Recent reports of dining plan kinks with a segmented reservation?

[wishicouldgomoreofte]

So happy you are going before I do so I can see how this works out for you!!!

I have a similar set up, 1st night DDxP, 2nd DDP, 3rd nothing, 4th DDxP, 5th DDP, 6th nothing, 7th DDxP, 8th DDP & 9th nothing.

I was also told I would need a new card with every plan change. Hopefully all the kinks will be worked out & there will be no need for a new card each day.

oh my Gosh. You really MUST let us know how that works out. REALLY!!!

 

[Castillo Mom]

I've had a terrible time with my segmented reservation and we haven't even left for our trip yet.

We have one night DxDDP and the remaining 10 nights regular DDP. After we added on the DDP I checked to make sure I could see my reservation online at Disneyworld.com in preparation for making ADRs the following week. I couldn't see my reservation. Called technical support and was told there was a glitch in the system with segmented stays which would be fixed by 3/30 - two days after my 180 day window for booking ADRs.

When I called on the 180th day, the CM at Disney Dining at first couldn't find my reservation. Once he finally did he said he would only be able to make an ADR for our first night and that I would have to call Member Services to fix whatever problem in the system that was keeping him from making ADRs for the additional days.

I called Member Services and was interrupted by a very rude CM who said I needed to call Disney Dining. I told her they had asked me to call Member Services. After a few moments pause she said she would need to unlink my resort reservation in order to make any other ADRs. Out of the 10 I needed to make she was only able to get me 5 which I thought was very unusual due to how early I was calling.

Later that day I decided to call Disney Dining again and the CM once again couldn't find my resort reservation at first. Long story short, somehow it's booked under my sister's name who isn't a DVC member. I have her listed as an associate on my membership but she's never called DVC for any reason. Supposedly the issue had been fixed but to date, it's still showing up under her name. I can see my resort reservation online at Disneyworld.com now but can't make any reservation due to an error message indicating I'm trying to make reservations too early. My resort reservation looks correct and under my name on the DVC site.

That's really just the tip of the iceberg of issues I had when I called to make ADRs last week but I won't go into those. I did send an email to DVC Member Satisfaction. I thought segmenting for only one night would be fairly simple but I guess not. Glad others have had positive experiences though.

 

[Grumpy6264]

We just returned from a trip to the Beach Club Villas on Saturday.

We had a six night reservation and wanted to try the dining plan, so we segmented our reservation to have the DxDP the second day of our stay. One call to member services and it was all set. Or so I thought.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon and check-in went fine (we couldn't do online check in, not sure why.) I was told that I would need to come down the next morning to receive new cards for the second night and that these cards would have the credits on it.

When Sunday morning came, I went down to pick up our new cards. I was told by the front desk, that they did need to add the dining credits to our cards, but that we would not need new cards. The cards said DVC MULTI on them and showed a check out date of 4/1. I thought ok, not problem.

We went to Hollywood Studios that morning and every thing worked like a charm. After spending a few hours there, we decided to return to the resort, pick up our mugs and spend sometime at the pool. Guess what? We could not get our mugs or use the dining credits. Apparently, according to the conceriage desk, our card was disabled at 11:30 that morning.

I spent about 45 minutes waiting for them to clear up the issue. The gentleman that I was working with at the conseriage desk worked with the front desk to get the situation cleared up. After he was able to get them working on it, he came by and told me that he was giving us a room credit to make up for the inconvience.

When we got our new cards, everything worked fine and we went about our merry way. What they ended up doing, is booking the remainder of the trip as a cash vacation not points (yes, I have checked our points online and everything is correct). The result of this is that we received mousekeeping every day, but were billed for internet access. They did remove the internet charges.

Overall, I don't know if I would do this again. The DxDP is a lot of food. We spread our credits over Sunday and Monday and were still scrambling to use up the snacks. Mostly because we had rain all day on Monday and didn't leave the room except for our dinner reservations. It wasn't a disaster and the room credit paid for tips, so it worked out in the end. However, it isn't a seamless process yet.

 

[sssteele]

Segmented an existing six day reservation. First day with QSDP; other 5 days with no plan. Took a little while because a manager has to be involved. I was told that I will have to get new keys the 2nd morning. I specifically asked about that.

 

[joandegennaro]

Segmented an existing six day reservation. First day with QSDP; other 5 days with no plan. Took a little while because a manager has to be involved. I was told that I will have to get new keys the 2nd morning. I specifically asked about that.

I just returned from an segmented stay where we had 1 night-no plan, nights 2 &3 deluxe, nights 4-8 no plan. We too were told that we would need to check in again on the morning of day 4 but we never did and our keys (all 4) worked for getting in the room.

 

[Anjelica]

Do they consider it a segmented reservation for the dining plan if you are going to keep the same type of dining plan the whole trip but change rooms and add additional folks? We are staying in a studio for three nights (2 adults, 2 children) and then moving to a two-bedroom for nine nights (6 adults, 2 children).

 

[jo-jo]

Does anything happen to your ADRs that you made at 180 days if you decide a month ahead of your trip to segment your trip?

 

[hakepb]

Do they consider it a segmented reservation for the dining plan if you are going to keep the same type of dining plan the whole trip but change rooms and add additional folks? We are staying in a studio for three nights (2 adults, 2 children) and then moving to a two-bedroom for nine nights (6 adults, 2 children).

Changing rooms is the old, proven way to "split" DDP. You'll get new rooms and keys for each stay.

Credits from each stay will not transfer back or forth. But otherwise you have 2 different reservations so the system should handle it better.

This new Segmenting would be something like dropping 4 adults for the last 2 days of the 2BR stay, ot changing what type of DDP while in the same room.

 

[brookelizabeth]

Another manager helped at that time and shared that we actually did not have to request new keys unless we planned on using the "new" dining credits prior to 11am. He shared that the system would automatically load the credits after 11am (Something to do with "checking us out" of the one segment and moving us into the next). I tested this during our next segemented portion with DxDDp on Tuesday and did not go down to retrieve new keys: sure enough, the credits were available later that day.

This is exactly what we experienced at BWV as well. It worked great.

All the credits were NOT pre-loaded, but showed up on the appropriate days after 11 am.

 

[csmommy]

Does anything happen to your ADRs that you made at 180 days if you decide a month ahead of your trip to segment your trip?

Nothing happened to mine, they were all in the system after I had DVC segment my reservation.

 

[csmommy]

This is exactly what we experienced at BWV as well. It worked great.

All the credits were NOT pre-loaded, but showed up on the appropriate days after 11 am.

So it would seem that unless you have a breakfast reservation, you need not get new keys with each change.

 

[disneybirds]

We just got back from a 6 night trip to BCV. We had the Regular Dining Plan on night #4. The original room keys said DVC Multiple. They delivered a new key on the morning after our dining plan. We didn't have any issues and all the keys worked the entire stay. I would do this again in a heartbeat. If I had it to do all over, I would probably have done the quick service early in the stay (so we could have spread the lunches over 2 days) and then the regular dining plan later in the stay.

 

[TBLaube]

We had a bit of a struggle on our recent trip. Did a split stay between AKL & VWL. At AKL we did the DxDDP and then did DDP for the VWL portion. Our KTTW said 'multiple' as well and the CMs were not familiar with it at all. Despite telling every server that we were on DxDDP and having it noted on the ressie, 5 of our meals were still charged to the room. Luckily I caught them and had them corrected before leaving each restaurant, but it got to be a little on the 'old' side to be honest. But...in the big scheme of thigns, it wasn't a big deal.

Where the real problem came in was the check-out/check-in day. We had HDDR on this day and were finishing up our DxDDP credits. However, we were charged on my credit card the cost. Concierge at AKL said that they couldnt' help and that I needed to check with HDDR to fix. So....went to the wondow at HDDR adn explained the issue. Explained in detail and numerous times regarding finishing up the DxDDP vs DDP. I was assured that it was GTG. However, when paying bill in Ohana the next morning, we were told that we had used 6 ot our 8 credits.....grrrr.....

So....stop by Concierge at WL to have the credits fixed, explain the details again...here is the kicker----> The young lady looks at me and says, "Are you sure you told them at HDDR to not use your DDP credits?" <---This is the short version, but she flat out accused me of not knowing communicating properly with HDDR staff and said that I was the one who messed it up.

**This is where I became a tad bit upset. Even if I was wrong (which I wasn't), it is not acceptable, nor good customer service, to be rude and blame the customer. **

I calmly explained again where the error was made and asked her to please correct the error and provide me with a prinout of my credits. It was corrected but this definitely put a buzzkill on the Disney magic for a few minutes.

Many of the restaurant CMs expressed the challenges wtih the new system and the issues that were occurring. I will definitely not be splitting plans in the future. I will stay on the same plan the whole time. Not a huge deal because our vacation was so phenomenal. Except for these few hiccups, we had awesome interactions with CMs and had one of our best trips ever

 

[TBLaube]

We had a bit of a struggle on our recent trip. Did a split stay between AKL & VWL. At AKL we did the DxDDP and then did DDP for the VWL portion. Our KTTW said 'multiple' as well and the CMs were not familiar with it at all. Despite telling every server that we were on DxDDP and having it noted on the ressie, 5 of our meals were still charged to the room. Luckily I caught them and had them corrected before leaving each restaurant, but it got to be a little on the 'old' side to be honest. But...in the big scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal.

Where the real problem came in was the check-out/check-in day. We had HDDR on this day and were finishing up our DxDDP credits. However, we were charged on my credit card the cost. Concierge at AKL said that they couldn't help and that I needed to check with HDDR to fix. So....went to the window at HDDR and explained the issue. Explained in detail and numerous times regarding finishing up the DxDDP vs DDP. I was assured that it was GTG. However, when paying bill in Ohana the next morning, we were told that we had used 6 ot our 8 credits.....grrrr.....

So....stop by Concierge at WL to have the credits fixed, explain the details again...here is the kicker----> The young lady looks at me and says, "Are you sure you told them at HDDR to not use your DDP credits?" <---This is the short version, but she flat out accused me of not knowing communicating properly with HDDR staff and said that I was the one who messed it up.

**This is where I became a tad bit upset. Even if I was wrong (which I wasn't), it is not acceptable, nor good customer service, to be rude and blame the customer. **

I calmly explained again where the error was made and asked her to please correct the error and provide me with a prinout of my credits. It was corrected but this definitely put a buzzkill on the Disney magic for a few minutes.

Many of the restaurant CMs expressed the challenges wtih the new system and the issues that were occurring. I will definitely not be splitting plans in the future. I will stay on the same plan the whole time. Not a huge deal because our vacation was so phenomenal. Except for these few hiccups, we had awesome interactions with CMs and had one of our best trips ever

 

[Lexxiefern]

I wonder if giving the server one of the children's room keys (which does not have charging privileges) would fix some of the issues I am reading about here? If the room card does not have charging privileges, then they would have to use your dining credits correct? This seems like it would eliminate the possibility for them to charge your card instead and then need to go to the front desk to fix it.

We always pay cash for the tips, so we wouldn't need them to charge anything. Just a thought, we leave in a few weeks with segmented plans and I would prefer to avoid most issues!

 

[JennG]

I wonder if giving the server one of the children's room keys (which does not have charging privileges) would fix some of the issues I am reading about here? If the room card does not have charging privileges, then they would have to use your dining credits correct? This seems like it would eliminate the possibility for them to charge your card instead and then need to go to the front desk to fix it.

We always pay cash for the tips, so we wouldn't need them to charge anything. Just a thought, we leave in a few weeks with segmented plans and I would prefer to avoid most issues!

Oooohhhh....that's an interesting thought! I'm seriously contemplating doing multiple plans for our next stay, and that seems like an easy way so the only mistake they can make is charging too many credits.

 

[skenney6]

We are staying at Kidani Village in July and I am considering doing the deluxe plan on the first night so that we can go to Cinderellas Royal Table and also get mugs. I would be changing to the regular dining plan the next day. Am I correct that the credits for the deluxe plan would be good until midnight the second day of our trip? Just wondering because then we would be able to have an appetizer with our dinner that 2nd night. We only plan on using the 2 credits the first day since we will arrive after lunchtime. Sorry if this is confusing and does not make sense, I am just trying to figure out the best way to do this and for our family the Deluxe dining plan for one day costs less than dinner at the castle would.

 

[LIFERBABE]

I think I will have the server run our credits prior to ordering to confirm everything is ok. At the end of a 2 hr meal is the wrong time to have to handle problems.

I have done this at CS locations, but I think I will start at TS also, until things run more consistently.

 

[GoofyTraci]

everything about this seems so confusing to me. My question is is there a problem bc changing types of dinning plans or changing dinning plans as well as resorts? We will be going in June to AKV and would like to change the dinning plan for certain nights but wonder if it will be too much of a hassel. Can't believe they have been still having problems after so long. Any ideas for tips for our family? also one more ? everyone in the room/reservation still has to be on the same plan right? meaning all must be on the plan not just two out of the three people listed. Bc out son is 11 and does not eat anything on the adult menus. just asking bc I dont know the new changes. please no flaming. thanks

 

[GoofyTraci]

everything about this seems so confusing to me. My question is is there a problem bc changing types of dinning plans or changing dinning plans as well as resorts? We will be going in June to AKV and would like to change the dinning plan for certain nights but wonder if it will be too much of a hassel. Can't believe they have been still having problems after so long. Any ideas for tips for our family? also one more ? everyone in the room/reservation still has to be on the same plan right? meaning all must be on the plan not just two out of the three people listed. Bc out son is 11 and does not eat anything on the adult menus. just asking bc I dont know the new changes. please no flaming. thanks

anyone??? I need to cal DVC about our reservation but need to know what I am talking about so they dont get me all turned around. Thanks