Sadly, when we checked in our room this Disney vacation, we had an issue. It was immediate, and it was bad. Before I even opened the door to the room I smelled smoke. The cigarette kind. When I got in the room I couldn't breathe. Now, I come from a lady who is very sensitive to smoke. I tire of her immediate remarks when she catches a whiff of it. I don't like it either. I freak out when I am behind a car who is smoking, and the smell comes into mine. However, it is not the end of the world to me, it is just unpleasant.
This was more than unpleasant, much, much more.
Even the bellman said: "I remember dropping off the people here, their suitcases stank of smoke." That kinda didn't help my cause. I should mention that it is Food and Wine week here, and I knew all the rooms were spoken for. It was 9pm at night, our only possibility was to not be the last people checking in. Joel got right on the phone and I took the boys out of the room. It took about 40 minutes, but we had a different room, though it was NOT to be our real actual room for the week.
As you can guess, I take my trip pretty seriously. We had groceries there waiting for us, two big suitcases. I am also a bit of a control freak. I can't immediately unpack and organize everything - outfits for each day? Food all in cupboard, coffee ready to push start tomorrow morning? As I processed this - two boys who had only MOMENTS BEFORE found out they were in Disney World (the moments when we thought we were getting our room no problem and could run over to EPCOT for a celebratory drink) - were FREAKING out. Well, actually, in the grand scheme of things, they weren't so bad. They were just noisy and constantly moving and touching everything in sight and all that stuff. You know, boys, who had been on a plane and were tired.
Disney gave us a room, a two room suite on the club level in the hotel. We sent back our food to the storage area and then I proceeded to be angry at the situation, which is the one thing you should never ever do here. Things are beyond your control, and you are in Disney World. Dammit. But I really thought I could fix this. I went to the front desk and showed them my excel spreadsheet in an attempt to explain that obviously I was crazy and I needed my room right now. They gave me the all smiles apology and that was it. Either Disney has these people totally trained, or I am not the first psycho to cross their path.
In their further defense, they gave us a two room suite with concierge level. The bellman (poor guy who was with us throughout this ordeal) begged me to see the concierge. Probably one not foreign to this dance, he was figuring "Lady, all the people like you love it, you will too." But, I, like a stubborn 4 year old refused to go. It was only after Joel Husband that came down with two beers that I decided to take a peek.
I was being a brat, but we had been looking forward to this vacation for 11 months and I just wanted it to start, and I thought that this was a way that was not making it start. We paid all this money, I had all these plans - not to mention this was the second time that when checking into the Beach Club we had an issue. What the hell? Then I walked into the concierge level, received 2 glasses of wine, a plate full of Mickey dessert treats. The elevator ride down I calmed, and by the time I was back in my two bedroom suite I woke the only son that would wake up - Joel - up… And we proceeded to devour the treats and he make me laugh. Our vacation did start.
Moral of the story is - when it is not working out and the mouses's house has screwed something up, try not to freak out like me, and try to recognize that they really want to make you happy here. We had a few more bumps in the road, couldn't charge to our wristbands and all that jazz, which was annoying and made it seem like we were not welcome and made us mad again. The second we would tell a Disney person they would give us a FastPass. At first, this was kind of offensive - just have a fast pass and go away. Then, it was kind of nice. This is the only thing the Disney person can really do - this issue cost us time from our vacation and this is the quickest way they can give it back to us - "go walk onto Seven Dwarfs Mine Train with your family - past the thousands of others in line, have fun, we are working on it." And we did.
Be nice to the people here, they will be nice to you back. They want you to have fun, because when you have fun you buy stuff. And that is all that matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment