Well..after being born and raised in SoCal, and being immersed in all things Disney, and after countless trips to Disneyland, I finally made it to DisneyWorld with my wife and two children.
We decided to treat it as if we may never get back..so we stayed at the Grand Floridian...and purchased a premiere pass for my daughter. We all have premium passes at Disneyland, but my dauighters was due to expire. So I priced it out, and realized if I bought her a premiere pass, that it would cost out cheaper than buying all 4 of us WDW park hopper tickets for 7 days, and then coming back to California and renewing my daughters premium pass. Herein lies the rub in our other wise fantastic trip...we encountered on numerous occasions in the theme parks and restaurants, employees who did not even know what the premiere pass was. Can anyone relate? Has anyone else had to deal with this? I would think that Disney, in it's employee training, would alert their park and hotel and other employees to something that the company is pushing as a big 'perk". We encountered a deer in the headlights stare on a few occasions, and no less than three employees asked us if that was a gift card. I could even imagine the crickets chirping soundtrack in the background a few times. Not the type of response I wanted for an investment of 722 dollars per pass.
I spoke witha manager at the Floridian, who was gracious and attentive, and by his own admission, said Disney had not done a good job in promoting the Premeire pass...I replied I understand, and that is all well and good, but that does not help me or others who are not receiving their 10, 15 or 20 percent discount as a Premiere pass holder because the employees are unaware of something their company is actively pushing.
I found that a tad annoying, although to his credit, for the reaminder of our trip, the manager when he saw us on the Hotel grounds, said he had passed along my concerns to corporate, and wanted to know if there was anything else he could do.
I enjoyed the parks...and actually kind of enjoyed the Hollywood Studios theme park in a wierd kind of way, as large parts of it are recreations of Los Angeles, i,e the Farmers Market on 3rd and Fairfax, the Crossroads of the world on Santa Monica BLVD. in Hollywood, the Graumans Chinese Theatre, et al..
Bottom line is we are planning to go back in Spring of 2012...but just wanted to relay my expereince with the pass, and wondered if others have had the same problem.
Marc
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