Seeing Fantasmic! (Frustrated with Disney)

My mom’s coming into town in September. We have two “must see” shows, Maestro of the Movies at the Hollywood Bowl, and Fantasmic! at Disneyland. Getting tickets for the orchestra was easy. Go to the website, pick decent seats, pay, get downloaded tickets. Done. Total transaction took about 5 minutes total.

Fantasmic! ...? Well, that’s a different story. To get reserved seating for Fantasmic!, you have to purchase a dining package. As I write this there are four: Blue Bayou lunch or dinner ($89 prix fixe), River Belle Terrace standard, River Belle Premium (with a special menu and you watch the show immediately after your 7:15 p.m. dinner, while seated at your table), and Hungry Bear grab-and-go. All but the River Belle premium option involve getting tickets and then making your way to a designated area a few minutes before the show starts. (You can try for general admission, if you want to waste hours in the park waiting, but she makes the multiple timezone trek to SoCal, and spends on a Disneyland ticket, infrequently enough, we try to maximize her time in the park.)

The way it currently works, is, you show up for your Blue Bayou lunch or dinner reservation and tell the server you want the Fantasmic! package. You pick your courses from the fixed menu and at the end of the meal, you get your tickets. I did exactly this in mid-July with a friend, as a “dry run” for when my mom is here.

I used to be able to hop on the app a few days before a trip and book dining, but since the pandemic, to book most reservations you have to be online right at 0600 exactly 60 days before the date you’ll be there, to get a slot before they’re all booked up. (Afterwards, you can use something like MouseDining, to alert you when reservations become available. If you’re not using the $10/month version that sends text messages, though, good luck jumping on an available opening before it, too, is gone.)

I did exactly that back in July, booking Blue Bayou for lunch so that we could get the Fantasmic! package - which Disney’s app reminded me was available, when I booked that reservation:

Done, right? Eh, apparently, not so fast. Fortunately, I lurk in r/DisneyPlanning, and saw this comment. Sure enough, Disney’s site now says:

To book the Blue Bayou Fantasmic! Dining Package:

• For dates through August 27, 2022: Request the package from your server while dining at Blue Bayou Restaurant and experience the first Fantasmic! performance that evening.
• For dates on or after August 28, 2022: Use the Check Availability feature to reserve in advance online and experience one of the 2 Fantasmic! performances that evening.

No word about that directly from Disney (who has the email address I supplied when I made my reservation). I emailed them about it several days ago and haven’t heard back, either. What, I was going to show up, assuming (as Disney had informed me when I made the reservation) that I could just “request the package from [our] server,” only to then learn I needed to have made a reservation for Fantasmic! ahead of time?

Not a great way to run things, Disney!

I setup alerts for every Fantasmic! dining package on MouseDining and this morning snagged a late lunch at Blue Bayou:

Crisis averted, but feel like this process was unnecessarily anxiety-producing. Not a great customer experience. The Happiest Place on Earth can do better.