all, they don't want you complaining if something breaks down and it takes longer than expected for you to reach the boarding area.

Yes and no.

yeah when i post 80 on my sign it's because it's going to be about 80 minutes, when i post 5 it's because it's going to be about five. That kinda bugged me, because I DO want people to come to my attraction, always, but i also want them to know how long i think it'll take them, which might not always be the most accurate, but at least they have a ball park idea.

GMC wrote:yeah when i post 80 on my sign it's because it's going to be about 80 minutes, when i post 5 it's because it's going to be about five. That kinda bugged me, because I DO want people to come to my attraction, always, but i also want them to know how long i think it'll take them, which might not always be the most accurate, but at least they have a ball park idea.

Sometimes we over post the wait just so we can get our out front traffic under control. (People go away we have it under control and we bump the wait down). Other times we over post because we are 105 (reduced capacity) where we have the full queue inside the gate is usally 30 minutes sans fastpass, but last year feb through april we didn't have the use of ER2 so we put what normally would have been a 30 minute wait running 2 ERs we posted at 45 because we were missing ER2.