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When Disney Parks made the decision to switch to a reservation-only system for Walt Disney World, one of the issues that could happen was a family arriving without a reservation in hand. In that situation, most families are simply out of luck. In fact, Universal Studios has taken advantage of that sort of a situation by adhering strictly away from such a reservation concept. Anyone can just buy a ticket from Universal Studios and go on in — that’s the traditional way of doing things and they’ve stuck to it. Disney has gone so far as to have CEO Bob Chapek declare that the reservation program is now the backbone of their theme park business plan. Note to readers: Bob Chapek isn’t perfect, even if his plans have been to moderate the company in the sociocultural sphere.
Well, with international travel mostly sidelined until recently, the only people who were being turned away were domestic guests. But now that people from all over the world are arriving, surprise, they don’t all realize they needed a reservation. And when they’re thousands of miles away from home, it doesn’t really help to be in the United States for their dream vacation without a way to get past the turnstiles.
Enter one creative Swiss family who didn’t realize they needed reservations until arrival:
Well, eventually Disney tried to shoo them away from the property. However, when that didn’t fully work, the Mouse caved as negative press started to form around the problem. Universal Studios was even offering the couple free tickets. So with the chance of cheese being taken, Mickey made it possible for the family to buy tickets and gain a reservation outside the normal system. It turns out that with enough negative media coverage, even Disney can make an exception for a family that is just out of luck.
The sad part about this article is that Disney was once known for being the best tourism company in the world when it came to issues like this. In fact, I can remember when a friend of mine was short a day on his ticket for whatever reason and wasn’t going to be able to enter the park without paying full price for a one-day addition. Guess what? A cast member overrode the issue and gave him a freebie since that was going to be around eighty dollars more than if he had just ordered the correct number of days like the rest of his party. When Disney cast members are given the freedom to help guests (within reason), it turns out they’re extremely kind, professional and helpful.
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