Timeshares and Disney tickets - a scam to avoid....

[Janet & Terry]

I wonder if this subject has been covered before on the boards?

One thing we noticed a lot of, and that is kiosks inside and outside supermarkets and ponderosa / denny's type eating places offering low priced Disney tickets. We were prewarned by our villa company that these were fronts for timeshare companies, using the demand for cheap Disney tickets as a hook to get you interested in talking to them.

If you look carefully at their stalls, most of the time they have a small fairly nondescript display showing details of a timeshare resort somewhere or other. I watched one guy approach one of these stalls outide a supermarket to enquire about ticket prices and the questions the guy was asking back were in no way appropriate towards the simple selling of tickets. The questions went like something like this....

"Oh hi there, are you on your own or do you have your family with you ?"

"Your wife ? Is she with you too ?"

"I can do you two tickets for MK at $20 each if you both come on a tour of XYZ resort"

At this, the guy was sensible enough to walk away !!

I would be interested to hear about anybody else's experiences with these kiosks.

Terry

 

[BevS97]

we saw them everywhere but just gave them a wide berth - we did get approached by a guy in the lobby of our hotel who offered to buy our 14 day flex passes off us when we moved to Disney - we just gave him a wide berth too..

Bev

 

[WDWfan uk]

....... in a hotel we stayed at several years ago in Orlando, there were cut price tickets for the parks connected with timeshare at one of the desks in reception - they offered us a free breakfast as well...... at the timeshare property of course We just said that we weren't prepared to take any time out of our precious days to go somewhere else for the morning even for cut price tickets and be talked at!

 

[jjcollins]

The best thing to say is "sorry we go home tomorrow" and it works every time.



jj...........

 

[Janet & Terry]

Yup... I tried that too, saying that we were on our last day and going home tomorrow !!

He still had a quick reply for me though... Have you got any unused days left to trade ??

To which, I quickly said no and departed.

I realised then that this is how they're able to sell tickets so cheap, they buy them at knockdown trade-in prices and then sell them on as part of their Timeshare scamming !!

Good job we got our villa through a reputable agent who warned us against these people.

 

[Sue F UK]

Apparently these companies are perfectly legal as long as they tell you (somewhere) that there will be a timeshare presentation which you have to attend in order to get the cheap tickets.

I heard somewhere that although you are obliged to attend if you accept the tickets you only have to stay for 90 minutes. If you have the willpower to resist the sales pitch for the 90 mins then you could make great savings - get there at 9am and you could be in the parks by 11.

Somehow I don't think my willpower would stand up to it and, like most other DISers have always said a very polite but firm "NO!"

Has anyone ever actually been to one of these things??

 

[UKDEB]

My brother and s-i-l went to one back in 1996 and each got free (unused) Universal tickets. They were really impressed with what was on offer and said there was nothing seedy about it and no real hard-sell of the type you hear about in Mediterranean and European resorts. They were there for an hour, were well fed and watered, and just said, "No thanks" at the end and left.

 

[mike230652]

Janet & Terry,

The timeshare kiosks are pretty well known......and they're fairly obvious even to the most naive of folk. We chatted to one outside IHOP, I asked him for some directions, he was very obliging. OK, he asked if we were interested in a tour and cheap tickets, but readily took No for an answer and gave us no pressure at all. We have friends who did do a timeshare tour for free WDW tickets, they quite enjoyed it , but got up after the obligatory 90 minutes with no hassle , collected their tickets and went. Not my idea of spending time in Florida, but they liked it.

Believe me, the timeshare folk in Florida are very low pressure, unlike their counterparts in Spain & tenerife.

I think you're being harsh calling them scammers.........From your post you and the guy you were listening in on had a total of 6 lines of conversation with the timeshare folk, hardly high pressure!!!!

 

[Janet & Terry]

Mike

Yes, you're probably right about the scam word I used. I would withdraw it if I could and use something else.

However, I do think though there is something more honest about offering FREE tickets (which is what most of the stories above talk about) as opposed to advertising cheap tickets for sale, then using that as a hook to move onto talking about Timeshare tours.