Next up on the Iger chopping block should be the Disney IT chief!

[insureman]

Trying to check in for our February cruise and getting the friggin spinning wheel of death. Seems like everyone is having the same issue. Come on Bob enough is enough!

 

[AZMermaid]

Our October cruise had three ships sailing out that date. It was brutal. I gave up after two hours and did it in the morning instead. I still had a PAT of like 11:30 and was group 6 or 8. According to my cruise group, people who stuck it out finished around 3AM EST. Good luck!

 

[Clarkson U]

Here here! Couldn’t agree more. It amazes me that a company worth so much can’t seem to do basic IT functions and have enough server bandwidth to handle all of this traffic. And the maintenance - find a date and time that doesn’t interfere with check in at midnight.

 

[princesscinderella]

It’s one of the questions on the comment card you fill out when you finish the cruise. I selected poor for online check in experience.

 

[danikoski]

Today I went in just to search cruises and got the seven Dwarves. Last week it wasn't giving me all the cruises when I did search. When the website works, it is decent, but that's only like 50% of the time.

 

[freshmanjs]

It’s one of the questions on the comment card you fill out when you finish the cruise. I selected poor for online check in experience.

That should take care of it.

 

[LewCruisers]

Trying to check in for our February cruise and getting the friggin spinning wheel of death. Seems like everyone is having the same issue. Come on Bob enough is enough!

Got passport info and headshots loaded/saved before the spinning wheel to nowhere started its frustrating journey ... waited 90 minutes (using four different browsers) before giving up. Came back at 3 am ET and it was still there, laughing at me. Came back at 5 am ET and got in and completed - with boarding group 7. As Platinum cruiser, not happy with lowest boarding group ever of our 13 sailings.

 

[Brett Wyman]

I work in IT for a major creative company and I can tell you NO ONE in the C-Suites ever wants to spend a dime on IT. They see it as a cost center and not a way to improve the customer experience. So they continue to downsize and outsource while their offerings choke. It happens everywhere not just Disney. Its only the true tech companies that understand money needs to be spent in IT.

 

[tvguy]

I work in IT for a major creative company and I can tell you NO ONE in the C-Suites ever wants to spend a dime on IT. They see it as a cost center and not a way to improve the customer experience. So they continue to downsize and outsource while their offerings choke. It happens everywhere not just Disney. Its only the true tech companies that understand moeny needs to be spent in IT.

Southwest Airlines being a prime example.

 

[NEGeekymama]

About 10 years ago, my husband was heavily recruited by Disney to work in their IT department where he'd be on the team responsible for all of the websites. He wound up not taking it for a few reasons (mostly relocating while I was pregnant and their cost of living adjustment still not quite being enough to make up for Omaha vs. Seattle). So now I always joke that if he had taken that job there would be fewer issues with the sites.

 

[NEGeekymama]

Its only the true tech companies that understand moeny needs to be spent in IT.

I think it also really depends on who is making important decisions. My husband worked for PayPal for 13 years, and after one of (many) company re-orgs he wound up on a team where the top boss was an HR person. Despite a good majority of PayPal employees (on the back end of things, at least) being more tech-leaning, this HR person was....not very savvy about things.

 

[Narcoossee11]

Disney has ALWAYS paid pennies on the dollar for IT.
They just don't care. No priority.

 

[RaisedDisney]

Before (semi) retiring, I worked in IT shops since college. The best solution to this problem is to use a public cloud (Azure or AWS) that can auto-scale based on demand. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of effort to make it work properly, so many companies only scale their systems to work with average demand, which is not the case when the check-in window opens.

 

[NEGeekymama]

Before (semi) retiring, I worked in IT shops since college. The best solution to this problem is to use a public cloud (Azure or AWS) that can auto-scale based on demand. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of effort to make it work properly, so many companies only scale their systems to work with average demand, which is not the case when the check-in window opens.

Except for when the cloud goes down...like when AWS went down and nothing worked.

 

[MillauFr]

About 10 years ago, my husband was heavily recruited by Disney to work in their IT department where he'd be on the team responsible for all of the websites. He wound up not taking it for a few reasons (mostly relocating while I was pregnant and their cost of living adjustment still not quite being enough to make up for Omaha vs. Seattle). So now I always joke that if he had taken that job there would be fewer issues with the sites.

He would have bolted for another tech company within 6 months after they dangled $350k per year in front of him.

 

[insureman]

Today I went in just to search cruises and got the seven Dwarves. Last week it wasn't giving me all the cruises when I did search. When the website works, it is decent, but that's only like 50% of the time.

Anyone who only did their job well 50% of the time would not have a job very long unless they were a weather forecaster.

 

[AquaDame]

Except for when the cloud goes down...like when AWS went down and nothing worked.

Thankfully that happens far less frequently than Disney goes down due to traffic....

 

[SandyinMonterey]

It’s one of the questions on the comment card you fill out when you finish the cruise. I selected poor for online check in experience.

Me too!

 

[NEGeekymama]

Thankfully that happens far less frequently than Disney goes down due to traffic....

Sure, but the sites going down due to traffic is far less inconvenient than AWS going down. It went down when we were at WDW and, yeah...literally nothing was working.

 

[tvguy]

Anyone who only did their job well 50% of the time would not have a job very long unless they were a weather forecaster.

Or a baseball player. A 500 battering average would be record breaking.