Disney Fails It’s Own Objective

It’s been two weeks since I sent my let­ter to Disney’s Guest Com­mu­ni­ca­tions on April 13 regard­ing the harass­ment I received from Dis­ney Secu­rity while tak­ing pho­tos at Down­town Dis­ney. I asked them to pro­vide a response within two weeks before I would attempt to esca­late the issue. When I sent the note, and auto-​responder said that I would receive a reply within 12 days. Sadly, I haven’t received any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Walt Dis­ney World.

I’m sure some­one at Dis­ney is aware of the issue, as my server logs indi­cate 38 vis­its from Dis­ney on the 13^th and nearly four dozen vis­its over­all since I sent my note to WDW Guest Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. I think two weeks is a suf­fi­cient amount of time to per­form some pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion into my com­plaint and con­tact me, even if they did not have a res­o­lu­tion at the time.

To me, this is just another dis­ap­point­ment in guest rela­tions from an orga­ni­za­tion that I truly felt was a world leader in the field of hos­pi­tal­ity. In fact, this is some­what more dis­ap­point­ing than my ini­tial encounter with Dis­ney Secu­rity. I pre­sume that every Dis­ney employee who inter­acts with guests has some basic train­ing to deal with peo­ple, but secu­rity guards aren’t really known as the friend­liest peo­ple in the world (with some excep­tions, I’m sure). How­ever, the folks who work in Guest Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ought to be the best peo­ple in the world at relat­ing to peo­ple who have some complaint.

Think about it. If Dis­ney is, as I had imag­ined, the world leader in hos­pi­tal­ity, then the peo­ple who deal with com­plaints there ought to have the most expe­ri­ence and best train­ing for deal­ing with dis­ap­pointed or even angry guests. The fact that they couldn’t find the time to even reach out and let me know they were work­ing on my issue is beyond pathetic. For­get about my state­ment of two weeks. Dis­ney failed to meet its own objec­tive to respond within 12 days.

I know that the peo­ple who work at Walt Dis­ney World are real peo­ple with prob­lems of their own. It’s not magic that hap­pens. It’s train­ing and a com­mit­ment to do your job that mat­ters here. If you have a job in Guest Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, I would think that com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a guest, whether you agree or dis­agree with his issue, would be part of your job and the min­i­mum accept­able level of per­for­mance. It’s one thing to try and fail. It’s also OK to dis­agree. Fail­ing to even try just isn’t some­thing that earns anyone’s respect.

Per­haps that’s not sur­pris­ing when you don’t deal with iden­ti­fi­able peo­ple. There’s no one for me to hold account­able at Guest Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. My objec­tive now is to com­mu­ni­cate with some­one who can and will hold them account­able. My objec­tive is to deal with some­one who has the author­ity to make a deci­sion and take action.

It seems my father’s old advice still rings true: Don’t waste time with the peons. Just go to the top.