First time using mobile ordering - not at all impressed

disneysteve

DIS meet junkie
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
I've heard a lot of good things about mobile ordering through MDE. We used it today for the first time to order lunch at Cosmic Ray's. Sorry to say it was definitely not a magical experience.

When you enter the restaurant, Bay 1 is the mobile order pickup site. There were screens saying pickup #3 and #4 so I wasn't clear if that's where I needed to be or if there might be a #1 and #2 on the other side.

The entire pickup area was a free for all. CMs were calling out names, which was often difficult to hear especially if they were soft spoken. That happened before the app showed that your order was ready.

Despite the app being set up very nicely to let you order your meal just the way you want it (with/without cheese, which sides, etc.), 2 of our 3 meals came out wrong. They both had bacon when they weren't supposed to and one had fries instead of the carrots I had ordered. What's the point of letting me customize everything if you're just going to ignore it all and make it any old way you want?

I fail to see how using mobile ordering accomplished anything. It certainly wasn't any faster. It did avoid standing in line to order but that's about it. Instead we stood around with a bunch of other people who had mobile ordered and waited for our name to be called.

Was this just a fluke or is mobile ordering always this disorganized? Or is it just like this at Cosmic Ray's?
 
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience.
The way it worked for you was not at all our experience at multiple places.
Each one, there was only 1 mobile order pick up window. We got a text when our food was ready and just walked up to the window to get our food. Saved a lot of time.
 
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience.
The way it worked for you was not at all our experience at multiple places.
Each one, there was only 1 mobile order pick up window. We got a text when our food was ready and just walked up to the window to get our food. Saved a lot of time.
I'm glad to hear that and we'll certainly give it another chance elsewhere. It sounds like the crew at Cosmic Ray's really needs to get their act together and come up with a better system because whatever they are doing is not working.
 


we have used many times and had a great experience! cant remember if we used it at cosmic rays though.
 
It was awful for us at aloha isle. The mobile queue was just as long as the regular queue. Not sure it works for aloha isle as you basically just get in the queue and then they prepare your stuff when you get to the front of the line.
 
Used it last week at Restaurantasuarus would have worked fine if their printer hadn’t malfunctioned
 


It was awful for us at aloha isle. The mobile queue was just as long as the regular queue. Not sure it works for aloha isle as you basically just get in the queue and then they prepare your stuff when you get to the front of the line.
Yeah, that makes no sense. They can't make them sooner or they'll melt so really no point there.
 
It was awful for us at aloha isle. The mobile queue was just as long as the regular queue. Not sure it works for aloha isle as you basically just get in the queue and then they prepare your stuff when you get to the front of the line.
Maybe they changed that since last year as when we used it we went to the mobile ordering line at Aloha Isle which was separate from the regular line.
 
The way that Mobile Order is supposed to really work is you get an alert that your food is ready to pick up and then you go and pick it up. Did you tap in that you were here on your phone? Did you then get an alert on your phone that your order was ready to pick up?

Maybe they were frazzled at Cosmic Rays IDK. We used it Sep 2017 at Aloha Isle, D-Luxe Burger, Satu'li Canteen, and Pecos Bill all with no issues with exception to the first time we ordered from Aloha Isle they made our dole whip float before we even got there and hit the we are here button. They just made us a new one. The second time worked like it was supposed to.
 
Cosmic Ray's seems crazy busy to me all the time. I also think mobile ordering is becoming more popular too. I would guess the bad experience is a combination of both of these.
 
Mobile ordering has worked very well for us at BOG, Satuli's and Casey's. Saved a lot of time and aggravation. Cosmic Ray's is a cluster on a good day, so clearly they need to get their act together!
 
We've used it with great success in the past, but we haven't been since they began allowing the DDP as a form of payment.

Anytime you introduce more and more people into the mix, there's more of a chance of it being less and less efficient. Hated to see the DDP included as a payment form for this reason.

There is also appears to be more customization allowed now than in the past, which also decreases efficiency.

We will be there next week, and will give it a try.
 
I mobile ordered several times over the past 6 days, and every time I did it, it was an exceptional time save....except at Aloha Freekin Isle! Pretty sure they don't make anything there until you are at the window, which makes sense, but the mobile order line was almost as long as the regular one.
 
The way that Mobile Order is supposed to really work is you get an alert that your food is ready to pick up and then you go and pick it up. Did you tap in that you were here on your phone? Did you then get an alert on your phone that your order was ready to pick up?
I placed the order when we got off of Space Mountain and said we were there. We then walked over to Cosmic Ray's and waited in the pick up area until they called my name which occurred before I got the alert on my phone. Had I waited somewhere else for the alert, I guess I would have just walked up to the counter and asked for my order but since there isn't one specific pick up location, I don't know how well that would work. They really need to tighten up the order delivery system there because right now, it's not organized at all.

(Edited to correct location)
 
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There is also appears to be more customization allowed now than in the past, which also decreases efficiency.
I love that it allows for customization. It really wouldn't be that useful otherwise. Disney loves to only list a few specific things on the menu when you actually have many more choices than that. If the app doesn't give me all of the same choices I have at the cashier, it wouldn't be worth using.
 
It was awful for us at aloha isle. The mobile queue was just as long as the regular queue. Not sure it works for aloha isle as you basically just get in the queue and then they prepare your stuff when you get to the front of the line.

We used it several times in May. Pecos Bills, Pinocchio Village Haus, Backlot Express. It worked great every time except for Aloha Aisle, as several pp have said. The mobile order pick up line was as long as the regular line. They should just discontinue it there and add some of the other restaurants that are not currently participating.

The thing we liked best was being able to load in the order ahead of time in a quiet place and let the kids take their time deciding instead of changing their minds 5 times in a loud and chaotic line. It was nice to go in the restaurant and get them settled while one of the adults gets the food.
 
We used it a few times but it was awful at Columbia Harbor House. They prepared our food when we ordered it and hadn’t tapped that we were there. They just made it immediately. So my daughter went to get it and waited and waited and waited. They ignored her (14 yr old). I was at a table with my walker. She came to me and asked what to do and I told her to ask someone. The manager finally acknowledged her and told her he threw our food away quite some time ago and was really angry with her. She was in tears when she came to our table with it. They did the same thing to other people’s food and my daughter said they were apologetic to them. We used to love that place - not any longer. We did had no problems at the other places we ordered.
 
We’ve used it many times, including at Cosmic Ray’s and never had an issue. I hope you give it another go!
 
I placed the order when we got off of Spaceship Earth and said we were there. We then walked over to Cosmic Ray's and waited in the pick up area until they called my name which occurred before I got the alert on my phone.

Ummmm, Spaceship Earth is at Epcot, Cosmic Ray’s is in MK. :confused3
 

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