The following is a narrative summarizing events occurring to me and my family on Monday, August 2nd, 1993, in our quest to have a wonderful vacation day at Disney World. I would like a reaction from a Disney World official to this letter. If we fail to get a satisfactory response from the Disney organization, a condensed version of my narrative will be printed in our paper "the Global Communicator" and also given to various Atlanta newspapers for print.


Sincerely,

Anne Colee

As a fitting culmination of our Florida vacation this summer, my family and I decided to go to Disney World, in Orlando,
Florida. Neither my husband nor I had seen Disney World since the early 70's, and we were curious to see how it had
changed and developed over the years. We also were planning to write a highly favourable article about Disney World,
for our newspaper, an article suggesting ways in which some of the Disney World concepts could be utilized in an overseas
planned community. As for our children, they just wanted to see one of the biggest, most famous amusement parks in the
world. So it was with a feeling of eager anticipation that we set out for Disney World.

On the long trip down to our destination we noticed a number of billboards bearing the legend "Get Discount Tickets
for Disney World" and directing people to various reputable institutions at which said tickets could be purchased. At an
exit on Interstate 4, we saw some of these "Discount" tickets at a "Shoney's" restaurant. The tickets were being sold behind
a semi-permanent counter inside the restaurant. Upon our inquiries, we were informed that we could purchase four tickets
from the people behind the counter for the price of $186.00, four tickets that would (supposedly) allow us one day's passage
into the Magic Kingdom, MGM, and the Epcot Center in Disney World. We took the deal.

An hour later we pulled up to the Disney World grounds and boarded the bus which would take us to the monorail
that would take us to the gates of the famous Disney World. My children could hardly contain their excitement. We presented
our tickets at the gate. That was when we were promptly pulled over to one side and informed that our tickets were worthless.
The young man at the gate looked at us rather suspiciously, I thought, and asked us how we had come by our tickets. When
we explained he told us that those tickets were special tickets, only for employees of Disney World and should not be sold to
anybody else. He offered to sell us some legitimate tickets. We had enough money to buy the correct tickets but we refused
on principle. Since we had bought our tickets in an establishment which purported to be directly connected with the Disney
institution, we wanted Disney to honor our tickets. The man at the gate after realizing that we were not going to buy some
"correct" tickets from him or go quietly away, finally said that the best he could do was to grant us one day's passage into
the "Magic Kingdom" portion of Disney World. He added that we could forget about Epcot or MGM. My husband quickly
asked to speak to the man's supervisor.

When he had the supervisor on the line my husband explained everything all over again. Upon hearing my husband's
story the supervisor hastened to assure him that there was nothing that he or anybody else connected with the Disney
organization could do to honor our tickets. He seemed singularly unconcerned that there were organizations that, on the
pretext of being Disney connected, were selling worthless tickets to would-be Disney World customers. He suggested that
if our story was true, we should go right back to the Shoney's where we had purchased our tickets and get our money back.
(Such a trip, it should be added, would have involved at least an hour getting back to our car, tracking down the location
of the correct Shoney's, and getting back to Disney World. It was well after the noon hour and our children were already
starting to cry.) My husband countered with an offer of providing his assistance to ride up with a Disney policeman to bust
the organization that was selling the bogus tickets while I stayed and enjoyed Disney World with our children. The Disney
supervisor could not have been more disinterested in that suggestion. My husband asked to speak to HIS supervisor.

The supervisor to which my husband then talked was a woman. He repeated our story and the stonewalling he got in
reply was a basic replay of the one he had gotten from her subordinate. She was sorry, it was unfortunate but there was
nothing she or anybody else connected with Disney could do about organizations that sold worthless tickets under the
pretext that said tickets would get people into Disney World. Nor could she honor our tickets. I observed that my husband
was only keeping his temper with extreme difficulty at this point so I grabbed the phone from him. I quickly told the lady
our story from my point of view concluding with "and none of this is our fault!" "Why, of course it isn't!" she cooed in
reply. "And the tickets came from a booth in a Shoney's restaurant," I added. I could almost hear the lady draw herself
up in righteous indignation as she answered " I am in no way connected with Shoney's!" Geez, how dumb is this lady
and how stupid does she think I am? I thought to myself. What I said was, " I know that. What I am trying to get across
is that we were ripped off by a booth in a Shoney's, a so-called reputable organization, and since it is not our fault we
want you to honor our tickets in return for which we will help Disney by helping them find and shut down the bogus
operation." " I'm sorry. I can't do that," she said cheerfully. I handed the phone back to my husband. If there had only
been me and him to think of we would have gone all the way to the top in trying to resolve this matter to our satisfaction.
But we had to think of our children. My husband ended the phone conversation by saying,"I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
On one hand I have a principle I want to fight for. But on the other hand, I have two children who are going to be very
disappointed if they can't go to Disney World. The first Disney employee we talked to offered us passage into the Magic
Kingdom. We're going to take him up on his offer. I'm selling out for the sake of my kids!" The lady supervisor said that
the employee had "really overstepped his bounds in offering that to you!" but added that since a Disney employee had
offered it she would have to go along with his faulty decision.

Despite its crowdedness, the lines that seemed to go on forever, the noise, the intense heat, and the somewhat exorbitant prices we enjoyed our jaunt around Disney's "Magic Kingdom". Disney World has a special charm that is all its own. We stayed at the "Magic Kingdom" until 11:30 p.m.
After we left Disney World, my husband and I spent a couple of hours trying to find the location of the Shoney's at which we had bought our worthless tickets. Finally, at Exit 53 on Interstate 4, we found it. We booked a hotel nearby and the next day we stormed into Shoney's and demanded our money back. The man behind Shoneys ticket counter was very polite and indeed could not (it seemed) return our money and send us on our way fast enough. " This has never happened before," he said. " I'm sorry you had trouble with your tickets." My husband and I thought that the only thing the man was really sorry for was getting caught doing something that was somewhat underhanded.
When all was said and done, we got a discount, but the whole experience left a sour taste in our mouths. It also raised a number of troubling questions and points for me and my husband.
For instance, everybody treated our case as though it were an isolated incident. If it had been an isolated incident, I would have thought that we would have had our tickets honored, in the interest of good P.R. alone. If, as I suspect, a significant number of faulty tickets are presented at the Disney World gates, Disney officials should be more concerned with putting an end to the booths that sell these worthless tickets than they are with giving grief to the innocent victims of this fraud. After all the Disney organization has astronomical resources and untold clout behind it.
To go further, it is impossible for me to believe that Disney could not spare even one of its policeman to go with my husband to find and shut down the booth where we purchased our tickets and other booths like it. I reluctantly believe, that nobody at Disney could be bothered to give us and other "victims" like us any satisfaction. My family and others like us are relatively small fish in the huge ocean of corporate power. It was easy for the Disney people to wash their hands of us, pleading ignorance and inability to do anything, given that their refusal to see to it that us "small" people were taken care of would be highly unlikely to cost any of them their jobs.
Are my husband and I to believe that our negative experience with Disney World happened due to massive ignorance and apathy on the part of everybody we spoke to whowas connected with Disney, Shoney's, or the "Discount Ticket" booths? If so, that is a sad commentary on the general ability and intelligence of Disney, Shoney's and "Discount Ticket" employees. If we are alternatively to believe that Disney has seen a number of these worthless tickets, that sale of the tickets is knowingly sanctioned by Shoney's (and other such organizations), and that everybody connected with the sale or collection of the tickets has been instructed to bury his head in the sand in the face of hassles from customers like us, that is a sad commentary on the integrity of all the employees concerned.
I think that the real bottom line with this is money. When we refused to throw good money after bad by purchasing "correct" tickets at Disney World's gate, we lost whatever marginal degree of sympathy that we had had from the Disney employees. Nobody ever stopped to think about the fact that a happy customer is apt to spend a lot more money than a disgruntled one is, and also a lot more apt to provide repeat business. If Disney's blanket policy had been to honor tickets purchased in good faith, Disney would have raked in a lot more money from us than they did. If they had treated us with the dignity that any human being should be accorded, we would have been happy to lay down additional money for a night at a Disney World hotel, another day at Disney and more meals and souvenirs.
I have a feeling that Walt Disney, the kind, creative old gentleman who was the inspiration behind Disney World, is turning over in his grave...


It is now 2001, and we never got to see Epcot or stay in the Disney Hotel.