Disney's website is appallingly bad

[GeorgiaHoo]

Every time I try to use Disney's website to make a change to my reservation I get the someone ate this page message, or it freezes, or just get the endless thinking loop (which I have presently). I'm trying to extend our March trip by a single day but apparently the website is overwhelmed by that request. How can a company that makes billions of dollars each year, runs theme parks in numerous countries, and makes highly successful movies, not have a decently functioning website?

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

Every time I try to use Disney's website to make a change to my reservation I get the someone ate this page message, or it freezes, or just get the endless thinking loop (which I have presently). I'm trying to extend our March trip by a single day but apparently the website is overwhelmed by that request. How can a company that makes billions of dollars each year, runs theme parks in numerous countries, and makes highly successful movies, not have a decently functioning website?

Replying to myself--finally got the reservation changed but when I try to make a park reservation I get the "this page isn't working" message. And chat isn't available but I can call.

 

[Disney.Dreamin.Dee]

My advice is relax. I don't think you realize how many Canadians are trying to cancel/change things after the new travel advisory.
If what you need is not urgent then give it a day.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

My advice is relax. I don't think you realize how many Canadians are trying to cancel/change things after the new travel advisory.
If what you need is not urgent then give it a day.

Disney is a multibillion dollar company that should be able to handle increased traffic, and this isn't a one time problem with the website. The vacation experience is great, but the customer service to get there is demonstrably awful, and when I'm trying to change a $5k plus trip then it's pretty urgent. But since the website is down, and you can't get through on the phone, I'll take your advice and give it a day. Good luck to those from Canada who need to change their trip.

 

[Disney.Dreamin.Dee]

Disney is a multibillion dollar company that should be able to handle increased traffic, and this isn't a one time problem with the website. When I'm trying to change a $5k plus trip then it's pretty urgent.

As though everyone else goes for free?
If you feel so strongly then I recommend emailing them about it.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

As though everyone else goes for free?
If you feel so strongly then I recommend emailing them about it.

I didn't realize everyone else had to pay for their trip! Thanks for that info.

 

[dixonyy18]

definitely has become troublesome lol

 

[Tink415]

I agree. The website is ridiculous. We did a quick spontaneous trip earlier this month. I was trying to book a room and instead of just telling me NO room available I had to see page after page of room types with no availability. It was crazy and I gave up. Luckily a dvc room opened up last minute instead
Also while there the app would show me restaurants that were available but I could not sort by park or resort…such a waste of my phone battery.

 

[PepperjackDragon]

I recommend deleting cookies and browser history and trying other browsers, then phone if necessary. This happens regularly but usually a different device or browser solves it. Could be that they are updating some of the websites also, paroticularlt if there are changes in international policy they may be making adjustments to either change information online or make other updates to keep customers (such as when ILL$ went down and then later that day changes were announced to add some of them to G+) Unless they are intentionally trying to change something or slow down the website. Throwing out a conspiracy for fun, it’s probably not in their best interest to set the website up to handle a lot of cancellation traffic, so It may be designed to bottleneck the system in such an event and hope that some people change their minds and come anyway.

 

[gharter]

I would be surprised if the Disney website has the traffic that Amazon does 24 hours a day. And yet, the Amazon rarely (I'm not sure I've ever seen the error page) goes down compared to Disneys. As a multibillion dollar company, this should not be acceptable, but yet has not changed over the years.

 

[Disney.Dreamin.Dee]

I would be surprised if the Disney website has the traffic that Amazon does 24 hours a day. And yet, the Amazon rarely (I'm not sure I've ever seen the error page) goes down compared to Disneys. As a multibillion dollar company, this should not be acceptable, but yet has not changed over the years.

Since August Amazon has been terrible in my opinion. I get error messages or it just taking forever all the time and yes I'm an Amazon addict so I'm on there a lot.

 

[gharter]

Since August Amazon has been terrible in my opinion. I get error messages or it just taking forever all the time and yes I'm an Amazon addict so I'm on there a lot.

Was on there several times over the weekend and never had an issue. Maybe I'm just picking good times?

 

[PepperjackDragon]

Was on there several times over the weekend and never had an issue. Maybe I'm just picking good times?

Of course Disney needs to do better but I don’t think it’s quite fair to expect Disney to invest quite as much in a website as Amazon. However it definitely does happen on Amazon especially on very popular products and limited time sales. Try getting a ps5-you will get a picture of some dogs and then other glitches on top of it.

 

[gharter]

I don’t think it’s quite fair to expect Disney to invest quite as much in a website as Amazon.

I would disagree. They want you to book rooms, meals, buy tickets, mobile dining, Genie +, ILL$ rides, ADRs, plus the DVC and cruise sides through their website for every park. They should be investing a lot of money.

 

[MICKIMINI]

I won't give Disney a pass. A family of four spending 8-10K for a week's magic should be able to easily navigate a web site that is user friendly and WORKS. Disney does not meet the most basic needs of their customers and they know it and do not care

 

[PepperjackDragon]

I would disagree. They want you to book rooms, meals, buy tickets, mobile dining, Genie +, ILL$ rides, ADRs, plus the DVC and cruise sides through their website for every park. They should be investing a lot of money.

We are in agreement that they should do better, but what I am saying is that comparing Amazon website to Disney website is not really a fair comparison due to the scale of the online operation. Amazon had like 360billion in revenue almost entirely from it's website, at the same time disney was about 60billion in revenue with only a small percentage of that coming from the wdw online sales. So, given the scale and nature of the online operations its just not a reasonable comparison, even though they should be doing better.

 

[Disney Dan 47]

Disneyland website is just junk compared to Disneyworld website.

 

[klmall]

I've been fairly lucky I guess in that I haven't encountered too many errors etc. over the years (except when something like party tickets are first released) but I find the speed appallingly low even at off times. We have a super fast fiber connection here at home and it's crazy slow just opening pages sometimes. Having worked in IT support for many years where software updates were extensively tested before release I can't believe that Disney still releases 'updates' that are buggy. I have had to resort to calling more to make changes over the past couple years and have noticed an improvement in that area especially when they activate the "Do you want a call back?" rather continuing to wait in the phone queue. I agree that all the intricacies of planning (and modifying a Disney vacation) are enormous and NOT as straightforward as an Amazon order but they really could improve so much for users!