A family’s trip to Disney Parks was almost ruined by the grandparents’ accidental purchase of the wrong kind of Disney vouchers.
‘In 2020, my parents were planning a big family trip, but the pandemic happened.’ reads the first text of Andie Coston’s viral TikTok video from earlier this week. She goes on to explain the trip was finally rescheduled for this December, but their bad luck was not at an end.
Andie’s 78-year-old parents, in an effort to save some money on tickets to Disney Parks for the 16-person family, decided to buy gift cards. They had discovered that the wholesale price store Sam’s Club offers 25% off Disney gift cards, meaning that each $100 voucher would only cost them $25. Wanting to make the most of this saving, they purchased $10,000 worth of gift cards, saving $2,500. They planned to spend these on buying Disney Parks tickets for the whole family.
The moment of realization
When they tried to use the cards online, they found the website wouldn’t accept them. It was only when their daughter Andie went to visit for the weekend that she realized the mistake. All $10,000 worth of gift cards were for the Disney+ streaming service rather than Disney Parks. Her parents had purchased over 70 years of streaming rather than anything that could be spent on the holiday.
Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Andie has a TikTok account, which she posts fairly regularly, her videos gaining around 800-2000 views. When she decided to share her parents’ story, the video went viral, racking up 3.6 million views by Friday.
‘We need help!’ she says in the video, explaining that she is worried the parks will sell out and her kids won’t get to go. ‘It’s not about the money,’ she goes on, ‘it’s about getting the money in the right form’.
Nevertheless, some TikTok users were skeptical about her appeal, especially given the amount of money involved. One comment, which garnered 22,400 likes, observes:
“I’m not in the right tax bracket to feel empathy for this situation I don’t think”
Luckypurr, TikTok
Others also took issue with her claim at the end of the video that the gift cards ‘need redesigning to be more clearly differentiated.’ Many users felt that there was no design problem as the cards are marked with Disney+ logos. Andie responded by pointing out her parents’ age and the fact that they don’t use streaming services.
How the internet came to the rescure
Luckily for Andie, some users were more sympathetic. In a video the following day, she says that she ‘got an email’ after posting it and ‘that’s how this got fixed.’ Her family were able to book their tickets for Disney Parks as planned, though with a lot more publicity than they might originally have intended.
However, as she explained a few days later, rectifying the mistake is a ‘slow-going process.’ Her parents are taking a photo of the back of each gift card to email to ‘this poor guy named Joey in California.’ They are then being converted is converting into Disney Parks vouchers.
Andie has posted over 30 videos since her original appeal and says she never expected to go viral. TikTok users are still following her story, with one comment by chrissyvii pleading, ‘anyways make sure you vlog your entire trip cause now I’m invested.’
In her latest video, Andie explains that this the ‘first time’ since then that she has had less than 99 TikTok notifications. She goes on to muse: ‘I guess I’m on the other side of fame now.’
