The Scariest Disney Villain Is Its Tech
I never eat apples, so the Evil Queen doesn’t worry me, and I’ve read enough Game of Thrones to defend myself against Maleficent.
Scar isn’t a threat since he hides behind those hyenas…and he might be dead now anyway.
But there is one malevolent force in the Disney universe that absolutely terrifies me.
As we recently learned yet again, the scariest Disney villain of all is its tech. Let’s vent a little, shall we?
What Happened Now?
Were you planning to attend the 2024 D23 Expo?
If possible, you certainly should. Park officials appear ready to announce the future of Disney Experiences.
Several different attractions, themed lands, and maybe even a new gate at Disneyland/Walt Disney World could be in the works.
You’ll want to say that you were there on that momentous occasion when the Parks Panel reveals what’s next.
Alas, if you tried to purchase your tickets on Tuesday, March 26th, you have decided not to bother.
Disney’s reservation system spit the bit for the umpteenth time as fans tried to purchase their tickets to the biennial event.
Even by the ridiculous standards of Disney tech, this latest snafu was a doozy.
Fans entered a virtual queue to purchase tickets for the D23 event, but there was a problematic sticking point.
Once the customers reached the purchase screen, a message indicated that tickets wouldn’t go on sale until August 7th.
So, the system identified that it shouldn’t be selling tickets to the customers and wouldn’t execute the transactions.
Meanwhile, the very confused guests waited for their entire allotted time in the queue, hoping the problem would resolve itself.
When that didn’t happen, the system registered an inactive user and kicked them from the virtual queue.
Here’s how that sounds in layperson’s terms. Let’s say that you try to buy U2 tickets for The Sphere.
The presales open today, so you wait in the queue until it’s your turn.
Once you’re up in the system, you get a message saying that tickets don’t go on sale for another four months.
At this point, you’re good and truly screwed. And Disney fans know that feeling all too well.
A Brief History of Extreme Incompetence
I toyed with the notion of listing every single Disney tech debacle since the start of MickeyBlog in 2017.
Why didn’t I do it? Frankly, I don’t have the inclination to waste that much time on something this inexplicable.
Even if I did, you’d start skimming after the first 30 examples. And yes, there are more than 30 examples.
Disney tech is less reliable than my old Mazda 626, and that car’s engine once caught fire. I still trust it more than Disney tech.
Like, that’s not even a joke. I had toyed with the notion of attending this year’s D23 event.
That choice would have made my life much harder during the weekend of D23, but it’d be worth the aggravation.
In the Hamilton vernacular, I want to be in the room where it happens.
But I know from experience how often Disney experiences “glitches” and “tech issues.”
The company uses such polite terms to brush away inexplicably terrible system errors.
Some problems are minor, like the occasional My Disney Experience wait times snafu.
Then, we have the stuff that’s harder to overlook. Remember when Magic Keys finally went back on sale?
That happened just one month after the Oogie Boogie Bash debacle.
A reasonable person would expect Disney to have checked under the hood after the July mistake before selling Magic Passes.
Nope! Everyone spent that day thinking, “Déjà vu all over again” from the previous month.
I’ll Keep Going Because I’m Annoyed
Remarkably, the same thing happened in a shorter timeframe at Walt Disney World.
First, the Advanced Dining Reservation system listed reservations that weren’t available.
Disney had to give away $25 gift cards as an apology.
You’d think management would have verified all the impacted people immediately. Nope!
Two weeks later, Disney announced that it’d learned that a second wave of unavailable reservations had been booked.
So, Disney canceled those as well and refunded the guests.
But that’s not even the worst one from the past four years. No, that gem happened in 2020.
At a time when Disney theme parks had closed due to the pandemic, the company accidentally charged customers.
As a reminder, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs overnight due to the health crisis.
Then, Disney billed them for four months for annual passes they couldn’t have even used at the time.
To the company’s credit, it did right by the impacted customers but I could fill a swear jar describing how much Disney blew that one.
Now, here we are, almost four years later, and NOTHING has changed.
Disney still cannot sell tickets to its signature fan event without suffering “technical issues” or “glitches” or whatever you want to call them.
Me, I’d use the f-word, and I’d say it loudly and angrily.
Disney is a Fortune 50 company with a market cap of about $222 billion as I type this.
How can a company this good have tech this mercurial and wholly unreliable?
Judas priest, Disney! FIX YOUR TECH!!!
I’d sooner eat a dozen poisoned apples than try to buy D23 tickets through your system. Trust simply isn’t there.
FEATURE IMAGE: Getty/iStock
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