What is your take on this? (Disney Idiocy)

[LibDemAlways]

This year Disneyland has a promotion - get in free on your birthday. My 16-yr-old daughter thought this would be a good opportunity to get in a theme park visit, so she signed me up for the birthday deal. OK, as long as my ticket was free, I agreed to take her and a friend.

So after being ripped off $14.00 to park and having to argue with the attendant so as not to be parked in Siberia, we finally arrived at the ticket booth.

I presented the official Disney downloaded document that proclaimed it was my birthday, along with my driver's license as the required "photo id." No problem. A free ticket appeared. Then I requested two more tickets for my daughter and her friend, handing over $100.00 in cash that the girls had scraped together and my debit card to cover the $44.00 balance. (Yes, Disney currently charges $72.00 for one day admission.) I wanted to hang on to some cash reserves just in case.

Anyhow, the ticket seller then informed me that I couldn't use my debit card at her window. I tried to remain and calm and friendly. "Why?" I asked. "For security reasons," she explained, "no one in your party can use a credit card since you just obtained a free birthday ticket."

This made no sense to me at all and I asked for further explanation, but I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. "You'll have to get back in line and go to another window if you want to use that credit card," she told me. "That's the rule."

I looked and the line was growing long. No way was I going to waste more time. I took out my cash reserves and forked over all cash for the two tickets.

The only explanation I can come up with for the inane "no credit card when picking up a birthday ticket" rule is that some evil Disney suit determined that given the outrageous price of admission, the average birthday celebrant would, indeed, need to purchase extra tickets and use a credit or debit card for the transaction. Who carries around hundreds of dollars in cash? Anyhow, by creating an added inconvenience, and making the entire party go to the back of the line, there's a chance the birthday boy or girl would say "Fuck it, I'll just pay for all the tickets, including mine."

Anyone else have any other possible explanation for this bs?

At any rate, after this fiasco I've visited the mouse for the last time.

[la_chupa]

1. I agree that makes no sense

dear god that's expensive

[Kali]

2. SEVENTY TWO DOLLARS!!!!!!!!????!!!!

No wonder I have never been, never wanted to.
Do you get ANYTHING for that?

[LibDemAlways]

8. You get to stand in long lines for short rides. You get to

jockey for limited curbside seating at parades. You get to obey the commands of Disney security who tell you exactly where you can and cannot stand to watch fireworks. In other words, you get to be a submissive sheep for the day. The only reason I agreed to put up with any of it was so my 16-year-old straight A student daughter could enjoy a day out an an amusement park with a friend. I, personally, hate the place, which is one gigantic rip-off.

[Kali]

11. so that includes the price of rides?

that makes it a tiny bit less awful, I suppose

[LibDemAlways]

12. Yes, as many rides as you can tolerate standing in a long line for.

[NewJeffCT]

3. Was the "no debit/credit card" in the fine print on your document?

if it wasn't, I would have made a stink about it there because they don't want to hold up the line and stop the people behind you from paying their admission.

However, I've never had a problem paying via credit card at Disney, anywhere. Heck, I can use a credit card for soda vendors, if I wanted.

And, Disney is best if you go for more than 3 days... It's normally like $72 for each of the first two days, $65 for the 3rd day and like $5/day after that. At least it was something like that the last time I bought tickets.

[Bossy Monkey]

4. Write them a furious letter.

No explanation is possible except that they are idiots. Unless they are super-idiots though, your letter should produce 2-4 free passes. (If it doesn't, you can easily carry out your threat never to return to Mousopolis.)

[BrklynLiberal]

15. That is what I would do...a very angry letter..and how youwere so embarrassed in front of your

daughter and her friend.

[petronius]

5. I can't come up with any logical explanation for that, except to deliberately hassle

people who've done the 'free ticket' thing. I agree you should write them a complaint letter, and I'd be interested to hear their explanation...

:shrug:

[jobycom]

6. Sounds like they don't want to link your credit card and your birthday.

Since your birthday is a frequent security question to access credit card and other personal information, they didn't want to have your card number linked to your birthday in their records, I guess.

I'm always stunned at how dumb retailers are in the opposite direction. Gas pumps require your zip code, for instance, so if anyone hacks into their card reader they have enough info to access your account, and no telling what else. Disney may be being overly cautious for that reason. If so, that's an improvement over a lot of idiocy out there from retailers.

If it's something else, I don't know why. It's not a scam to make you pay for your free ticket. Disney has too many other ways to grab your money to do something that simple.

[LibDemAlways]

7. The transactions were completely separate, and the rule applied to

everyone in the party. If I was with a friend, he or she wouldn't have been able to use their credit card at the window either. We would all have had to go to the back of the line. I really can think of no good reason for this.

I swear Disney goes out of its way to inconvenience people. Even at the end of the day when the tram takes "guests" back to the parking structure, the tram driver parks as far away as possible before letting people out. Then they have to not only hike back to the multi-level parking structure, where the escalators have been shut down, they have to transverse the football field length lot before reaching their cars. Absolutely no reason to subject tired people with aching feet to more discomfort other than management must be asshole masochists who enjoy making people suffer.

[jobycom]

9. I don't know, then. I've never been to Disneyland. Disney World is very well organized.

The parking lot flow is amazing to me. They have attendants keeping traffic moving, you have a short walk to a tram that takes you to the front gate of the park, and even the lines are kept moving smoothly. I've gone to elementary school functions and walked further and taken longer to park.

But it's a major corporation that handles tens of thousands of visitors a day. They organize to handle the masses, not the individual, so I'm sure problems occur.

Not sure about the credit card policy, but since you can pay in cash and not with plastic, it's obviously a security issue involving credit cards, and that's the only one I can think of. It used to be illegal to require an ID with a credit card because you were showing a clerk too much information that could be used to verify your identity.

The rule would apply to everyone in your party in case someone else in the party was also authorized to use your card. Maybe. I'm not saying it was a smart rule, I'm just saying that's all I can think of as a security reason. Otherwise they'd have more incentive to take your money right then than to send you to another line. They point of the free ticket is to lure a group into the park, not an individual, and their policy would be more likely to have some on the group leave, so it wouldn't be a way to get them more money. It would more likely result in less money for them over the course of the day.

[LibDemAlways]

10. I've been to Disney World, too, and noticed that the entire operation is

somewhat friendlier. Disneyland is much more hostile to "guests." There really is a difference.

[david13]

13. All special offers are like that. Rules, exceptions, special days,

special hours, special provisions, all designed so that basically no one can ever take advantage of them.
And that place is a master at the process.
My uncle worked on that place when it was opening. And thus I got to go out there as a kid just about the first time that it opened. What a disappointment it was for me as a kid. Even in those days the word 'plastic' started to come into use, for the phony thing that place is.
dc

[gmoney]

14. Maybe trying to save the credit card fees?

they've already given you a $72 ticket... if you put the $144 on plastic, that will cost them another $3 to $5 in credit card processing fees, whereas cash costs them nothing?

not that it costs them anything to let you walk through the gate... especially since, thinking you got in free, you'd probably spend a bit more liberally on food and souvenirs and such.

or as someone else said, they may be prohibited from recording your date of birth in conjunction with a credit/debit card transaction for privacy purposes and to help shield them from identity theft accusations?

if one of their ticket people had the info from your credit card AND your DOB, and possibly other info on your photo ID, they might be able to do some identity theft damage... and either Disney's lawyers or a state law want to protect you from yourself.

[TreasonousBastard]

16. Best guess is that the clerk got it a little wrong...

you can't use your credit card because they have your birthday. But there's no reason to not use someone else's card, so the clerk may just have blown it.

(It's happened.)