Magic Happens Here is a small Australian-run business that is based in Melbourne. The ladies who run the company are Samantha Harman, Danni Richardson and Connie Buck. This is the company that I went through for my Disneyland Schoolies trip. When I went through them they were more focused on group travel but they also did a fair bit of being a unique travel agent as well that planned holidays personalized just for you, but now the company mainly focuses on being travel agents for those personalized trips rather than the group tours.
Cost of the Travel Agents
The amount of money I spent to go through Magic Happens Here was surprisingly cheap compared to most other travel agents and the best thing that I enjoyed about going to Samantha was that they always kept you up to date with the payments you make as well as any changes that need to occur.
While I was paying off my schoolies trip we had to postpone the trip multiple times due to COVID-19 in the end, Disney actually increased their day passes for the time that I would be there and as soon as Samantha found out about the ticket price change she notified me immediately and explained to me that there would be an increase of the trip. On top of this Samantha always made sure we had all the information we needed if there ever was a price increase or if something with any other money-related issue came up, this made the full experience run a lot more smoothly.
Communication with Travel Agents before departure
Before departing on my trip the communication with the team from Magic Happens Here was honestly a disappointing experience, I do understand that running a business can get hard at times and sometimes answering emails can be thrown on the back burner but the entire time before my departure I had constant trouble trying to reach Samantha and the rest of the team. Whenever I had a question about bookings or the ESTA we were required to hold when going into the USA it took a few weeks sometimes to even get an answer.
On the bright side though, even though I was ignored the majority of the time before our departure, near the end of the countdown before our departure Samantha and the team apologized for the slow answers and they even started to reply a lot quicker to the email and all the questions.
My on hands experience
Now this is pretty upsetting for me to write but I believe it needs to be said. I will start by saying my trip was absolutely fantastic and I wouldn't change anything that happened but I will say that there was one major thing that I was disappointed about while I was on the trip, and that was the group leader. Throughout the entire trip planning, all the Zoom calls we would have, all the emails and Facebook posts it was made clear to us that Samantha would be our guide for the trip but instead when we got to the LAX airport it was Samantha's best friend Natalie.
Natalie was sensational but it was upsetting to find that Samantha had more important things to deal with than to spend quality time with us as a group. Samantha would always run off throughout the trip to do business work which is completely fine of course but it would have been nice to meet her and get to know her like we had with Natalie. Samantha was making bookings and organizing everything she needed for the Australian Disney Cruise that begins late in 2023 so in my opinion she could have waited to answer those emails to come say hello and stay for a while instead of always leaving us with Natalie.
But as I said, I wouldn't have changed anything about the trip, it was amazing as it was. Everything in my experience was perfectly fine while we were there except for the big issue of Samantha not making it to the majority of our meetings or getting together while we were in the parks.
Overall review
Would I book through them again? Maybe. Since my last trip, the company does seem to finally be getting things under control and is able to run it nicer now but I would be incredibly skeptical in the way that those late email replies can creep back in if I were ever to book through them for my next Disney holiday.
