I will be arriving at CSR on 8/11/07 and was wondering if it was too early to place my order. I wasn't sure if it would be a problem placing the order now without knowing my room number of what they do with the groceries once they arrive. What if I am in the parks and not there? Also, does anyone know if the hotel will charge me? I have never had things delivered before and would love any tips or information anyone can provide!
Order ASAP! I was about 6 weeks away from my trip, when I read on DISboards from another DISer who was arriving the same day that that day was already sold out. I e-mailed garden Grocer to make sure it wasn't a malicious rumor. Brian, the co-owner (along with his wife) called me on the phone and confirmed he was sold out on my arrival day. He said he wanted to maintain the quality of the service, and that if he took on more deliveries than he honestly thought the company could handle, the quality of the service would suffer, and he would not stand for that. He could have taken my money, but he wanted his already-reserved customers to get the level of service they paid for. Gotta love a guy who puts customer service over increased profits.
You won't know your room number until you are standing at the front desk during check-in, so you obviously can't wait until then to place your order. All they need to know is your name and the name of the resort.
With Garden Grocer, you have the option of scheduling a delivery time and accepting the delivery yourself, OR arranging with them that they will deliver to your resort's Bell Services and that Bell Services will store your order for you (they will even keep the cold stuff cold!). If you do this, Bell Services leaves a message on your room phone. When you get back to your room, you call them and then they deliver it to you.
As Rantybaby said, the resort won't charge you for anything. However, if Bell Services gets involved it is customary to tip. But if you are there to accept delivery directly from Garden Grocer, then there would not be any resort employees involved, and thus no resort employees to tip.
If Garden Grocer happens to be sold out, then I highly recommend Gooding's (
www.goodings.com), a local supermarket that delivers. I used them twice and was completely satisfied both times. They are expensive, but they deliver to Bell Services exclusively ... they will not deliver to your room, they deliver directly to Bell Services, which means you never have to schedule their delivery, as Bell Services will hold it for you if you're not in.
The other delivery service is WeGoShop (
www.wegoshop.com), but they MUST deliver directly to you and won't deliver to Bell Services. Thus, with WeGoShop you must schedule yourself to be stuck in your room and wait for them.
Last year I sent down a package with things like snacks, breakfast foods etc... but this year it was so much easier using GG. I called almost 2 weeks before our trip and had a delivery time scheduled between 2-4 pm. Our plane arrived at 9:00am, we were at our resort by 10:00 (sure enough our room was ready) and GG called a little before 11:00am just to see if we had our room (they had our cell #) and if we would like an earlier delivery. Within 30min we had our groceries. It doesn't get any easier than that. I can't say enough about them.
They were great!!
DS
ME
