This is how companies should handle mistakes. Even though, personally, I feel Disney is evil, they are now the least evil of all the evil that is out there.

Awesome Disney.

Imagine if Comcast did it like this. Wow. I think my brain just broke.

Classic, "We're sorry, you don't qualify for the payment plan you chose, so now you don't have to pay for it." Geez, would that so many other companies would follow Disney's lead.

Wow. Mad props to the mouse.

Kudos to Disney, but why not just continue collecting the payments and send out notices close to renewal?

This is just awesome. They could have just remained quiet and kept charging them monthly but wow. Way to go Disney.

Now if they would just stop raping my childhood with those straight-to-DVD sequels, I'd be happy.

Our family had an annual pass to Club Disney (Disney's failed children's play center concept). When the decision was made to close all of the Club Disney locations in 1999, we received a similar letter. Despite the fact that we had already been using the pass for almost the entire year, Disney mailed us a refund check for the full price of the pass.

Also, one of my kids accidentally lost the free balloon they had gotten at a Disney character breakfast. A passing cast member saw what happened and insisted on writing out a voucher for a new balloon (and one of those fancy, expensive mylar ones, to boot).

I wish that all companies were as proactive as Disney (but then I suppose we wouldn't have anything to discuss here if they were!)

Either the contract was illegal for some reason and this was their way of getting out of it, or this is the dumbest business in America. Why are they taking the time to write and say sorry you're not eligible for 60% off, our mistake, so let's call it even at 80% off?

@Hoss: Keeping customers happy isn't necessarily dumb. Or maybe it is, I don't know; how's Disney's bottom line these days?

@Hoss: I think it's 60% off because they had to pay up until april/may and after that no longer had to pay. It really is full price if they had them pay monthly.

The real question is why are only SoCal zip codes eligible? Plenty (and I mean LOTS) of people here in Northern California have annual passes and visit multiple times a year. I'd love to be able to participate in this monthly payment plan but because of my zip code I can't?

@Andrew Dorsett: I get it. thanks

@smartwatermelon

I'm guessing it's some financial/legal mumbo-jumbo which limits the range of this offer. In any case, it's a genius marketing move (I jumped on it).

As far as Disney's ultimate motivation for canceling these contracts, it's likely a legal issue (the contract specifically states eligibility requirements), but from my 27+ years of visiting Disneyland, it does not suprise me that they bend over backwards to make their customers happy.

I nominate Disney for one of the LEAST evil corporations. My wedding was at Disneyland, and it was spectacular. I've never had a bad time at the park, and when my wife's sunglasses fell off on Big Thunder (presumably to be lost forever), they mailed them to our house the next day.

Boy Scout Summer Camps include entire sections about Disney's customer service in their staff training programs.

The one that runs the theme parks is a decent corporation, the other parts are the ones responsible for getting copyright extended by decades and pushing already public domain works back into copyright retroactively.

And this is why people like to go to disney and spend lots and lots of money there. Lots.

Letting you in doesn't really cost Disney any money for the most part. Sure, you'll generate a bit of trash, use some water here and there and so on. But we are talking pennies, if that.

But once you are in, you will buy a $3 coke, a $7 cheeseburger and a $25 princess tshirt to send to your cousin for her birthday.

The guest is happy, Disney makes more money than if they had canceled your pass. Everyone wins. And with a bit of luck, the guest will renew his pass after it expires.

This makes no sense. It's one thing to not let him renew the pass, but why stop making him pay for it? Don't get me wrong, it's great news for him, and nice of Disney, but still it makes zero business sense. They weren't taking anything away, so why give a conciliation prize....

@gbgirl: i'd prefer no consumerist and no crappy companies

Disney gets it.

From an microeconomic perspective, this was brilliant.

They essentially gave the customer back almost 60% of the cost of the pass, but at the same time, their costs aren't increased (marginally, the cost of an additional person in the theme park is extremely small when you consider that the staff and rides will all be there throughout the day regardless if these annul pass holders are there or not), and the customers will now more than likely be much more loyal to Disney, all the while, spending extra money on each consecutive trip to the park.

Kudos, Disney on hitting the nail on the head when it comes to mutually beneficial trade.

Nintendo and Disney are probably my two favorite companies. I love Nintendo considerably more, but this makes Disney that much more favorable in my book.

@sicknick: RE: "Disney is Evil"

Couldn't disagree more. At least with their amusement parks, they have, in my experience, a great track record of
A) Hiring quality employees, and paying them enough to enjoy their job
B) Putting on a facade which, although some don't like it, is very thorough and very convincing.
C) Going above and beyond to keep people entertained and happy.

Oh, and a preemption: I'm not a shill. If you think I am, more power to you.

They should probably be more careful with their revenue streams in the future...

I'm just wondering where the story on the 2,000 layoffs Disney World just made in the Orlando area is?

Or how they used a loophole in their employment contracts to fire many seriously ill long-time employees and take away their medical benefits? My mother in law, a 15 year Disney supervisor, was laid off two weeks ago, while she's in the middle of fighting stage 3c cancer that had spread to multiple organs. Even after she insisted, against her family's wishes, on going to work all through her treatment.

It's disgusting really. Yet, she still won't say a bad thing about Disney. I think that's the saddest part of all of this--these 2,000 layoffs were all long-time employees that live and breathe Disney. I saw a story on the news the other night. An older man who'd been laid off by Disney. They filmed through his house and it was like a museum of all things Disney. You could tell that it was his entire life. He then went on to explain his prescription costs of course...

It's just sad, honestly.

@Hoss: Or they figured the cost of even a single lawsuit over this matter would be more than the combined remaining cost of the tickets they would eat.

I like how it follows up with:

"RELATED
"At Six Flags, You Have To Pay A Fee To Print Your Own Tickets""

Ball's in your court, Six Flags.

@gbgirl: A lot of people complain about Disney, and I'll agree that at times their CS can be somewhat aloof. But at the same time, when an on-the-ground CM does something nice, it usually really makes a difference.

This just confirms my already positive opinion of Disney.

@QquegChristian: Was she part of the 2K layoffs? If so, she's probably SOL but if she's not, I'd think she'd be covered under the ADA. Maybe Eyebrows or one of the other legal beagle types can correct me if I'm wrong?

Disney Theme Parks's customer service is really fantastic with this stuff. I've found they'll go out of their way to please you. Examples from my last trip to the Florida park:

1. Showed up at Tower of Terror at 4PM with a "Fast Pass" that said I could only enter between 5 and 6PM. I said that I was planning on leaving the park to go to a different park for dinner and I wouldn't be around to use it. He happily let me through.

2. There was a deal at a specific sit-down restaurant that if you went for dinner there and made reservations in advance in a certain way, you'd get reserved seating for the MGM show without having to wait in line. I apparently didn't make reservations in advance in that certain way (details escape me), and rather than insisting that I couldn't get the reserved seating he said "let me see what I can do for you" and scrounged up a handful. (We of course tipped the man nicely.)

It's what makes Disney a bit nicer of a place to be instead of Six Flags Broken Rides.

@Hoss: How does actually taking care of customers make Disney the "dumbest business in America?" They made a mistake and then went above and beyond what could be expected to treat those customers well. They could've cancelled the contract at the end of the month and invalidated those passes, but they decided it might be a good idea to keep those customers happy so they just let them have the passes. I'll bet you a nice shiny nickel that those customers will be more likely to renew their passes next year and they might even buy some high margin food on a trip to the park sometime this year. If you really think this is a dumb business move, you're probably way too short sighted to run a customer service oriented business...

@slickdealer: Well, if you treat customers extremely well, you can make a customer for life. If you piss customers off, they're likely to never spend a dollar with your company again. Some of those people will see Disney exceeding customer service expectations, be pleased, and continue to spend thousands of dollars at Disney parks in the coming years. They might also tell their friends and family how much they love Disney's customer service. This is a brilliant business move.

So the people that were ineligible will get to keep the pass without being charged, and the eligible people still have to pay? How is this fair? I know it was their fault for giving out these passes, but I would be pissed if my neighbor got to keep his free pass only because his zip code was off one number.

@smartwatermelon: Not to mention those living outside of CA. If you're living in SoCal, you're probably already living in Lotus Land. Giving these people breaks at Disneyland is like giving free swag to rich celebrities.

"Giving these people breaks at Disneyland is like giving free swag to rich celebrities."

@JollyJumjuck: Actually I was born and raised in San Diego and we hardly ever went to Disneyland. Alot of the other families around us were the same.

@secret_curse:
Eh. Maybe with a retail store or similar business, but with a theme park? People are either going to go to Disney World/Land or not. No one is going to say "well, Bob got a free annual pass, so we decided to go there this summer".