Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween 2023 Super Thread

[Chili327]

But you can’t sell them. They are non transferable

Correct, you can only give them away to friends.


Auto bots makes the most sense for sure… which is why they should sell them on the phone only. There has to be a way to stop the machines!!!! lol

 

[Kender]

I will ask this with some trepidation…. If any of those that did not get tickets yesterday had “lucked into” getting through with all of their attempts (and I know there were many, many attempts, mine included), would you have NOT bought tickets because you felt badly about getting “in” when others could not? I think most would have felt fortunate that by some twist of fate, pull of the slot machine handle of Disney IT, or whatever, they got in and would have bought the tickets. Maybe some would not have bought them??

I won't lie and say I wouldn't have been tempted. But assuming I knew sales were supposed to be paused and I wasn't supposed to be able to purchase tickets: I wouldn't have.

Not because I would have felt guilty (and I definitely would have; never would have admitted to getting through), but because I would have been too concerned about the risk of purchasing when I wasn't supposed to have access.

Now assuming I hadn't known? That I just happened to log in after the queue opened and got right through? I probably would have. And then felt horrible after and also nervous about the validity of my tickets

HOWEVER. That's just me. I don't fault anyone for taking advantage of Disney's mistake and not fully locking things down. And like I said it would have been more concern for the tickets being honored than it would have been guilt. Guilt just would have kept me from telling anyone.

I still feel horrible guilt over getting in for everything I wanted for DLR half marathon weekend when some got none and the issues there were minor in comparison to OBB tickets today.

 

[Chili327]

Tickets for OBB went on sale that day at that time… correct? When and where did it ever say you shouldn't get thru to purchase tix and that you should close the browser window??
No one should have declined the opportunity if they were given it, if there was a problem you can always sort it out with Disney later, but no one should decline… thats just silly.

 

[theluckyrabbit]

But you can’t sell them. They are non transferable

This is correct. The tickets are not for resale, not transferable, and non-refundable as stated in the fine print.

As others have posted, you CAN gift the tickets to family/friends or a lucky someone or try to donate them to charity. People have posted in the past that they have had success donating DLR special event tickets to CHOC WALK or to Make A Wish (both charities have longstanding relationships with Disney/DLR). The people who donated tickets have posted that they received a tax receipt from these charities.

 

[twodogs]

Of course I would have. I also don’t begrudge anyone who did buy them.
I don’t understand why people are annoyed by me suggesting it was random luck that some people got in though. There clearly was no consistent manner on which people who got tickets got in. There just wasn’t. Nothing they did could be duplicated consistently. How that is anything but random is beyond me.
Does it annoy me that Disney didn’t really shut down sales? Of course, but that is not the fault of anyone else but Disney. I don’t blame anyone who bought tickets, I would have done the same.

I agree with you 1000%. I am not at all annoyed at you because I completely agree that it was random luck that some got tickets and others did not. Which is NOT the way it should be, according to Disney themselves! Disney says you will be randomized in the queue, but after that, it should go according to that initial randomization. And it most certainly did not. At that point, they were fully capable of shutting the whole thing down, and they did not. I think because they thought they could fix it and salvage things in real Time. Again, they were wrong and upset so many people because of it.

I am so hoping that you get your anniversary trip tickets when they do go back on sale!!!

 

[Kender]

Tickets for OBB went on sale that day at that time… correct? When and where did it ever say you shouldn't get thru to purchase tix and that you should close the browser window??
No one should have declined the opportunity if they were given it, if there was a problem you can always sort it out with Disney later, but no one should decline… thats just silly.

I would have declined. Sorry, not sorry . I wear the badge of "silly" with pride.

But again: I don't mind other people didn't bypass the chance even knowing they shouldn't have been able to get through. I just know it said ticket sales were paused and I would have been very suspicious of any tickets I purchased during that time. I don't trust Disney that much to honor anything.

Only one who should be getting side eye and more is Disney. And resellers.

 

[The Mayor]

I applaud anyone that got through initially or who was able to finagle the work around!! I tried all the work around mentioned here but if I had got through I would not have felt the least bit guilty. I would have felt more like I slayed the beast

 

[theluckyrabbit]

...

Only one who should be getting side eye and more is Disney. And resellers.

Oh, the resellers should be getting WAY more than side eye. Karma's real.

 

[MATTERHORN]

First time attending OBB...curious what makes it better than MNSSHP?

Omg, the treat trails being immersive instead of just someone dropping your candy in a bag, actual villains out that harass you and mess with you, Villians Grove is out of this world, I have to do it at least twice a night. The weather is always better, I never even want to wear a costume here because it's always too hot during MNSSHP. Guardians with Monsters after Dark "overlay", CarsLand is epic at Halloweentime. At WDW, you wouldn't even know it's Halloween after leaving Main Street. The other lands don't decorate at all!

I will give WDW one point, the parade is amazing!

 

[MATTERHORN]

There are also more people buying tickets for those events at WDW. In my opinion there is no defense for a large company crapping the bed like this and being unprepared for an event they know is one of the most popular across all their parks!

Agreed. My answer was in response to the question of why can one always get MNSSHP tickets. It's the same company, so the only reason is demand. And I believe the demand is because of less dates available/superior party!

 

[AndrewC]

Then the question is why doesn’t Disney flirt around with more dates to find the point that they aren’t all a sell out and then pull back a little?

 

[Mrjoshua]

I wonder if a lottery system would work. People enter for a date(s)/number of tickets that they want. Random picks 1 week after selection begins. Then a public onsale for any remaining stock.

I don't know if it would prevent resale mischief, but Disney seems to cancel reseller tickets anyway. It would take glitches, work arounds, and site crashes out of the equation.

 

[brightlined]

Then the question is why doesn’t Disney flirt around with more dates to find the point that they aren’t all a sell out and then pull back a little?

Because it screws up attendance at DCA. Day ticket buyers don't want to spend the money if the park closes for them at 6pm.

In the broader sense, twisting one knob to fix one issue causes other issues - the difficulty is finding the right balance. The strong argument here is that they're not charging enough - that's why scalpers get in the game. If things are fairly priced, scalpers stay away. The problem: charge more for this and people (understandably) go ballistic.

The overarching problem with parties like this is that they were designed to lure people to the park during "slow" periods. (That's why they generally don't have them on Fridays or Saturdays.) Parents might not buy a day ticket if their kids are in school, but they might bring the kids to the park for a special event after school (hence the 3pm mix-in time).

There's an argument that DCA doesn't really need that anymore.

It's also a different situation compared to other parks' offerings, such as HHN at Universal. They can almost double the available capacity of the park for HHN, because so much of the event is held in areas that aren't used during normal operations. (That's similar with Cedar Fair and Six Flags with their Haunt and Fright Night -type events.) That's (mostly) not true for DCA - all they're doing is limiting capacity for a premium price.

The smarter play here would be to lessen the event. Treat it more like WDW treats their After Hours events - the "party" is more a chance to be in the park with fewer people around than for the exclusives. Make the parade part of the normal DCA Halloween festivities; do the treat trail as part of a ticket add-on during normal nights. Stop trying to treat it like an exclusive party, and the audience will stop trying to chase the ticket.

(Natually, people would then complain that it "isn't like it used to be" - but, honestly, situations change, it never is.)

 

[Kender]

Then the question is why doesn’t Disney flirt around with more dates to find the point that they aren’t all a sell out and then pull back a little?

They have been playing around with number of parties. Info from the last decade:

2013: 13 parties (MHP @ DL)
2014: 14 parties (MHP @ DL)
2015: 17 parties (MHP @ DL)
2016: 17 parties (MHP @ DL)
2017: 14 parties (MHP @ DL)
2018: 15 parties (MHP @ DL)
2019: 20 parties (OBB @ DCA)
We don't talk about 2020. Also no dates were ever announced so we don't know how many parties they were planning.
2021: 25 parties (OBB @ DCA)
2022: 24 parties (OBB @ DCA)
2023: 25 parties (OBB @ DCA)

So parties have increased over the years. They also have to balance the parties with regular day ticket guests and staffing availability.

I wonder if a lottery system would work. People enter for a date(s)/number of tickets that they want. Random picks 1 week after selection begins. Then a public onsale for any remaining stock.

I don't know if it would prevent resale mischief, but Disney seems to cancel reseller tickets anyway. It would take glitches, work arounds, and site crashes out of the equation.

If how Disney handled the lottery system for limited edition monthly merch was any indication, this would be an even bigger disaster than the website crashes. Granted that was shopDisney, but people gamed that system pretty easily.

 

[brightlined]

I wonder if a lottery system would work. People enter for a date(s)/number of tickets that they want. Random picks 1 week after selection begins. Then a public onsale for any remaining stock.

I don't know if it would prevent resale mischief, but Disney seems to cancel reseller tickets anyway. It would take glitches, work arounds, and site crashes out of the equation.

People kinda miss this during the shenanigans - but, statistically speaking, the tech problems are a form of lottery. Some people get tickets, some people don't. The end result is the same - it was just that the tech problem chose the winners instead of something more official.

The same thing is true when they don't announce the start time of a sale and just throw them up randomly. People complain (loudly) that they missed out because they didn't know, didn't hear in time, had a meeting (etc) - but, on a different day, it might have been just fine for them. It's still a lottery - just "fate" choosing the winners.

People assume a pure lottery would be "more fair", but they'll complain just as loudly when they lose, and assume it was rigged in some capacity. No matter how the tickets are sold - as long as there are fewer available tickets than interested buyers - that will always happen.

(And, even in a lottery, scalpers would still end up with tickets - they would almost certainly have a programmatic way to land more spots than the average person.)

 

[brightlined]

I'll add this separately - I wonder how much of this is a problem with Queue-It.

The queue is handled by a third-party - it's not run by Disney. As soon as Disney paused the queue, people should not have been able to get to the purchase page - Queue-It should have completely stopped that. (Unless Disney was actively trying to leak people through, possibly to run tests in production.)

It's been known for a while that people have been able to skip the queue with the app - which suggests a problem with Queue-It, which might be out of Disney's hands. For whatever reason, the forward coming out of the app may occasionally not be intercepted by Queue-It. (Not out of the question that it could be a configuration problem on Disney's end.)

But if one of the scalpers figured out the actual loophole and exploited it to drive a bunch of bots through, that would explain what happened. (One possible explanation of many.)

 

[2tinkerbell]

I didn’t purposely go out to game or hack the system. I didn’t purposely try to find a loophole. I got in the queue with over an hour on my desktop and my daughter got the same on her iPad. I thought that I would try my phone as well, which I did. I got the same screen. I thought to check the disBoards to see if anyone was getting tickets. Our 2 screens said things were “paused.” I thought I would just go back on my phone and add that to the mix. I didn’t go through the app. I went directly to the website similar to what I had done previously and I did on my desktop and the iPad. I immediately got the screen to choose the number of tickets and then the date and our names and payment information. I wasn’t really sure I had the tickets and commented to my daughter, “I think I just got tickets.” She looked at my email account because I didn’t want to give up the confirmation screen on my phone. I then went to the app and our tickets were there. It was such a fluke and a surprise. Both my desktop and the iPad had the sales still on pause. I read here and people were asking if any had sold out so I went onto the website to see and again got right in. I didn’t go on after that because I didn’t want to gum the works so others might have a chance.

My daughter is having a really hard time right now and this was a last minute trip. While I really really wanted tickets to Oogie Boogie, I had several plans. I got our Plan A. Afterwards my daughter just started jumping up and down.

 

[Snap Crackle Pop]

,

 

[AndrewC]

I don’t view this fiasco as a lottery system. This felt like there WAS a way to increase your odds, even if it was by random chance. If you could refresh the page 10,000 times for that 1 in a 1000 chance compared to someone that could only load it ten or twenty times but *could* sit in a queue. So if there was a lottery system, I would really want it to be something tied to Disney accounts (maybe even pre authorize a credit card for a few bucks and only allow that card to be used for one Disney account at a time, etc). You submit you request on Thursday or something, Disney conducts the lottery and emails/allows you to log in and check if you were picked on Monday, and ticket sales start on Tuesday. You must log into your account first and that dumps you into the queue or sales page if you were picked. At 5pm whoever didn’t buy tickets it gets released Wednesday morning as general sales or something. Put an 8 or 12 ticket limit or whatever they decide.

Credit card would help beat the bots a little too, but for the people that use virtual credit or debit card numbers, maybe go to the extreme and say that tickets can ONLY be accessed via the app and there is no way to print them or email or screen shot them or anything (maybe only show the bar code day of event and GPS locked to a mile within Disney or something).

90% of people that would work perfectly fine. You make your Disney account, you add your credit card and Disney verifies it’s real, you do the lottery and buy your ticket. It shows up in the app. You go to the park on the night of and the full ticket shows up and you scan yourself and your kids or whatever.

For the people that bought them for grandparents that don’t use a phone and are meeting you in the park later that evening, any ticket booth can print out physical tickets within 48 hours of the event so you can give them to whoever.

Or for the rare rare case of the person that buys them months in advance and lives hundreds of miles away from Disney and gets sick and wants to give them away, you allow them to call in. They must present the name and address that was used with the credit card to buy them, the date of the event, and maybe their birthdate or something. You charge them $15 to cover the labor and say you will physically mail tickets out approximately 30 days before the day of the event. That information goes in a database and if you notice that person “getting sick” every year and maxing their allowable ticket purchase, or other “suspicious” activities, you block their account from purchasing in the future without some additional pre authorization or something.

There are ways you can cut this stuff down a lot. No one is going to buy on eBay in July and then wait 6-7 weeks for tickets to show up physically in the mail, so that will cut down people wanting to buy them. It’s now a large hassle for someone to sell those tickets, and their funds are tied up for ~3+ months (I think eBay hood funds in escrow until stuff has been sent). But you’ve limited the hassle real people endure.

Then maybe look at increasing prices. I know I’ll be viewed as some horrible monster that is telling the working mother of three that it’s going to be $800 instead of ~$600 if you make each ticket $50 more expensive or something… but people are right, demand clearly is overwhelming at this price point.

Either that or maybe you make a second “tier” of tickets that are $250 or something but include some stupid limited edition lanyard and some special digital gifts or some other low cost way to make it “exclusive.” At least now you’ve keep prices flat, but shifted 20% of available tickets into a much more expensive package that earns you more money, and might keep available tickets around for a few more days or something.

Would be very curious to hear from families with two to four kids… what is your deal breaker price? Would $199/tix make you think twice or stop going? $249? Or do you just cut somewhere else in which case the price doesn’t do a thing for demand…

(I have no children and am usually solo or just +1, so while I value money just like everyone else, my perspective is no where near a family. I’ll buy $460 ticket to HHN to jump the lines all night and stuff because it’s only $270 more expensive than a normal admission or something. That’s easier to budget, assuming I have the ability for that expense. BUT, if I had to buy FOUR of those, well now we’re talking almost two thousand bucks for one night… that’s a wildly different equation.)

 

[AndrewC]

,

I kind of agree with this. Make the hotel a required two or three night stay or something if you need to limit that some. Give them a pre-sale or just the ability to buy it as a package with the hotel. If you cancel the hotel stay the tickets are automatically canceled.

Would be nice if the magic key pre-sale was tiered towards the higher keys being sorted ahead of lower priced keys in the queue.

Then fix the general public chaos somehow.

I was stuck working both days (hands on stuff, working with radioactive materials) so couldn’t be sat in front of a computer the whole time, maybe just check in every 15-30 minutes. I was banking on the magic key queue and it working correctly. It would give me fairly accurate estimates on time and I could pause what I was doing to take a work break when I got close to being able to buy. So when I sat in line for 6+ hours that day without a ticket I started to worry.

I also couldn’t leave the room I was in while my process was running (multi-hour) and couldn’t have my cell phone in the room, so I couldn’t try the app methods or anything else on the general sale day; felt very frustrating that Disney couldn’t even pause the tickets for everyone when they paused the official system that was in place.