Disney Magical Express Service

July 16th, 2009 · No Comments

disney magical express service
Anyone booked a disneyworld hotel not through disney before?

I booked 3 nights at coronado springs and one night at animal kingdom lodge through travelocity. I am unsure about what to do to book Magical Express because Disney needs a hotel reservation code and I did not get one from travelocity.
Customer service was very rude for both disney and travelocity, that even hung up on me because they don’t know what to do. Everyone is pushing the responsibility to someone else and no one can help me for all the money I paid. Disney couldn’t even find my hotel reservation.

Has anyone booked a disney hotel not through disney and had problems?
I’d like to have booked through disney, but this was a last minute trip, and I leave on Tuesday!! Now I’m scared that I won’t have a way to get to Disney once I arrive!

I’ve never trusted booking my vacation without Disney or a travel agent (no charge to use an agent). Even though these sites are well known, they really don’t have great business practices. I always book with an agent just so I don’t have to deal with Disney, because a lot of times they aren’t much help either.

As the other answer said, you are now in the hands of Travelocity and anything you need to take care of needs to be done with them. Disney can no longer take care of anything for you because it has to be done with Travelocity, they are in charge of the reservation, but unfortunately they usually don’t do much to help. Like I said, I’ve never booked with anyone else, other than a travel agent, but I have read/heard a lot of really bad stories about what can happen by booking this way.

Depending on when you booked, your reservation may not be in Disney’s system yet, but even if it was, you would not be able to change or modify anything on the reservation. Even though it is your reservation and your money, Travelocity only has the say with Disney now.

Unless you can get a confirmation number, you will not be able to book Magical Express. This is a special for Disney’s onsite guests, but you have to have a reservation number to do it and I believe the one you get with Travelocity will more than likely not be the actual Disney number, but one Travelocity provides. The only thing I can tell you to do is keep calling Disney and try to get different answers to see if you can get someone to help you. I know that Travelocity will not help you with the Magical Express, they basically book the trip and that is it, not much help with anything else, questions, etc.

What I would recommend doing is cancelling the reservation with Travelocity. If you don’t have large fees to pay, I think you will be much happier and better off this way. From there, I would either book with Disney directly or a travel agent. With Disney you will be able to take care of everything yourself, with a travel agent they can book any dining you want, reserve Magical Express for you, purchase tickets, etc. Also, if you go this way you can do a package, you will almost always get a lower rate this way and you can get the dining plan which will save you a lot of money.

Even if you just do the room only, you can get a better rate than you got with Travelocity, almost every time. There are a lot of discounts available, AAA for example. I looked around at some of these sites before and I actually found that all of the sites were higher than what Disney or my travel agent was charging.

Good luck!