What Do You Mean I Can't Charge To My Room?!

[glendalais]

In order to facilitate the upgrade of many systems, all Hotel and Dining Reservations and many Resort Functions have been taken down from today to 14 October. One of those functions was the one that allows Walt Disney World Resort Hotel Guests to charge On-Property purchases to their folio.

Guests have been warned about this outage in who knows how many ways over the past few days. As such, I was absolutely not surprised when I had a Guest come up today and try to charge something to their room.

I informed them that the systems were down, and if they had another form of payment. The Guest proceeded to rant for about 15 minutes that they were never told in the week they've been here that this was going to happen. That being able to charge stuff to their room was half the reason they stayed on property, and how we were all just being completely lazy.

They eventually stomped off saying they were going to go talk to their Front Desk. This is one week I am happy that I do not work behind one of those. May those of you in Room Operations receive the aid of whatever higher power you believe in .

[turkeyham]

You should had left the Magic 8 ball on the counter. :twisted: They ask a question and they ball says ask later.

[hhsrat]

From what they were telling us at the resort, the matra terminals would still be able to process room charges, just that it'd be stored in a queue and not actually hit DPMS until DPMS came back up.

[glendalais]

From what they were telling us at the resort, the matra terminals would still be able to process room charges, just that it'd be stored in a queue and not actually hit DPMS until DPMS came back up.

That's the impression we were under as well. However, when we tried to run a KTTW Card, MATRA wouldn't let us. I think it may be a intermittent thing.

[kurtisnelson]

That's the impression we were under as well. However, when we tried to run a KTTW Card, MATRA wouldn't let us. I think it may be a intermittent thing.

Correct. Room billing is up and down, DPMS is about to take a permanent nap, and we are about to experience a living hell when they import the reservations into LILO and things start going wrong.
But hey, front desk transactions will be 10-20% faster once it is up! (Per my not so scientific report)

[hhsrat]

Correct. Room billing is up and down, DPMS is about to take a permanent nap, and we are about to experience a living hell when they import the reservations into LILO and things start going wrong.
But hey, front desk transactions will be 10-20% faster once it is up! (Per my not so scientific report)

I'm still struggling to see how a web-based application will be faster than a text-based application running on an AS400. Based on my experiences in the test environment, I'd say that Green Screen is hands down faster.

[Zazu]

I'm still struggling to see how a web-based application will be faster than a text-based application running on an AS400. Based on my experiences in the test environment, I'd say that Green Screen is hands down faster.

True dat!

The Windows Clown Suit they put on DPMS to create the "blue screen" takes twice as long to do not quite everything needed.

After a la carte, I'm really not looking forward to Lilo. OTOH, they have promised an automated bankout, and that will definitely be a nice change. I haven't seen some of the required reports for months!

Ah well, I can always transfer back to attractions if it gets too bad. I have one co-worker who has scheduled a transfer back to Custodial just before rollout, with the promise to return in six months or whenever the bugs are gone, whichever happens last.

Gonna miss him, I fear.

[kcberlin]

I'm still struggling to see how a web-based application will be faster than a text-based application running on an AS400. Based on my experiences in the test environment, I'd say that Green Screen is hands down faster.

My uninformed guess would be it has nothing to do with being faster, it has to do with being cheaper. My workplace has gone to almost entirely internet based software so we don't have to pay for servers, etc. All you're paying for is space, and that is cheap as dirt.

[hhsrat]

After a la carte, I'm really not looking forward to Lilo. OTOH, they have promised an automated bankout, and that will definitely be a nice change. I haven't seen some of the required reports for months!

Unfortunately, the "automated bankout" still won't take A La Carte into account, from what I'm told, so any time you take cash in A La Carte, your drop is still going to be over.

[Rob562]

I'm sure that it'll be invisible to him, but I'm hoping all goes well for my friend when he arrives next Sunday for his first "solo" trip to WDW. (i.e. his first trip without *me* playing tour-guide...) ;)


-Rob