Bed bugs at Bonnet Creek :(

[This really stood out: "you seem to think it is their job - again if you report something like this you could get fired. would you do it?" because yes, I do think it's their job to report a health risk. I understand time schedules and all that jazz, but if a housekeeper were to walk into a room covered in blood - are they supposed to clean around it? A health hazard is a health hazard. I don't care if they speak English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese - there is going to be someone on their staff who understands them. And furthermore, why do you keep insisting that someone will be fired if they report it? In my field, not reporting it would lead to termination.

I really can't wrap my mind around this .. at all.[/FONT][/QUOTE]

I can't either.

I just read the bedbug registry site. One family staying at POR was removed from their room because housekeeping reported signs of a bedbug infestation. You would think that good hotels that care about their reputations would encourage ( and train ) housekeeping to look for evidence and report it. Then it can be dealt with in a timely matter, before it spread. Seems Disney does this..and hotel can get bedbugs but one that looks for signs and deals with them correctly will get my money.

Now I am also re-considering my post/pre Disney stay since the hotel I have chosen seems to have quite a bit of reports and many of them are unhappy at the way it was handled.
 
Hello all,

I've been trying to follow up on this thread as much as possible, but it has been a busy weekend, and now I realize I have A LOT of catching up to do. :sad2:

Anyway, I want to thank each and every one of you for providing GREAT suggestions and overall support and well wishes regarding our situation. Even though I don't know you, it makes me feel better knowing that other people care. :) Per the suggestions of people on this thread, we have done/will do the following:

1. We have followed up with WBC and are currently awaiting a reply. We'll give it a week and if we don't hear anything we're going further up the food chain. I also made sure to post it on the bed bug registry.

2. I will be emailed the timeshare owner the details of this thread tomorrow...you're right that he should know.

3. We will also be contacting the health department, because it obviously isn't being handled correctly. Thus, their ineffectiveness and misinformation in dealing with this could be causing the spread of these parasites. If housekeeping feels their jobs are at risk for mentioning a large health concern, then that's a whole separate can of worms.

I will say that when it actually happened, I was so in the mode of getting out of the room that I didn't even stop to really think about how mad I was/am. Also, I must say that I was a little bit in shock...I couldn't believe it had happened to us. While it is a terrible situation, it didn't quite hit home until we broke out in bites as badly as we did, then I was REALLY disgusted and I freaked a lot more then. Doing my research and finding out how mishandled everything was is really when I hit the fan. The whole situation didn't ruin our vacation, but since coming home it has been QUITE stressful. It almost feels like we never took a vacation. :confused3 As I told my husband last night when I had to go to a "fancy" event...my body image has taken huge blows because I am very self-conscious of the bites/scars and I have to be very selective about what I wear. Sadly, long sleeves only do so much and don't cover the bites on my hands, face and neck. Oh, and to answer another poster...yes, you can have "just a few" bites from bed bugs. It really depends on how hungry they are and how many there are.

I can without a doubt say that we will NEVER stay at WBC again. While it can happen anywhere, how the situation was handled speaks volumes about how much they care about their guests and what they view as acceptable management practices. And yes, to answer another posters question/comment...they very much treated us/it as if it was an everyday thing...no big deal...nothing to be worried about. When I was asking questions, I was almost treated as if my questions were crazy talk.
 
I feel for you, OP and hope that things get better. It almost sounds like you need a second vacations to recover from this one!


And to the poster saying its not the housekeepers responsibility, I think that is a load of ----. What reputable hotel manager wouldn't want their staff to report something as serious as this??? So a housekeeper would lose their job for alerting the management to a possible problem BEFORE a guest checks in, possibly preventing any issue after arriving? No reputable hotel is going to do that. I don't believe it for a moment, unless she or he is referring to a dive where they just don't care.

For me personally I would fire a housekeeper for NOT alerting me to a problem, especially in a situation like this, where the infestation was so obvious!
 
This is horrific. I really feel for you and your family! Hope everything turns out ok for you.
 


Now I now that my decision to cancel our reservation (for other reasons) was the right decision. OP, you are right that this could happen anywhere but the way it was handled is what really matters. I am so sorry that this happened to you!!! :hug:
 
any place that doesn't report it immediately to the HD is already breaking the law

so why do think it happens?

if more places reported the bed bugs - it could be controlled.

as I say never saw even one housekeeper when I was there for a week - it was a several years ago - when at any other timeshare they are around.

always ask the maids for information and things - they have a lot of knowledge.

can anyone here find the policy from Wyndham regarding the housekeeper (maids) on reporting beg bugs or any other insect that bites humans? florida has several of them.

I could be wrong - but don't think so - if the maid cleaned the room and she did or the Op would have found things in the tubs and kitchen - that would say this room was not cleaned.

then she had to see these things - since the OP had no problems seeing them.

some people don't even react to beg bugs - those of us that do are allergic to them.

even if the maid tried to report the problem - a front desk that does not take customers complaints - would never listen to a maid.

It is called a corporation.

corporation only care about the bottom line - if they can hide it - they will - it scares off people

OP if it is not to much trouble - go put a post on trip advisory too - know if it gets by their scanners - then you might get a reply from wyndham
 
any place that doesn't report it immediately to the HD is already breaking the law

so why do think it happens?

if more places reported the bed bugs - it could be controlled.

as I say never saw even one housekeeper when I was there for a week - it was a several years ago - when at any other timeshare they are around.

always ask the maids for information and things - they have a lot of knowledge.

can anyone here find the policy from Wyndham regarding the housekeeper (maids) on reporting beg bugs or any other insect that bites humans? florida has several of them.

I could be wrong - but don't think so - if the maid cleaned the room and she did or the Op would have found things in the tubs and kitchen - that would say this room was not cleaned.

then she had to see these things - since the OP had no problems seeing them.

some people don't even react to beg bugs - those of us that do are allergic to them.

even if the maid tried to report the problem - a front desk that does not take customers complaints - would never listen to a maid.

It is called a corporation.

corporation only care about the bottom line - if they can hide it - they will - it scares off people

OP if it is not to much trouble - go put a post on trip advisory too - know if it gets by their scanners - then you might get a reply from wyndham

Once again, I can make NO sense of what you posted.

If not reporting to DOH is breaking the law, why would a resort NOT want to report it? Not reporting a serious health hazard is only going to garner many negative reviews, and since Orlando hotels can be found by the dozens, people are going to book at ones with positive reviews of not only the room but the staff, their treatment and responses, as well.

Also, not finding "things" in the tub or kitchen does not mean housekeeping was provided. Before we left, we cleaned our unit (as housekeeping had an issue doing so, and by issue I mean laziness). All of our dishes were washed and put back in their respective place, our tubs/showers were cleaned, our towels and garbage were thrown down the chute. We did all of this simply because, out of our 10 day stay, WBC's housekeeping staff cleaned our unit once, despite the fact that we prepaid to have them clean every other day ($99 PER cleaning).

I'm sure there is no Wyndham policy on reporting bed bugs. Reporting such is common sense. Just because it's not in the employee handbook doesn't mean employees cannot do it. Whether someone "reacts" to bed bugs or not is a non-issue. I cannot think of one person who would be comfortable sleeping in a bed infested with bugs. Allergic or not, it IS an issue, and one that's obviously high up on DOH's list.

Why would I ask a maid for information (as they have a lot of knowledge) after knowing they purposely overlooked a health risk? They would be the LAST people I'd ask for information.

Yes, corporations do focus on the bottom line (I would know - I work for one) but a corporation that does not listen to their employees, and furthermore does not take a health risk complaint into consideration, is just asking for every health agency available to visit. Those agencies have the power to shut down all operations and close a property and they WILL, especially if there's a trend of untreated issues.
 


I can't either.

I just read the bedbug registry site. One family staying at POR was removed from their room because housekeeping reported signs of a bedbug infestation. You would think that good hotels that care about their reputations would encourage ( and train ) housekeeping to look for evidence and report it. Then it can be dealt with in a timely matter, before it spread. Seems Disney does this..and hotel can get bedbugs but one that looks for signs and deals with them correctly will get my money.

Now I am also re-considering my post/pre Disney stay since the hotel I have chosen seems to have quite a bit of reports and many of them are unhappy at the way it was handled.

I'm so thankful that I'm not the only one who can't wrap their mind around it! From my point of view, ANY and EVERY employee who discovers a health risk is responsible for reporting it. No matter how big or small that health risk is deemed to be, it's ALWAYS going a matter of life or death for someone that happens to be seriously allergic to the problem.

I 100% commend Disney and their housekeepers for reporting bed bugs. It's a situation that demands reporting and the resort has a responsibility to not only listen to their employees but follow up on their concerns and (in the case of bed bugs) treat the room so that the next guest(s) to check in aren't sleeping a top a bed bug colony.
 
I know this wasn't OPs original intention but I can't help but shy away from this resort now. Honestly it's not only because of the bedbugs. Yes maybe it was a random case. But the way OP was treated in this situation and that is wasn't taken 100% seriously just makes me feel that management could care less about their clients. That is not a place I would like to give our hard earned money to.
 
Momma2PrinceNPrinces said:
I know this wasn't OPs original intention but I can't help but shy away from this resort now. Honestly it's not only because of the bedbugs. Yes maybe it was a random case. But the way OP was treated in this situation and that is wasn't taken 100% seriously just makes me feel that management could care less about their clients. That is not a place I would like to give our hard earned money to.

While I can relate to your feelings, never go to tripadvisor. You will find something like this posted about every hotel in America.
 
Ok, I have thought about this for several days...whether or not to post anything at all, but I decided that I need to tell my story in hopes that it won't happen to anyone else...

I, like many, adore Bonnet Creek. We stayed there this past May and returned again for out trip in January. Both times we had the EPCOT view and it was beautiful. Sadly, this trip started out a lot rougher than the last. We arrived at BC at 12pm on Friday, and they checked us into tower 4 by 1:15pm or so, which was sooner than we expected. We had driven through the night from IL, so we hurried to unload. We unloaded everything onto the baggage cart and then got to the room. Upon entering the room, I did my customary bed bug check on the kids' beds (it was a 2BR) and didn't see anything. Then I somehow got distracted...very easy with 4 kids...and realized later on that I had missed checking our bed. We unpacked and quickly laid everyone down for naps...I was laying on top of the bedspread and my husband was on the couch. At 5pm we woke up and showered and hurried off to EPCOT to eat. When we returned home, it was late and we all went to bed. When we got into bed it was dark in the room...for fear of waking up my son in the crib. Woke up the next morning early and started rushing around to get ready. Put my son on the bed to put on his clothes and a bug crawled out from under where I had set him. I immediately freaked and said to my husband...is that a bed bug? We pulled back the covers and they were EVERYWHERE. Big ones, little ones...it was like nothing I ever would have expected. Even worse, there were both old (dried) and new blood spots on the sheets...that is pretty scary to both of us because we wonder whose blood that is???? There was also bug feces all over the bed skirt and mattress. Had we checked, we wouldn't have missed it. Housekeeping SHOULD have caught it too (which leads me to believe they never did change the sheets in that bed from the last guest). The infestation of that bed was so bad that the bugs didn't even bother hiding because there really wasn't any place!!!

Anyway, we called the front desk and they told us just to throw our clothes in the dryer and someone would be up at some point. We waited for 30 minutes or so (trying to quarantine everyone), and then my husband called and asked for a manager ASAP. He arrived after 1 hour from the original call. He told us that we shouldn't be concerned because it was only in that one bedroom since we didn't see any anywhere else. And I mentioned to him that we had found dead ones on the kitchen floor while we were waiting and that my kids had carried blankets and other stuff between the two rooms. He claimed that wouldn't be a problem and that we could take anything that wasn't a food source for them like our electronics and that they'd take all of our clothes and wash/dry them for us. He said that everything else needed to stay in the room to be treated. They did give us some replacement diapers/wipes, some food credits for the restaurant, and a rental stroller because we couldn't take any of it. They said they'd get us a new room and we'd have our clothes once we returned, which they did. Then they told us that the place would be heat treated the next day so we'd have to wait on everything else. Well they did heat treat, but only the one bedroom...not the kitchen and not the living area. Further more, they never moved our belongings into the bedroom where they treated stuff so some stuff never got treated and sat there for 24 hours in an infested room. Upon talking to a person who has experience treating bed bugs when I arrived home, I found out that they gave us serious misinformation and did not treat the room as they should have. Given what we told them...the WHOLE condo should have been treated. Aside from our luggage, they left everything out in the main room and never treated it. So, we traveled home with belongings that were never treated...because they said since they weren't by food sources we shouldn't worry. Wrong...too bad I didn't know all this then. I've tried quarantining stuff in our garage, but now I freaked that we'll have them in our home. I did find eggs on the outside of my purse, which never came in the house, but it rode in the van all the way home. So every morning and evening we check out beds and I even wake up in the middle of the night to check my bed. It really is mentally damaging when something like this happens to you.

Oh and the manager told us we would see bites in about 2 days...we didn't see any bites and we were hopeful that we didn't have many or didn't react. Wrong again...on the way home (9 days later) we developed large welts all over. My husband's were mostly on his back and stomach. Mine were on my stomach, back, face, neck, hands and legs. They are so itchy it is unbearable. The welts turned into a bunch of tiny bites in clusters. I stopped counting at 100...and that's just on me. It has now been two weeks and I'm still itching and I have scabs everywhere. I will only wear long sleeves out, and for the 1st week I rarely went out because my face looked like I had pox. I cried yesterday because the stress of continually checking and hoping you didn't bring them home is terrible.

Anyway, I KNOW this can happen anywhere, and I still think BC is a nice place to stay. However, it is unforgiveable that we slept in a dirty bed that obviously had never had the sheets changed. Furthermore, the misinformation that they gave us isn't right either. They've dealt with this many times, I'm sure, and they should give the right information.

Learn from my mistake...check and double check everything. You CAN see bed bugs...even the little ones. Don't take anything in the room until you do. If you have to do something to remind yourself...make a check-list...which we should have since we so easily get distracted with the kids. Lastly, no need to worry about it and let it ruin your trip, but know your information about these bugs before you ever leave. Had I done a simple check, I would have saved myself a whole lot of stress and trouble.

I post this here because if you stay and BC and encounter this issue, please make sure they treat EVERYTHING so that you don't take it home. Because of this...I'm not sure we'll be taking any vacations for a LONG while...I'm way too paranoid.

Please put this on Trip Advisor, Yelp and any other site that publicizes these things. YOu were not treated correctly. This happened to my cousin and his kids at another hotel and not only did they comp him the stay at a different hotel they gave him equal time for another visit at the same chain. This is beyond acceptable and I would have contacted the health dept and the corporate office during my stay. I check but now I am going to check more thouroughly. Why does housekeeping not pick up on this stuff? How could there be blood on the sheets if they were changed? That in it self scares me.
It is not too late, contact the corporate office at Wyndham and let them know about this. Someone's head should roll.
 
I know this wasn't OPs original intention but I can't help but shy away from this resort now. Honestly it's not only because of the bedbugs. Yes maybe it was a random case. But the way OP was treated in this situation and that is wasn't taken 100% seriously just makes me feel that management could care less about their clients. That is not a place I would like to give our hard earned money to.

Um, not random. Seems they have had a decent amount of reported cases via bedbug registry last Oct/Nov in several towers.

I do not blame you for not staying there. Management did not treat the rooms correctly...and obviously did not care about the safety of the OP...
 
Please put this on Trip Advisor, Yelp and any other site that publicizes these things. YOu were not treated correctly. This happened to my cousin and his kids at another hotel and not only did they comp him the stay at a different hotel they gave him equal time for another visit at the same chain. This is beyond acceptable and I would have contacted the health dept and the corporate office during my stay. I check but now I am going to check more thouroughly. Why does housekeeping not pick up on this stuff? How could there be blood on the sheets if they were changed? That in it self scares me.
It is not too late, contact the corporate office at Wyndham and let them know about this. Someone's head should roll.

This!
 
I dealt with bed bugs in my first NYC apartment 5 years ago now. I luckily moved out and cleaned everything. However I didn't know they could get into things like bags and computers and such. I ended up quarantining my non-washables for a year so that I didn't get them or spread them.

I don't want to scare you but in the terrible event you realize they are in your home don't waste your money on treatments that won't work. The only proven method is to heat treat the entire home. It can be costly but at the end of the day when you realize that constantly paying someone to spray toxic chemicals around your kids that may not even work on bed bugs isn't worth it plus it all adds up the one heat treatment that kills everything is worth it for piece of mind. I believe the information that the NYC board of health puts out says they must be heated to 120 or higher so most companies get the house up to 150 for an hour or longer. It will kill anything that might be hiding in the nooks and crannies that spraying won't get.
 
Please put this on Trip Advisor, Yelp and any other site that publicizes these things. YOu were not treated correctly. This happened to my cousin and his kids at another hotel and not only did they comp him the stay at a different hotel they gave him equal time for another visit at the same chain. This is beyond acceptable and I would have contacted the health dept and the corporate office during my stay. I check but now I am going to check more thouroughly. Why does housekeeping not pick up on this stuff? How could there be blood on the sheets if they were changed? That in it self scares me.
It is not too late, contact the corporate office at Wyndham and let them know about this. Someone's head should roll.

OP should definitely contact Wyndham corporate about this and give them this link. I can't speak for the general manager at WBC, but it's difficult to get the front desk staff to even answer the phone.
 
I am now completely freaking out. We booked through VS just a day or two before this thread started and I don't think we can cancel without losing our deposit. I was so excited to stay here and now I feel sick to my stomach. don't know what to do.
 
I just wanted to update that I have sent an email to the Health Department and posted a review to Trip Advisor. We have contacted management, but we have not heard anything back at this point. Thank you for those suggestions. I hope I can prevent this happening to future families. I know you can't keep the bed bugs out completely, but you can take steps to insure they're taken care of correctly...as are the hotel guests.
 
Thank you for bringing attention to this issue. I feel like everyone who has a reservation booked there should contact them and whoever they booked through and inquire as to what is being done about the bedbug issue.
Then perhaps they will see that people are seriously concerned and know about the problem. I really wish i knew about this and knew about bedbug registry before i booked. they have reports on there about just about all the towers. ugh.
 

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