Are you 23? Are you angry?
You should be, unless you were one of the lucky few that managed to land tickets for the member-exclusive "D23 Days at the Walt Disney Studios and Archives" event.
The tour is one of the "free" perks available to those who paid the $74.99 fee to become a D23 member. As described on the events page of the official D23 website:
D23 Members will have the rare opportunity to enjoy a 2-hour tour of The Walt Disney Studios and Walt Disney Archives, hosted by D23 and Archives staff. Only two dates are available for the Summer 2009 Calendar, and space is limited.
Dates: Saturday, June 27, 2009 and Saturday, August 15, 2009
Location: The Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, California
Rare indeed! The chance to tour the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California and delve into the Disney Archives is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and would make the mouth of any avid Disney fan drool. A WIN for the Disney community, right?
Below: The Animation Building
The Burbank studios is notorious for never, ever hosting guided tours. In December 2008, the Walt Disney Studio Store, Disney Employee Center, and Studio Commissary on the studio property were open to the public, but the intent was mostly to sell merchandise, not to tour the property itself, and most of the studio grounds and buildings were off-limits to guests.
That's why, when this D23 event was announced late May, it was the closest real-life example I could think of to getting a golden ticket into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Finally, D23 offers a truly unique event that makes the membership price worthwhile.
Below: The Michael D. Eisner Building
Little did I know that the process to get your tickets would be just as hectic, confusing, and plain unfair as the worldwide pandemonium for Wonka bars in Roald Dahl's novel.
D23 members were told that their tour reservations could be made online starting promptly at 11am PDT this morning. However, according to several determined members who were frantically refreshing their screens, the link was active at 10:57am. In a window that amounted to just seconds, all the reservations had been filled, and by 11am everyone who clicked the 'Submit' button was told that the tours were full but that they could be put on a waiting list for the desired date. By around 11:05am, the waiting list was full too. Fail.
Some members who could not be put on the waiting list at the time of submission later received an email saying that space on the waiting list had opened up, but when they clicked on the link and signed up again, they received the 'event full' message a second time! Fail again!
Above: Icon on D23's website announcing sold out tourIn the minutes following 11am, livid members who followed the rules but didn't get in made their frustration heard across the Twitterverse:
@SnorkletsMom If you're a D23 member, the studio tour ticket method was an absolute joke. Anyone as mad as I am?Meanwhile, a message appeared on the official "DisneyD23" Twitter page, meant to appease those who didn't make it in:
@myrnal D23 Days at The Walt Disney Studios and Archives event full both days in 4 min...did not get in...rats!
@lurkyloo So much for D23 members' access to exclusive events - both studio tour dates filled up 90 secs before the 11am release time.
@steveberg D23 FAIL: Studio tour sells out in under 1 minute for both days. Way to go again Disney.
@BriarRose461 D23 Studio tour tickets available at 11am. NOT! Sold out and wait list FULL at 11:01. How is that possible? Frustrated D23 member!
@DisneyD23 Thanks 4 ur enthusiasm 4 the Studio/Archives tours. We're exploring ways 2 offer more tours later this year! Stay tuned 4 details.To which many Twitter'ers responded:
CottageWayOfLif @DisneyD23 Fantastic news D23. While you're at it could you please look into a better way to distribute tix? Today's method was a failure.
cstephens2 @DisneyD23 Really frustrating to get continuing emails from waitlist saying there's room now, only to submit request and be told it's full.
djaffe @DisneyD23 At 10:57 California time you guys were sold out. Totally lame- I won't be renewing.
michaelshearin @DisneyD23 WOW, extremely frustrated that the Studio Tour is sold at 11 AM on the dot! Guess that is what we get for having free events!
chriscorry @DisneyD23 who do we contact to voice some serious complaints with this mornings reservations???
Skorp28 @DisneyD23 You've managed to upset a lot of your most valuable fans. Good job!
Just to be clear, I am not a D23 member, but now I know I do not want to become one. How can you blame me? Be tantalized with an opportunity to tour the Walt Disney Studios with extremely limited space, then put up with a severely flawed online reservation system that deceives people by going live before it's supposed to and is more of a contest of whose browser window refreshes the fastest? Is that what I want to pay $74.99 to do? Yeah, thanks but no thanks, D23.
Smell familiar? This D23 DisneyFAIL reeks with the same stench that plagued past exclusive event fails, like the Enchanted Tiki Room 45th Anniversary merchandise fail (remember how incredibly tough it was to get your hands on that fountain?) and the annual Candlelight Processional online registration fail (the server crashed multiple times last year). What always happens is that Disney severely underestimates the demand for these events, and chaos ensues when everyone tries to get their hands on the same thing at once and Disney is not organized or prepared enough to make things go smoothly.
Why couldn't more than two dates have been available for the D23 studio tour from the start? Clearly they should have known that two dates was not enough to reasonably meet demand. Disney says they are adding more dates in the future in reaction to what happened today, but that will do little to undo the hurt done to the members who got burned this morning.If some D23 members have to be turned away, why couldn't there have been an orderly lottery system instead of a free-for-all clicking fest? Entering a lottery and being told you have not been selected would have at least made the pill of rejection easier to swallow.
Unfortunately, unless you hold the Golden Ticket, there's no easy way to swallow this epic DisneyFAIL.
Actually the link & sell out were both earlier. Had page open at 10:45, refreshed a couple times, last time approximately 10:48-10:50. Suddenly link was already active when I refreshed at 10:55. Immediately filled info and BOTH dates were already full. This was either 10:55 or 10:56 as it took only seconds for me to fill out the form & hit submit. To top it off, I received not one, but TWO emails telling me I was off the waitlist. Everytime I hit submit it said "full". Not to mention I kept trying between the emails!
ReplyDeleteThis blog should have plenty of material for the time being.
ReplyDelete-Lack of a Tomorrowland fix
-Pixarfication of the parks
-"New" monorails
-Parking problems (park a couple blocks away with no tram link on busy days)
-Dead areas of the park including the Motorboat Lagoon, second level of Starcade, and People Mover track. There may be an attraction there, but Innoventions still sucks
-No true E-Ticket addition since 1995's Indiana Jones. Everything has been remakes (Nemo) or flops (Rocket Rods)
Godspeed DisneyFAIL.
So, the ranting has expanded Outside MiceChat too?
ReplyDeleteDid you happen to see the D23 interview up today on MiceChat about this? Sounds like they are doing what they can to deal with the problems. At least they acknowledge them:
ReplyDeletehttp://micechat.com/forums/d23-disney-twenty-three/118100-micechat-interviews-steven-clark-d23-event-ticket-process-expo-future-events.html
It's also a meme.
ReplyDeleteI did see that interview, and I'm glad that Disney vocally recognizes the frustration D23 members had with the registration process yesterday and is doing their best to accommodate the people on the waiting list and adding future tour dates.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the non-answer Disney gave to the question "Any thoughts or advice that will help people obtain tickets to future events?" that the events will continue to be on a first-come, first-served basis is disconcerting because it seems to confirm that they don't plan on altering the registration process and that this sort of DisneyFAIL will happen again in the future.
I hope readers of this blog will understand that DisneyFAIL, while grounded in fact, is satirical in nature and is purposely focused on the problems and shortcomings of Disney offerings, whether or not they are later addressed by Disney. DisneyFAIL is all about the first impression, which is a delicate thing that cannot be undone. This blog holds the view that if management had the proper oversight, these problems would never have happened in the first place.
Obviously you have never tried to buy tickets to anything else online before. When buying tickets for anything, concerts or D23 events, you have to be quick on the refresh button and just hope for some good luck! Things fill up fast and obviously a D23 event is going to be EXTREMELY popular. I'm not surprised that all the spots were gone in a matter of minutes. Disney does what they can, but they can't allow thousands to show up just because a few people go angry. They can't make everyone happy all the time. Plus, this was the first event. Give them time to figure out what works and what doesn't.
ReplyDeleteAnother place for Spokker to sit and stew. Banned from micechat yet you still find this blog spok? Guess you're too lazy to keep your blog going, good thing too lol.
ReplyDeleteIt should be the next topic of this blog, since it was such an epic fail. This will be too down the line though.
It's surprising when you realize that some Disney fans are some of the most vindictive, nasty people on Earth. They are ugly on the outside, and ugly on the inside.
ReplyDelete