New Passholder Tours … for Some

from Passholder e-mail announcement

Talk about a good idea executed poorly – I understand that an awful lot of Passholders are upset / frustrated / downright angry about the Mouse’s latest Passholder-only events. Earlier this week, many of us received e-mails announcing a couple of special tours coming up in December for Passholders only – a backstage tour of the upcoming American Idol Experience at the Studios and also a tour of the famed Cinderella Castle Suite at the Magic Kingdom. Pretty cool, eh?

Well, it would’ve been had very many people been able to sign up for it.

Now I don’t know exactly how many Passholders Walt Disney World even has or how many they were ready to accommodate for these events, but just from what I’ve seen (and experienced) so far, it looks like they did a very poor job at executing the big announcements. The website mentioned that sign-ups began at 10:00am on Wednesday morning, however many Passholders didn’t even receive the e-mail until mid-afternoon (I got mine at 3:03pm). Then upon visiting the website to sign-up even minutes after receiving the e-mail, the site was so overwhelmed with visitors that their system couldn’t handle it and returned an error when many guests attempted to sign up. Anyone who couldn’t access their personal e-mail during the day pretty much didn’t stand a chance of finding an open slot. And I think the final nail in the coffin was the idea that sign-ups were for individuals only – no guests – meaning that to make reservations for an entire family, one had to login to the Passholder website with each individual pass and make the reservations separately, and between the errors and dates disappearing, I don’t see how a family of 4 could’ve possibly gotten four reservations all during the exact same time…

from Passholder e-mail announcement

I ended up getting a single reservation for the Castle tour for myself, but got the Event Full message when I went back to get the same date for my wife, so I don’t know … if Disney doesn’t figure something out, I may end up just cancelling that one because I’d feel awful guilty touring that place without her. I did login last night and was surprised to be able to secure reservations for the Idol tour for both of us during the same time slot, so if nothing else we can still make an afternoon out of that and the Osbourne lights, but let’s face it – if given the choice, the Castle tour is really the cooler of the two and the one that I’d much rather experience!

Ultimately this is a neat promotion and I love it when Disney does special things for their Passholders like this, but they’ve got to get a much better handle on demand because just like getting turned away for the resort discounts due to the fact that they only allow a limited number at the discounted rates, missing out on a perk like this is just going to make someone more bitter than if they didn’t offer anything at all. Granted, I don’t want it to come to that and honestly, I really hope they come to their senses and open up a few more days so that as many people that want can take in these sights, but until then, it’s kind of hard to get excited about a Passholder-exclusive event that only a lucky few Passholders will even get to participate in…