…Tables in Wonderland???
I feel like I’ve been a little critical of the Mouse lately, but this one just really doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I’ve never really been a fan of name-only changes (Disney’s Hollywood Studios, anyone?), and I don’t know if I really buy their reason given for this one, either…
Our Festival [13th Annual Epcot International Food & Wine Festival], which will take place from September 26 – November 9, 2008 will celebrate Cities in Wonderland, and following that theme, your dining club will be named Tables in Wonderland as of September 15, 2008.
This new name will not alter any of your current benefits. We have simply decided to do this to help distinguish your membership from any other dining privileges at Walt Disney World Resort that bares a similar name to the Disney Dining Experience.
Allegedly some guests were getting confused between the Disney Dining Plan and the Disney Dining Experience, but I’d like to think that passholders deserve a little more credit than that … assuming we’re the main purchasers of the card because it’s usually a better deal for us than buying the dining plan. This, to me, just seems like a silly change for somebody who needed a project and I’d have much rather seen a change come about to announce that all of the outside dining vendors (i.e. Rainforest Café, Yak & Yeti, etc…) would start accepting the DDE instead of a simple name change.
Plus, frankly I just really don’t like the new name! And to be honest, it’s going to make not renewing our membership this year a little easier – to me, the Disney Dining Experience sounds kinda cool, whereas Tables in Wonderland just sounds like awkward, marketing garbage that I don’t necessarily feel as bad about not being a member of. Granted, there are also other reasons for our non-renewal – my fiancee’s nursing school continues through next year and that’s going to continue to limit our time available to splurge over at Disney, but also just for the record, we didn’t really have all that incredible of savings with the card this year. I mean, 20% was nice, and I do plan on writing up a much more comprehensive breakdown of our experience at the end of the year when the card expires, but just as a guess at this point, I think we’re going to come pretty close to breaking even at the $60 purchase price for annual passholders.
I still have a feeling that we’ll sign back up the following year once we have some free time again, and it did certainly help persuade us to dine at some more table service restaurants than we normally would, but let’s just hope that by then Disney has some good sense to come up with a better new name for the program!
Are you telling me with Ratatouille providing such a great theme for Food & Wine last year, they still felt the need to reference a 50-year-old movie???