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[Goofy'sGal]

My cousin's family is traveling with us to WDW in April - they are listed on our DVC reservations and all. When I created my Family & Friends list, I listed them there and sent "invites" to the 2 adults. My cousin's husband accepted the invite and together we were able to customize all of our magic bands.

We bought APs for our family and he recently bought APs for his family as well. I will be able to make FP+ for our group on Saturday so I asked him to link his APs. He said he did. When I check my Family & Friends, his ticket is the only one that linked up. My cousin and her DD do not show tix. HOWEVER, when he looks up his info on MDE, he sees that all 3 tickets are linked.

I can also see that their DD shows up as under my management (I guess b/c I created them in my Family & Friends list?). When I click Edit on her icon, it says that I can control who makes changes to her plans - which I would like to do to make sure that her dad can do - but there is no place to do this.
I'm sorry for this very confusing post but does anyone know what might have happened? I was happy that we were all staying together on the same room reservation so that we would be able to plan our FP+s together - but I'm wondering if I messed things up? Was I not supposed to add their names to my Family & Friends list? Does he have his own list? Does he control his DD's info or do I? Does this make any sense?

Edited: Ok, so my cousin sent me an "invitation" and I accepted so now I see her info (including her tix) on MDE. The only person that is still not showing up with her tix linked is their DD and she is still listed as under my management. Shouldn't she be under their management? And if she were only on their list, would I be able to add her to our ADRs? Does that question make any sense? My kids are underage and therefore, they don't show up on my cousins' F&F list. So if she were on their list, I wouldn't see her, right?

Oh, so sorry for babbling - I will call Guest Services tomorrow but wanted to see if anyone here had any experience with this. As my cousin's husband said, this feels anything but magical right now

[hildai]

I'm curious to see what Disney says when you call them!

We're traveling with my parents in April and the same scenerio is occuring. I booked for my DH and daughters and then my parents booked seperately a week later. I then created my Friends and Family list and sent out an email to my mom to link the two accounts. I see all of their names/icons on my account.

The funny thing is when my mom logs into her Disney Experience account, she only sees my name (my DH and two daughters do not show up????)

Love the idea of having the technology to organize our trips, just get very frustrated when glitches such as this pop up!!!

Good luck with the planning!!!

[WillCAD]

This is confusing, but I wonder if part of the confusion might be in who is linked to whom and how they are linked.

If A has B&C linked as family, and D links to A, do B&C also link to D and show up in D's family list?

Or, I wonder if it works more like Facebook; in Facebook, I can friend someone, but their friends list does't get added to mine, and my friends list doesn't get added to theirs - only I get added to his list, and only he gets added to my list. It doesn't daisy chain.

[aligalreilly]

Originally Posted by WillCAD

This is confusing, but I wonder if part of the confusion might be in who is linked to whom and how they are linked.

If A has B&C linked as family, and D links to A, do B&C also link to D and show up in D's family list?

Or, I wonder if it works more like Facebook; in Facebook, I can friend someone, but their friends list does't get added to mine, and my friends list doesn't get added to theirs - only I get added to his list, and only he gets added to my list. It doesn't daisy chain.

Yes, what PP said -- it seems that you will only see the people to whom you are directly linked.

[Goofy'sGal]

Ok, first thanks all for replying. So after 3 different calls I'm almost there! This is going to be lengthy and perhaps confusing to understand, but if it helps someone to understand how the whole MDX process when it involves more than one family, I'll be happy.

To recap: my family of 4 and my cousin's family of 3 are all staying in a DVC Villa under the same reservation which I made. I added their names to my DVC resort reservation when I called Member Services. This has nothing to do with MDX or MDE

This is what I SHOULD HAVE DONE next:
create MDX with my immediate family of 4.
Then add my cousin to the my F&F list, sending him an invitation.
He would have accepted my invitation and created his own MDX account. He could then add his wife (or she could create her own acct too but let's keep this simple) and dd to his F&F list. '
Once he did this, I would then be able to see his F&F list and send invites to his wife and DD.
Once they accepted (through him), I would have all 7 of us on my F&F list.
Now I would be able to link them to our DVC resort resv and ADRs.
When we each purchased our family's APs, he would link his tix to his family through his MDX, I would do the same for mine.
And all of us would show our tix on my MDX F&F list - ready to make FP+ by me.

WHAT I DID WRONG:
created MDX for my family of 4 and their family of 3, sending invites to my cousin and his wife.
I linked us all to our DVC reservation, I made ADRs and linked them all to those as well - all without them making their own Disney accounts first - now I controlled their accounts.
When it was time to customize Magic Bands and my cousin had not accepted my invite yet, I re-sent it and explained that he should accept it, he did and ...
thus, created his own account as well as his wife's and his daughters - they now exist twice! He controlled one set which showed up on his MDX only with the cool avatars that they chose; and I controlled the other set that only I could see that had the Mickey shadow avatars.

The problem became apparent when we bought our APs and linked them. My family of 4 had room resv, ADRs, magic bands ordered and their APs all linked. Their family on my MDX was mixed up - my cousin had room resv, ADR, MBs ordered and his AP; his wife and DD (as shadow Mickey avatar) had room resv, ADRs and MBs ordered - no APs, and that meant no FP+. My cousin's MDX showed his family with their cool avatars and APs, but only he had a resort resv; his wife and DD only had APs.

Today I called Disney Guest Services Tech Help and they were super helpful. She was able to add my cousin's wife and DD with their cool avatars to my MDX but since the old Mickey Shadow avatars still existed on the room resv, I would have to call DVC tech and have them unlink their Mickey shadows from my DVC resv and re-link the cool avatars to the DVC resv.

I then spent about an hour on the phone with DVC - she was very nice and tried to unlink the Mickey shadows but it took forever. In the end, she muddled it up. She somehow got rid of my cousin's wife's own MDX acct and now she showed up in my MDX with her cool avatar but under my control again Also she created 2 more Cool Avatars for my cousin's DD and added them to my MDX - one had nothing attached to it - no dining, no room, no tix, no MBs; the other had only the room resv and the MBs. Both showed up as under my control. But she told me that my cousin still controlled his DD's avator and would just have to pick one of the two new ones to assign her AP to, delete the other. I had to log out of MDX while she was working on it so I couldn't see that the new avatars were under my control and not my cousin's. After we hung up, I discovered all of this.

So I called Disney Gst Svcs Tech back, tried my best to explain what happened and again, he was wonderful. He fixed my cousin's wife's MDX immediately - she again has her own acct with her AP and is connected to our room resv with MBs. Then he took the one new Cool Avatar for their DD that had nothing attached to it and moved it to the bottom of my F&F list and labeled it "DO NOT USE". He also added back the original Cool Avatar that my cousin had created for his DD that had the AP attached to it.

So right now their DD is still under my MDX twice - one with rooms/MBs; the other with AP. DVC Member Services had already closed for the night otherwise I think he might have been able to take care of the next step for me, but tomorrow I am supposed to call DVC again and ask them to unlink the one avatar from the room Resv and relink the other avatar with the AP to the room resv. Right now when I go into MDX, all 7 of us are there with APs appearing to be able to make FP+s on Saturday but I still want to make sure that their DD's avatar with the AP is also linked to the resort resv before I make our FP+ and hit another glitch.

Hopefully this makes sense to some of you, at least I hope Will can follow so you can all learn from my mistakes. Next year my sister's family is supposed to travel with us and I had added them to MDX exactly like my cousin's family but since there is no resv of any kind for them yet, I am going to delete them and follow the right steps when it's time and hope that I don't screw it up again! LOL

Thanks for reading my saga. I'll report back tomorrow (hopefully with the good news that it is all resolved!)

[WillCAD]

I... think I undestand it all now Val. At least, I hope I understand it. Being a solo traveler, I haven't had to explore the intricacies of linking MDX accounts and having a friends and family list, so your explanation helps fill in some gaps in my knowledge. Thanks!

[Pris]

I have to agree with your cousin's husband. This doesn't seem very magical! It is definitely not user friendly. Looks like Disney has a lot of work to do to get this all simple and easy to use.

[Salty]

I do not like the linking We're going with my SIL, my BIL and their son, as well as BIL's extended family. My SIL linked to my MDX and now I see all their plans, so it's totally confusing to me what is ours and what is theirs. I thought it would be helpful to see all the plans together so we could meet up and try to plan FP+ together, but it's just overwhelming to see all our plans together. Wish I could unlink now without ruffling feathers

[mamasann]

We did great with ours and all the linking, reservations, MBs and such. Then feeling completely proud of myself .... went to do our online check-ins. It let me check-in my ressie only, not the room we had for DD and the grandkids. I had to call and a wonderful cast member sent me to a different website and walked me thru it and we got her checked in. But as I told him that while he was most helpful.... having to go thru all this...and all the linking....and planning what rides to FP, etc. so far in advance, has taken the joy out of the planning and turned it into a chore instead. I told him, "You've been helpful, but the magic is slowly fading from our relationship."

[Goofy'sGal]

I totally hear you! Even though Disney straightened it all out for us and I spoke to 4 wonderful Cast Members who couldn't be more helpful, it still took FOUR phone calls and FOUR separate people to resolve.

So after I last posted, I called DVC the next day, planning on having the CM open up my MDX so they could see what was happening and I would explain all of this in the simplest way possible (ha!) and tell them what Guest Services said for DVC to do "exactly word for word".

While this DVC CM was very friendly and helpful, I was not feeling very confident about her abilities. The other 3 after asking if they could go into my MDX, saw my Goofy avatar and said, Valerie, you're Goofy. Well, this CM tried to open all the other accounts associated with mine EXCEPT for mine. I had to redirect her to my account to start things off. Of course, I was put on hold for a while. Unfortunately, I had to wait a long time before she first picked up my call and suddenly time was against me as I had to get my DD to an event after school (silly me, thinking that 45 mins would do it LOL). So once she put me on hold, I got nervous that I might have to hang up - I totally should've used my cell.

Anyway, she did come back, baffled about how to delete/unlink my cousin's DD from our room resv. I started to think - what if my cousin's family had decided not to come with us to WDW after all and their names had to be removed from my Resort Resv (not my MDX but the actual DVC Resort Resv). I've had to do that in the past, add and/or remove names of people that were supposed to travel with us. That is not a big deal - or it didn't use to be. So I suggested that they remove cousin's dd's name from my resort resv, then they might be able to delete the Avatar of hers that we didn't need and "re-link" the one we did need. But I told her I had to hang up and we agreed that I probably wouldn't get her again later in the evening when I called back and would have to go over this again with someone else. She apologized for not being able to help me.

Amazingly when I returned later that night there was a message from her - she kept at it after we hung and was sure that she'd fixed everything. I checked and we were all there properly in MDX, the shadow Mickey/other Avatar was gone. The correct Avatar with MB, room resv and APs was there. I checked with my cousin and he saw the same stuff too. I was very happy!

I'll be happier when I make my FP+ AND when I know I've done it right. Had a FP+ session with my family earlier so that I could make them tomorrow. "I don't have a good feeling about this!"

Thanks, Guys!