"Disney, what has to happen for you to decide that MDE does not work?"

[AngiTN]

I can assure you it's no small percentage of guests that have issues. I am in and out of multiple MDE accounts every day, as are my colleagues, and we all have numerous problems. We also have numerous problems on the professional end of Disney tech. Their IT is, in general, a $@*#-show.

My theory? Disney doesn't care. People will still come, and until they see revenue loss from their IT not working, they will continue to not care.

I do email them daily about it, and I encourage every single one of you to do the same.

There's one simple reason for that. Disney has a monopoly on Disney.
If you want to go to Disney it's not like you can go somewhere else to get it.
The majority of their guest isn't choosing to take a Disney vacation just as a random vacation destination and they can replace it with a different random vacation destination because of a poor IT experience. They choose Disney because they want to go to Disney, specifically. So they deal with whatever they have to deal with to go. Disney knows this.

 

[kat_lh]

So is there anything you can do to protect yourself, so to speak, from a MDE failure while you're act the park? Will screenshots of FPs and ADRs work? Are printed emails with reservation numbers any guarantee of anything? Or are you just SOL if it goes down when you're there?

 

[monkyby87]

So is there anything you can do to protect yourself, so to speak, from a MDE failure while you're act the park? Will screenshots of FPs and ADRs work? Are printed emails with reservation numbers any guarantee of anything? Or are you just SOL if it goes down when you're there?

Screenshots and such probably won’t work since those could have been taken before and then switched. For ADR’s, a printed reservation might work since they have a specific number associated. But I can’t say for certain.

 

[StacyStrong]

I used to work with a system called Siebel. It was fantastic for our insurance call center. Unfortunately they kept adding more and more features, more and more tasks for it to do, macros added, etc and every release (which happened every few months) it would break for a few days after it.

We could still do our job but only to a point because that sytem was used to track so many things. It was also frustrating for us when we would get a call from an agent, immediately apologize that the system used for information to automatically pre-populate (you know when you enter your policy number or account number when you call it would transfer over) wasn't working at the moment and also immediately hear "what you don't have the policy information in front of you *sigh* here it is again" amongst other things.

Now the main issue was the Siebel system we used was just never intended to take on as much tasks as it kept being given and that was straight from our in-house IT guy who got loads of fun on those days when it would break.

The funny thing was the program that was very very vital to our work and that almost never broke was an old IMB program from the 1980s that was not reliant on the internet. When it went down, which was rare, it was due to a server issue. But again it was rare that it would go down.

I know Disney had the MDE built but quite honestly some of it (though I couldn't say just how much) could be due to how much they've added into it. I can only hope it gets better because it's one thing to be a bit slow, it's another thing to have tickets, ADRs, hotel reservations, FPs disappear and "stitch ate the page" all the time on a good portion of the website when it's experiencing issues.

Deleted

 

[hayesdvc]

My magicband orders are still not showing...........what else is missing due to the magical update experience?

 

[Alison S]

Yeah my magicbands are missing too. Wonder if I should wait or try chat.

When do we need them entered by? 30 days before the trip?

 

[Klayfish]

Their IT is, in general, a $@*#-show.

My theory? Disney doesn't care.

But it's just that...a theory. My theory is they absolutely do care, and probably pour a ton of financial and human resources into it...daily. I also completely disagree their IT is $%$% show. Neither of us work there, so we can't say for sure and your opinion isn't any more valid than mine. But I think their IT is actually pretty impressive. When you really think about the system, what it offers and how it must all work, personally I find it pretty incredible that we can make FP+ minute by minute and change them.

 

[Brocktoon]

So is there anything you can do to protect yourself, so to speak, from a MDE failure while you're act the park? Will screenshots of FPs and ADRs work? Are printed emails with reservation numbers any guarantee of anything? Or are you just SOL if it goes down when you're there?

For ADRs you can print the confirmation # which can help in many cases. For FPs you're basically SOL as there's no sort of confirmation # ... screenshots probably won't help for the popular attractions

 

[DisneyMommyMichelle]

So is there anything you can do to protect yourself, so to speak, from a MDE failure while you're act the park? Will screenshots of FPs and ADRs work? Are printed emails with reservation numbers any guarantee of anything? Or are you just SOL if it goes down when you're there?

Screenshots work for FP and for ADR, if you also happen to be staying at the club level, if you have any issues, they take care of it right away when you use the number they give you at check-in.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

All - friendly reminder that using “symbols” in place of profanity is against DIS Guidelines. Please find other methods to express your opinion of Disney IT.

Thank you.

 

[anomamatt]

Oh, guess I need to go check out the FP area.....
Need to see the oh so important stuff they've been spending their time developing

Oh, they are ALL new! Even the ADR! Wow, what magical "magical enhancement" they made

I'm not defending MDE and/or Disney in any way, but I think this update was about the new multi-day tickets that will have different prices by season (which seem overly complicated, even for a WDW vacation, but I digress...). Anyhow, a few weeks ago the word was that all the ticket resellers needed to re-code what they were doing to sell these tickets. And we'd be seeing the new tickets in Sept/Oct.

So I assume they had to figure out a way to get the new tickets into MDE. And in the process, they bungled all the tickets that were there... I'm still waiting for the rest of mine to re-appear. Hopefully they re-appear before the wondrous MDE decides to delete my Fps for not having tickets associated...

 

[anomamatt]

So is there anything you can do to protect yourself, so to speak, from a MDE failure while you're act the park? Will screenshots of FPs and ADRs work? Are printed emails with reservation numbers any guarantee of anything? Or are you just SOL if it goes down when you're there?

I don't remember the specific date, but in 2017 I was there and all of MDE went down for an entire morning. The taps tiles didn't work, MDE app didn't work...

I had screenshots of my Fps and we were consistently allowed to enter the FP queue. No one else was allowed in and we were the only ones in the queues after the first 20 minutes of the outage. We did have to wait for people complaining at the taps tiles... but the screenshots let us in, consistently. Not saying this will always work, but did for us.

 

[cruiser21]

After reading this thread I decided to print out my itinerary. I'll just keep a copy in my purse. I'm thinking I should probably throw my tickets from UT in the bag. I haven't had anything not show up on my MDE, but things I have cancelled are still there.

 

[fractalpotato]

I've written about this before, and I've done a fair amount of reverse engineering of their web protocol that powers the site and the app. I can only tell you one thing with certainty, it's absolutely terribly designed. I can infer this just from the structure of the messages flying back and forth, they're way too heavy and carry far too much redundant information. This is symptomatic of developers not understanding underlying problems with the design and patching it until it works long enough to ship it.

Given the fact that Disney Parks engineering is typically world class, I have to assume (I have no proof, but I fully believe this due to what I've seen) that this was contracted out. It was also probably under-budgeted, and will remain so until they've no other options. Due to this, it's unbelievably likely that Disney had neither the means nor the system knowledge to properly repair it themselves. Furthermore I would bet the original contracted firm also lacks this knowledge . The main takeaway here is that it won't get fixed, it will eventually get replaced, because it would cost them more to fix it than to replace it. I know this from a long career as an engineer in a much higher stakes field, I've dealt with contractor design before and, well, you get what you pay for, and they didn't pay very well.

Like I said, this is all just from reverse engineering their web protocol, but it smacks of low skill, outsourced work and doesn't have that Disney shine to it. It also has a couple of glaring security holes that made me laugh when I found them, which I will not detail here for obvious reasons.

Matt

 

[AngiTN]

Yep. Frankenstein

 

[jbhodj]

I've written about this before, and I've done a fair amount of reverse engineering of their web protocol that powers the site and the app. I can only tell you one thing with certainty, it's absolutely terribly designed. I can infer this just from the structure of the messages flying back and forth, they're way too heavy and carry far too much redundant information. This is symptomatic of developers not understanding underlying problems with the design and patching it until it works long enough to ship it.

Given the fact that Disney Parks engineering is typically world class, I have to assume (I have no proof, but I fully believe this due to what I've seen) that this was contracted out. It was also probably under-budgeted, and will remain so until they've no other options. Due to this, it's unbelievably likely that Disney had neither the means nor the system knowledge to properly repair it themselves. Furthermore I would bet the original contracted firm also lacks this knowledge . The main takeaway here is that it won't get fixed, it will eventually get replaced, because it would cost them more to fix it than to replace it. I know this from a long career as an engineer in a much higher stakes field, I've dealt with contractor design before and, well, you get what you pay for, and they didn't pay very well.

Like I said, this is all just from reverse engineering their web protocol, but it smacks of low skill, outsourced work and doesn't have that Disney shine to it. It also has a couple of glaring security holes that made me laugh when I found them, which I will not detail here for obvious reasons.

Matt

This makes perfect sense to me and I tend to think your on to something. They can’t fix what’s broke at this point it’s to far down the hole. It’s gonna be a fresh start to upright this ship. May look the same but mechanics behind scene will be all new

 

[firefly_ris]

It's just pathetic. I'm a front end web developer and so work on a lot of gigs alongside back end guys... if this was the quality of their work they wouldn't be getting more work, that's for sure.

This is the product of an overseas, outsourced gig that simply went to the lowest bidder. I've lost gigs to these places before and the client usually regrets pinching those pennies because they end up having to spend more to fix or start over.

Maybe some of the money from all those dessert parties could have paid for a better skilled developer team...

 

[hsmamato2]

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure they know it's broken and it sucks. And trust me, they've had lots of guests yell at them about how bad it is. They've heard it all.

I agree.

 

[Nancyg56]

My magicband orders are still not showing...........what else is missing due to the magical update experience?

Mine are not showing uo either. All I can see are the "old" ones. I have not yet called to see if this can be fixed, but we are nearing our FP date. I am not thrilled.

 

[chris benton]

One issue with the overseas IT companies is their contracts. They are rock-solid. Once the contract is signed, they are hard to get out of without penalty. The $ savings that is dangled in front of the execs' eyes is too great to pass up. Once the native employees are fired after the knowledge transfer period, and the next big "update" happens, the results are usually horrific. this is because the new employees have no idea about the intricacies of what they are producing, since they only know of the one cog they are producing, they have no idea how it fits, or what it is supposed to do in the bigger scheme. I've actually had conversations with these offshore employees at other companies. Some did not know what the corporations they were working for did, they just knew the name of the corp. And these were not obscure corporations - multi-billion dollar ones. Once they get their foot in the door, it's band-aid after band aid, after band aid. Their contracts are written in such a way that they are praised for those band-aids. I know of a few small, cash rich, companies that saw the trend of their IT outsourcing contract very quickly, and immediately paid the penalty to get out of that contract, and hired the IT employees that they fired back. Usually the bigger companies can just keep on rolling if their infrastructure does not crumble too much, and if their income generating technology can still take in enough money for the execs to keep on buying vacation homes and bigger boats for their children. (Okay, that last line was a little bit of comedic effect - or was it?)

One high level exec I worked with compared the outsourcing companies to an opiate i.v. and he made a very compelling argument. Draw your own picture - once it's in, you need more and more, and more to cover up the bad, and then it doesn't end well. Obviously, not ALL outsourcing is like this, it can't be. I'm SURE the execs have done their homework, and make the best decisions for the long term outlook, right? Or, do they just quit and get better jobs at a different company? (tee-hee!)