When Disney Service Fails: A Rant

I love Disney. They make many magical memories for me across their theme parks, movies, and shows. Yet, it is their tendency to exceed expectations that make the parts of the company that underwhelm seem completely unacceptable. A prime example of this is Disney tech support, which somehow makes dealing with the cable company seem like a pleasure cruise.

While Imagineering pushed technological boundaries every day, Disney’s consumer-facing technology is infamously poor. Apps crash while not delivering on their stated mission and let’s not even get started on the failure of My Disney Experience. While they are not alone in having less-than-reliable technology, their ability to handle issues is even worse.

Let me give you two recent examples.

I have had a Disney Rewards credit card for over a decade. Reliably, I would receive emails with various marketing offers each week. Then, suddenly, in August, they stopped. For the last two months, I have tried to get to he bottom of the issue, with Chase pointing the finger at Disney and Disney pointing their finger at Chase. The one thing I am clear on is that I have nothing to do with the problem. In my last effort to get this resolved, I spent three hours on the phone and talked to 12 different people. At one point, a representative said that it is because I am not engaged with Disney enough — which if they looked at my purchases on the card, should seem like a ridiculous statement.

The card is famously inferior in terms of rewards, but I still use it at times due to the special offers. Without the information about the special perks and benefits, why would I use this card? I understand that glitches happen, but their complete lack of interest in trying to get to the bottom of it, is disheartening. Do they not care about me?

Another example is my experience with Disney Cruise Line. For the last five years, and nearly 15 cruises, I have not received luggage tags in the mail. The last update I received was that they “did a deep dive and discovered that your tags get printed and shipped without issue, but then the paper trail stops. There is never any record of the post office receiving them, nor a record of them being delivered.”

And that is where the updates ended. How is this acceptable? 35 cruises, but they can’t seem to figure out how to send me something in the mail? On the surface, it isn’t the biggest deal in the world, I admit. However, on our most recent cruise, our luggage was lost because they miswrote our stateroom number since we did not have preprinted tags, which ended up being a major issue.

My family recently had a very positive experience with the care and courtesy of Disney. They truly salvaged a miserable experience. The cast members involved truly cared about our family and ensured we had the best outcome possible. Unfortunately, those cast members tasked with managing the databases don’t seem to have the same care for their roles. I have often heard people concerned that Disney could use the personal data they have in some less-than-ideal way. My reply would be to not worry about that, Disney doesn’t have the technological know-how to even manage the most basic data-driven tasks.