Mickey's Very Merry and Plentiful Discounts

Here's the scoop - if you are a passholder at WDW, for every purchase, ASK if there is a passholder discount. For merchandise purchase, it appears that passholder gets 10% at almost every merchandise store on WDW. But you have to ask for it. For food, it is a hit-and-miss, even for counter service. I'm sure someone somewhere has a more detailed and accurate list of where a passholder can get a discount. I don't have that list, and neither does Disney and the WDW Passholder website.

Now, this is where it gets annoying. In those same stores, you also get 10% off on your Disney Visa if your purchase is more than $50. Again, you have to request for it. But here's where it gets confusing. If you also a passholder, SOMETIME YOU CAN GET BOTH DISCOUNTS ON THE SAME PURCHASE, AND SOME TIME YOU CAN'T. I was a the Pin Central store when my purchase had both discounts, while my friend who bought her pins at another cash register didn't get both even when she asked for it. This seems to be the constant theme throughout our stay, where the rule on whether both can be used on the same purchase were not applied evenly, even in the SAME store but by different cast members.

Another case in point is this. At various food counter service restaurants, you get a special promotion on the receipt where you can get 20% off at the big merchandise stores at each of the park. That's quite considerable (the promotion on my receipts ends Dec. 15). We did our shopping using one of such promotions at Island Merchantile at DAK. I asked if I can use the Disney Visa discount on top of the 20% discount. The cast member said no and pointed to the written part of the receipt that it cannot be used with any other discounts. Fine, I'll take that, because 20% off was nothing to sneeze at.

Well, you guessed it. At another register, another friend asked for the same thing when using her 20% off, and the cast member said to the effect "Well, let's see if it will go through if I punch in the discount code" (the discount code is 71 for the Disney Visa 10% off). Guess what, it went through! So she got not only the 20% off, but also another 10% on top of that!

Look, I love the fact that WDW has now tried to give passholder the same valued treatment that they give Disneyland passholders. Giving 10% discounts isn't much, and I have no idea if it will last, but at least it is something. However, this uneven policy on whether or not the Disney Visa can be used together with the passholder (or other) discounts, sometime even in the same store, is just driving me nuts! When you hear that another guest got more than what you get, you still feel cheated. You are left with the frustration that, even though it is only a few bucks, you should have gotten what you are entitled to, especially when you asked for it. I've mentioned before in one of my earlier complaints about services at WDW that one of the BEST way to annoy your customers is to not get your story straight. Nothing is more annoying than to have an uneven policy in which different parts of your company apply things differently on the very same thing.

For the record, I never, even once, went back to the stores that I got shortchanged on to demand for the extra discount. I didn't want the annoyance to ruin my vacation.

Zz.