Mark and I had an unusual experience
yesterday trying to renew our WDW Annual Passes.
We have had APs for four years, since we became Florida residents in August of 2010. When we renewed them last year, the Cast Member wrote on the back with a Sharpy that our expiration date was August 28 of this year. Fine.
So because we are going to be out of town all next week for the NARFE Convention and unable to do the renewal on the exact date of 8/28, we went to DHS Guest Services yesterday to renew the pass.
The good news is that there was NO line, so we were serviced immediately. The other good news is that the young, female CM was delightful and pleasant.
Now for the bad news. Although she was very pleasant and happy, she didn't seem very competent. It took her nearly 40 minutes to finish the transaction.
At first she couldn't "find" the things she wanted to see in the computer. She left the station to go get help. Mission accomplished. Then a lot of time went by and she finally admitted that it was showing we owed ZERO for the renewal. Well, we would have been pretty happy with that, LOL, but Mark is too honest! He insisted she fix that. She left the station and got help, so yes, we now owed $871.18 for two Florida resident renewals. Making progress.
Next, we wanted to use our Disney Visa Rewards points, which Mark had transferred to the appropriate reward card the day before. We had $791.18 on it. (What are the odds that the pennies turned out to be identical! LOL!)
Well, she didn't know how to use that either. She left the station, twice, to find someone to help. Then those other helpers debated back and forth whether it was a Voucher or a Gift Card. I have NO IDEA which one they settled on and used, but eventually it processed it. Then she was able to process the balance of $80 on our Disney Visa Card, so hey, making more points for next year's purchase right away. And we really shouldn't complain about getting two Annual Passes for less than the price of a one day ticket!
Then she gave us back our cards, but since the cast member last year had written an expiration date on our cards with the Sharpy, I wanted new ones. I thought the point of having plastic cards was to reuse them year after year and be more green. It seemed to defeat the purpose to ask for new ones, but I didn't trust all CMs in the future, especially the ones in restaurants or shops, to accept it if they saw that it had "expired." She left the station to get new ones. She came back with Mark's replacement card with Donald Duck on it. No problem, but she said she had to go somewhere else to find a Minnie Mouse for me. I would have taken anything at that point, but she was gone in a flash. We waited for her to return with Minnie.
Wow, at this point it was already over a half hour for processing and she had left the station six times. She had the money done; she activated the new cards; she handed them to us with a satisfied smile. Then she said, "And these new ones expire on July 30, 2015."
WHAT? The old ones expired August 28 and it's August 22 when we are doing the transaction. There is supposed to be some leeway in the renewal process, but the date is always supposed to remain the same. Why is it now expiring a month earlier? We asked her, and yes, you guessed it. She didn't know, but she'd be happy to go find out. She left the station for the seventh time.
When she came back, with a big smile on her face, she said, "When you renew it reverts to your original purchase date."
She was happy with that answer, and I could tell she expected us to leave. But we didn't. I said to her that there is NO WAY that was our original date because on July 30 of 2010, the year we first bought APs EVER in our LIFE, we were NOT in Florida and NOT Florida residents. We bought our house on August 6, 2010 and bought our APs one week later on August 13, 2010. THAT is our original purchase date. (I know the precise date because of this BLOG! Thank goodness for the blog.)
She seemed confused and left the station for an eighth time. She came back with no other explanation. She carefully repeated that July 30 must have been our original purchase date. She thanked us for being patient. We were now hot, tired, late for our dinner appointment off property, and DONE standing there. We told her once again that it was not correct. We were disappointed that we were NOT actually buying a year long pass, but that we were leaving. Have a nice day.
Since I write an almost daily blog, I was able to look back and see that we did indeed buy those original APs on August 13 of 2010. We have no idea why the one that we turned in had a Sharpy date penned in of August 28, but clearly it was right. Our pass had just gotten us into the park yesterday on Aug 22, no problems. It had not expired.
Now we will expire on July 30, a full four weeks earlier than the pass we turned in. Although, we did feel slightly better when we realized it's only two weeks short of the original purchase date, we still feel cheated and confused.
We have had APs for four years, since we became Florida residents in August of 2010. When we renewed them last year, the Cast Member wrote on the back with a Sharpy that our expiration date was August 28 of this year. Fine.
So because we are going to be out of town all next week for the NARFE Convention and unable to do the renewal on the exact date of 8/28, we went to DHS Guest Services yesterday to renew the pass.
The good news is that there was NO line, so we were serviced immediately. The other good news is that the young, female CM was delightful and pleasant.
Now for the bad news. Although she was very pleasant and happy, she didn't seem very competent. It took her nearly 40 minutes to finish the transaction.
At first she couldn't "find" the things she wanted to see in the computer. She left the station to go get help. Mission accomplished. Then a lot of time went by and she finally admitted that it was showing we owed ZERO for the renewal. Well, we would have been pretty happy with that, LOL, but Mark is too honest! He insisted she fix that. She left the station and got help, so yes, we now owed $871.18 for two Florida resident renewals. Making progress.
Next, we wanted to use our Disney Visa Rewards points, which Mark had transferred to the appropriate reward card the day before. We had $791.18 on it. (What are the odds that the pennies turned out to be identical! LOL!)
Well, she didn't know how to use that either. She left the station, twice, to find someone to help. Then those other helpers debated back and forth whether it was a Voucher or a Gift Card. I have NO IDEA which one they settled on and used, but eventually it processed it. Then she was able to process the balance of $80 on our Disney Visa Card, so hey, making more points for next year's purchase right away. And we really shouldn't complain about getting two Annual Passes for less than the price of a one day ticket!
Then she gave us back our cards, but since the cast member last year had written an expiration date on our cards with the Sharpy, I wanted new ones. I thought the point of having plastic cards was to reuse them year after year and be more green. It seemed to defeat the purpose to ask for new ones, but I didn't trust all CMs in the future, especially the ones in restaurants or shops, to accept it if they saw that it had "expired." She left the station to get new ones. She came back with Mark's replacement card with Donald Duck on it. No problem, but she said she had to go somewhere else to find a Minnie Mouse for me. I would have taken anything at that point, but she was gone in a flash. We waited for her to return with Minnie.
Wow, at this point it was already over a half hour for processing and she had left the station six times. She had the money done; she activated the new cards; she handed them to us with a satisfied smile. Then she said, "And these new ones expire on July 30, 2015."
WHAT? The old ones expired August 28 and it's August 22 when we are doing the transaction. There is supposed to be some leeway in the renewal process, but the date is always supposed to remain the same. Why is it now expiring a month earlier? We asked her, and yes, you guessed it. She didn't know, but she'd be happy to go find out. She left the station for the seventh time.
When she came back, with a big smile on her face, she said, "When you renew it reverts to your original purchase date."
She was happy with that answer, and I could tell she expected us to leave. But we didn't. I said to her that there is NO WAY that was our original date because on July 30 of 2010, the year we first bought APs EVER in our LIFE, we were NOT in Florida and NOT Florida residents. We bought our house on August 6, 2010 and bought our APs one week later on August 13, 2010. THAT is our original purchase date. (I know the precise date because of this BLOG! Thank goodness for the blog.)
She seemed confused and left the station for an eighth time. She came back with no other explanation. She carefully repeated that July 30 must have been our original purchase date. She thanked us for being patient. We were now hot, tired, late for our dinner appointment off property, and DONE standing there. We told her once again that it was not correct. We were disappointed that we were NOT actually buying a year long pass, but that we were leaving. Have a nice day.
Since I write an almost daily blog, I was able to look back and see that we did indeed buy those original APs on August 13 of 2010. We have no idea why the one that we turned in had a Sharpy date penned in of August 28, but clearly it was right. Our pass had just gotten us into the park yesterday on Aug 22, no problems. It had not expired.
Now we will expire on July 30, a full four weeks earlier than the pass we turned in. Although, we did feel slightly better when we realized it's only two weeks short of the original purchase date, we still feel cheated and confused.
So this morning, still wondering about this, I did more blog research! Here is what I found:
Original purchase date 8/13/2010
1st renewal date 8/28/2011
2nd renewal date 8/12/2012
3rd renewal date 7/30/2013
AH HA!!! So when she said "original" date, she didn't mean what I thought she meant. She meant LAST YEAR's renewal date. BUT, last year the cast member personally wrote 8/28/2014 on the back as a reminder of our expiration date. So now there are more questions! Why did she write 8/28 last year when it should ALWAYS be 8/13? And why did the cast member yesterday only find last year's renewal date and not the original purchase date?
Mark has spent a good bit of time online today researching the renewal policy. It is VERY clear that there is a leeway of SIXTY days in advance of the expiration date and THIRTY days AFTER the expiration date to renew the pass with the renewal discount (which is significant) but ALWAYS the original purchase date and hence the expiration date STAYS THE SAME! For us that should always have been August 13.
So....we have to leave at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning to go to downtown Orlando for the NARFE Convention. Mark is on Registration Duty starting at 8 a.m. and he has to be there early to set up. There might be a late afternoon/evening time during the week to go back to Downtown Disney to see if this can be cleared up. Otherwise we are just going to keep the "new" expiration date of July 30 from now on.
i think something is wrong in the AP computer system, or something was wrong with that Cast Member's training. Who knows.
All I know for sure is that yesterday we bought 48 weeks for the price of 52!
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