In April my Wife and I went to WDW for our Honeymoon. We spent 2 nights at the Grand Floridian Resort and a couple days in the park. We had a great time. When we bought our park tickets it was suggested to us by the ticket agent in the hotel that we should buy a 3 day pass. We told her we were only going to be there for 2 days. She understood and said we could use the 3rd day later. We asked if the day would expire and we were told it would not. Therefore we bought the 3 day pass.
Sometime in late 2010 we went online to see if our ticket was still good. The Disney web site said we still had 1 day available. Great! We put the tickets away for future use.
On 7/18 we had friends in town and decided to take our 4 year old son to Magic Kingdom for his first visit. He was so excited he could not sleep!!! We arrived at the park, waited in line to board the tram to the Transportation & Ticket Center. When we arrived at the TTC we stood in line and purchased a ticket for our son (at full price). We also asked the agent to check our Passports to ensure that we still had the day available. She checked and said we had 1 day left on each pass. She even asked if we wanted new cards or keep the ones we had. We kept the ones we had (sentimental reasons). We stood in another for line (for about 45 minutes) to board the Ferry Boat. When we arrived at the turnstile our son inserted his ticket and was allowed to pass. When we inserted ours we were told our tickets were expired. SHOCKER!!! We explained to the cast member what had taken place at the TTC. He directed us the Guest Services. We pulled our son back and proceeded to the Guest Services line. We waited again for about 30 minutes. When we finally got up to a window we explained the whole story AGAIN! The Guest Services member told us Let me see what I can do. After a few seconds he said Your tickets are expired, would you like to buy 1 day passes for today? We explained to him that we had checked several times and were assured the day was available. He again apologized and asked if we wanted to buy tickets. We told him we wanted the day that was left on our passes. He told us AGAIN that it was expired. He went on to explain the tickets expire 14 days after first use. We were never told that. We asked to speak to a lead. We went the whole story again and received the same response from the lead. She did make an offer to upgrade our original passes from 2005 to non-expiring for $35 each. Back in 2005 we were told that they did not expire. Apparently there had been a policy change. We again asked why we were told (by a Disney ticket sales person) we had a day left. I dont know was the only answer we received. At this point our son was becoming antsy as you would expect from a 4 year old waiting to see Mickey Mouse for the first time. We asked one last time what the lead could do for us. All we wanted was to have the day we were promised. She told us there was no wiggle room regarding tickets. We caved in and paid the $35 per ticket and were on our way.
The moral of the story is The customer is never right. I guess with several thousand other people going through the gates what is 2 unhappy customers..
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