Warning for those holding non-expiring park hopper days

[Selket]

I have a 10 day non-expiring hopper ticket that hasn't been used. I'm going to use 6 days in December. Will I lose the 4 more days on this non-expiring ticket or will they be good for another trip?

I suggest checking with guest services before you your trip is over - not sure if that's best done at the resort or at the park. I've always had them check and prioritize my package tickets over my non-expiring ones at the resort. I think best to do it while you're there on your last day rather than trying to do it by phone. if they'd give you a print out of something even better.

 

[Belle5]

All I can think about when reading these nightmarish stories is, "Imagine how many people won't even notice they have missing days on their tickets'!

 

[bsmcneil]

I didn't have N-E PH tickets - just bought tickets as part of my package, and now they're gone. Does anyone know what I do next?!

 

[Airb330]

Well this just hit me. I guess I will have to call. one day randomly vanished off a ticket. I have emails from

ticket.inquiries@disneyworld.com> on 10/21/21 and 12/13/22 and no usage in between, but yet a day was used. This is ridiculous. ​

 

[rwdavis2]

Perhaps I was just unlucky but I want to warn others about this...

DH and I each purchased a 10 day non-expiring park hopper ticket back in 2015 before they were discontinued. Added the tickets to MDE in late 2016 and started using the days here and there. Back in July of this year we planned a trip for October and confirmed on MDE that we had 3 days left each on our tickets and we made 3 park reservations. So far, so good. Then about a week before our trip I happened to check our tickets on MDE and it said that I had zero days left and DH had 1 day. WHAT??

I called Disney and after about 75 minutes on hold a helpful and pleasant CM spent about 20 minutes figuring out that my days were still there and it was merely an MDE display issue. She said she would report it, hopefully it would be corrected soon, but it shouldn't cause me a problem.

When I arrived at CBR this past Sunday it was still wrong so I spoke to a CM at guest services at the resort. Took her about 20 minutes and consulting with someone else but she said the same as I was told on the phone. She theorized that somehow MDE was ignoring the park hopper aspect of our tickets and counting entries rather than days. That made sense to me because last year I hopped once while DH returned to the resort, so that would explain why he showed one day left and I showed zero. In any case the CM said we'd be fine entering MK in the morning and if there was an issue the ipad person would be able to see what she saw and I wouldn't be sent to guest services.

Next morning at MK DH got in fine and I was rejected for having no days. The ipad person made no effort at all and I was sent to guest services . The CM there wasn't at all friendly or apologetic about the situation. Took her at least 15 minutes to get it sorted out, eventually creating new tickets for us.

As a retired IT person I can guess that some coding change was made which unexpectedly caused this issue. So if you are holding some old days, you might want to double check that all is good in MDE.

Disney seems to not be great with IT. I know they don’t pay that well. Some of the problems that crop up are, IMO, poor testing. Their problems are not that complex.

 

[SusanDK]

We've also had problems with our old non-expiring tickets. A couple months ago, I coincidentally noticed that our days remaining on our non-expiring tickets had dropped by 5 days each. Turns out that after we renewed our APs, it started pulling from the non-expiring tickets every time we entered, even though I absolutely was certain that I made my park reservations using the APs. It also pulled 5 of our water parks & sports days from the non-expiring tickets when we went to Typhoon Lagoon and mini-golf despite our having the Water Parks & Sports add-on to our AP.

I spent nearly an hour with a very sweet, helpful CM at Disney Springs who confirmed what happened and what we should have. Unfortunately, they were unable to add those days back onto our non-expiring pass nor put any non-expiring days into our MDE because they no longer sell non-expiring tickets. She noted in the account how many park days we should have, and how many water park & sports days we should have, and gave me a "file number" written on a scrap of paper. This is the only proof I have when someday in the future we want to use any of those days.

I understand that they no longer sell non-expiring tickets, but find it absurd that they cannot correct an obvious error and add back the erroneously used days to an existing ticket.

I would never have noticed it either had I not been having trouble with MDE via my browser on my laptop one day and went to the iPhone app to make a park reservation, then clicked on the wrong icon because I wasn't sure where to make a park reservation and ended up clicking on the icon that showed my tickets. You can only see days remaining on a ticket on the iPhone app and not on the website, and I usually use the website to make a park reservation.

 

[twinklebug]

after we renewed our APs, it started pulling from the non-expiring tickets every time we entered, even though I absolutely was certain that I made my park reservations using the APs. It also pulled 5 of our water parks & sports days from the non-expiring tickets when we went to Typhoon Lagoon and mini-golf despite our having the Water Parks & Sports add-on to our AP.

I spent nearly an hour with a very sweet, helpful CM at Disney Springs ...

This was exactly the same issue I had a few years back. Activated AP, system pulled from a non-expiring pass instead.
The amount of time and question marks left hanging in the air with a visit to resolve the issue was ridiculous and while the CMs were polite and I was issued a gratuitous, expiring pass in it's place, it did not come even close to making up for the issues and time out of the trip.

Why the software has not been fixed, I can only guess the answer as they don't know how to fix it. Speaking as a database developer here: Overrides happen in systems all the time, despite what Disney is telling us, they can be made. The passes could be restored to what they were, it's just a matter of putting in a database update request but they are not impossible. The policy is that they don't WANT to make them.

 

[hsmamato2]

whow. Thanks for the headsup OP! This is 100% Disney crap IT,and it's nothing new to the experience overall..... but you reminded me to check my account and take screenshots of everything! This is a colossal waste of guests time!

 

[mickeymom629]

The last time we were in WDW, I went to GS and they transferred my old tickets to plastic ones and wrote what is left on them. I didn't add them to my MDE yet. I think we have a couple NE hoppers with park days and some with just water park on them. When we finally try to use them, will we have an issue during the trip even if we use all days during that trip (hopping)? Or is there an issue when the tickets are partially used and sit in MDE waiting for another trip to be used? Does that make sense?

 

[summerlvr]

Anyone who has old non-expiring tickets that you are holding on to for future use, before using any AP or other tickets, go to guest services and get those non-expiring tickets transferred.
Last time I renewed my AP, I went to Guest Services at Disney Springs to get my tickets "prioritized" so that my AP would be used and not my non-expiring ticket. The very nice CM that I spoke with told me that the system had changed and that prioritizing tickets would no longer guarantee that the correct ticket would be used.
She transferred my non-expiring ticket to an alternate "person" in my MDE. My AP is listed under my correct Firstname Lastname and my non-expiring ticket is listed as Firstname NE. She gave me a plastic ticket with the non expiring days on it, so when I want to use one of those days, I just use that plastic ticket. This ensures that the wrong ticket will not be used when I scan in at the parks.

 

[Princess Disney Mom]

I too have non expiring tickets for my husband and myself and noticed some days were missing. I went to guest services and the cast member said this ticket is old it is all used up. I know I had an extra day. She was no help. I went home and was on the phone for an hour with a cast member. Lucky I took good notes and had the dates of the 9 out of 10 days I used and it matched what the cast member had in his system. He read all the dates and he too said the ticket was used up. I said hold on you read 9 dates not 10 and he was like what. Counted the dates and sure enough it was 9. It was like my 10 day converted to 9. He gave me one complementary ticket. My husbands ticket was missing 2 days. What a mess.

 

[WalkingintheFog]

Yup.

I reached out to WDW in November to really ask them to confirm if my sister’s completely unused multiday park hopper pass would still be valid 14 days from 1st use as per the policy when purchased, And also asked, btw, to confirm the days on 2 of my tickets (I expected to be told 3 non expiry park hopper days & 1 single Parker hopper day).

They finally answered Dec 22:
They didn’t answer the Q re 14-day validity, but told me of my own tickets, I had only 3 non expiry park hopper days & that the other ticket was empty!
….. nope they had to be wrong, and I figured I’d deal with it later.
But I happened to log into the MYE the other day, and it DOES show what I expected, not what their email said (yes, I took a screenshot!)

 

[KimBean]

Perhaps I was just unlucky but I want to warn others about this...

DH and I each purchased a 10 day non-expiring park hopper ticket back in 2015 before they were discontinued. Added the tickets to MDE in late 2016 and started using the days here and there. Back in July of this year we planned a trip for October and confirmed on MDE that we had 3 days left each on our tickets and we made 3 park reservations. So far, so good. Then about a week before our trip I happened to check our tickets on MDE and it said that I had zero days left and DH had 1 day. WHAT??

I called Disney and after about 75 minutes on hold a helpful and pleasant CM spent about 20 minutes figuring out that my days were still there and it was merely an MDE display issue. She said she would report it, hopefully it would be corrected soon, but it shouldn't cause me a problem.

When I arrived at CBR this past Sunday it was still wrong so I spoke to a CM at guest services at the resort. Took her about 20 minutes and consulting with someone else but she said the same as I was told on the phone. She theorized that somehow MDE was ignoring the park hopper aspect of our tickets and counting entries rather than days. That made sense to me because last year I hopped once while DH returned to the resort, so that would explain why he showed one day left and I showed zero. In any case the CM said we'd be fine entering MK in the morning and if there was an issue the ipad person would be able to see what she saw and I wouldn't be sent to guest services.

Next morning at MK DH got in fine and I was rejected for having no days. The ipad person made no effort at all and I was sent to guest services . The CM there wasn't at all friendly or apologetic about the situation. Took her at least 15 minutes to get it sorted out, eventually creating new tickets for us.

As a retired IT person I can guess that some coding change was made which unexpectedly caused this issue. So if you are holding some old days, you might want to double check that all is good in MDE.

I had a similar issue with water parks annual pass I bought early 2020. Wanted to go Aug 2020 but because of Covid put it off until Aug 2022. Asked the cm on the phone before I went if any issues. Nope. Asked cm at GDT when checking in and she said she activated it. Get to TL at rope drop and it takes them an hour and 3 attempts to get us all into the park. They were not nice and very rude about the whole thing. How did you even get these tickets I was asked? Uh bought them off your website a few weeks before Covid hit (I was at WDW Jan 2020 booked bounceback and bought WP tickets I didn’t know the world was about to shut down.) It was our first time at a Disney WP and my Dh was really turned off of the whole thing. We were there for nice GDT/AKL resort stay and just WP and he didn’t even want to go back. The whole point of buying the AP was to do two trips but the family was like nah. Customer service isn’t what it used to be.

 

[twinklebug]

I had a similar issue with water parks annual pass I bought early 2020. Wanted to go Aug 2020 but because of Covid put it off until Aug 2022. Asked the cm on the phone before I went if any issues. Nope. Asked cm at GDT when checking in and she said she activated it. Get to TL at rope drop and it takes them an hour and 3 attempts to get us all into the park. They were not nice and very rude about the whole thing. How did you even get these tickets I was asked? Uh bought them off your website a few weeks before Covid hit (I was at WDW Jan 2020 booked bounceback and bought WP tickets I didn’t know the world was about to shut down.) It was our first time at a Disney WP and my Dh was really turned off of the whole thing. We were there for nice GDT/AKL resort stay and just WP and he didn’t even want to go back. The whole point of buying the AP was to do two trips but the family was like nah. Customer service isn’t what it used to be.

"Customer service isn't what it used to be."
If Disney wants to restore faith in their company, this is top priority. Aside from the usual stories and park design... THIS is the ONE thing the company really stands out for. No matter what happened we always had a warm spot for Disney knowing that the company had our back should anything go awry.

I get that the world has changed. People now use the internet to try and squeeze every dime and benefit possible out of a stay and the pandemic made it hard on all the companies, not just Disney... but recovery mode means asking your clients to have faith in you while you keep faith in them. Right now it feels like Disney is operating inside a box they're afraid to open and show weakness to the world.

Ticketing is the connection between the two groups. They need to show the most faith and stop with accusational tones when we've done nothing but been supportive of the company.