Here is what happened. We were at the Mickey's Christmas Party and we wanted to pin trade while we were there (let me point out we are not traders, we play a game where we buy pins at full price and then we try to find the ones for hotels and resturants and rides we like. Since we live so close, it makes Disney fun "again").
Anyhoo, I kept running into mystery pins. So I asked a supervisor about it (that was walking around). He told he created it (yes, he actually said this), but he went on to say that it was used to "frustrate" pin traders. I questioned him why you would want to do that to people to spend hundreds even thousands of dollars on 10 cent pins. He continued on about how the cast members don't like pin traders. So i listened, but i was getting angry. I kept my cool b/c we wanted to have good time.
So, we went to the Christmas store (my personal fav) to buy an ornament for the night. So we picked one out and the lady who was working at the cart (behind the Christmas store) had pins on. So I asked her if I could see her pins. Then for the 5th time tonight, I saw mystery pins. I asked her three times if I could see them. Explaining we only traded for pins of things we have done.
To make a short story shorter, we went to City Hall to find out what was going on. We wanted a refund for our pins b/c this was not how the game was explained to us. We were new to the game at the time and were trying to learn the rules. We bought 2-3 pins that night just to trade, so wanted a refund for those 2-3 only (not the 10 we probablly bought before that). So I let my wife talk b/c I was upset over the lady telling me no three times when I had just been told it was something cast members made up.
Well the lady at the front (who just happened to be upper management, not just a normal city hall worker) was horrified to hear what was going on. Let me point out by saying we never actually asked for a refund. As soon as we started the story she politely cut in and told us how horrified and "embarrassed" she was. She said it was not Disney policy and she know the person over Magic Kingdom (I assumed a manager of some sort) and she would talk to him. She listened to our entire story and said this would not happen in the future. She offered to buy us as many pins as we wanted. As she said, "Let's go shopping". I refused. It was not necessary. I told her "mystery pin" frustrates those of us that are trying to enjoy it. We don't want a random pin, we want pins that leaves memories with us. We like to remember "Oh, yes we got that pin on our honeymoon b/c we liked Soarin' so much". Silly, I know. We made a game out of it b/c it is too easy to just buy the pin, not mention expensive.
Side note: on our 3rd anniversay, we found a Paradise Pier Hotel pin. The same hotel we stayed on our Honeymoon. We were so excited. The cast member thought we were weird until we told him why
He really thought our little silly game was fun (or he tricked us lol).
I was just curious to see if others have had the same problems. It is interesting me to also to see this start at disney with out the permission of Disney. It is funny, pin trading is a culture to itself at Disney (if you will).
I still can't believe she told me no three times even though it was evident I was getting upset. We've been on the rides a million times and we had an hour before our dinner, we wanted to pin trade. Not pick a random pin. Grrr. ...
