Hi,
Just back from doing some work in St. Petersburg, and since I wound up having the last day (9/21) of the trip open, I thought I could nothing better to help our economy than by making a quick trip up to WDW. I chose the Boardwalk because I wanted to grab an ESPN t-shirt as well as lunch (and a beer) at the Big River Grille, which I missed on our trip back in May.
Well, a quick survey of the parking lot told the story: license plates from all over the eastern US and Canada. I counted 9 states east of the Mississippi as well as Ontario and Nova Scotia. The lot I went into (on the right after the main entrance) was about half full; I don't know if that was normal for noon on a Friday, but somehow it just didn't feel right.
Anyway, they are doing a lot of work on the on the right-side exterior of the hotel (is that the hotel or timeshare part?), and I would guess that by the presence of all that scaffolding that those rooms were not in use.
So, I walk out back, and sure enough, it's deserted. Went and grabbed my t-shirt and a mug at the ESPN store, and then walked over to the S/D hotels, as I had never been in those before. The Swan lobby resembled a ghost town, and the Dolphin wasn't much better.
Now back to lunch at Big River Grille. I walked in at 11:55am--yes that's right, I'm the only customer there! Only two servers and one bartender, Oliver, on. I got to talking with Oliver, mostly about sports but we also touched on business at WDW. He told me that on Tuesday last week, they were so slow that he wound up doing the entire lunch shift by himself--no other servers, busers, etc. Just him. And he only did about $500 in sales, which is just a ridiculously small amount. By the time I left, there were a few other people at the bar and 3 or 4 tables going as well.
Incidentally, both flights between Boston and Tampa were about 1/3 full, as I'm sure you all must know by now. I got very lucky getting to the Delta ticket counter line in Boston, as there was no one in line, and I just had to wait a minute for an agent to free up. However, their computer randomly picked me for a manual luggage search, so I was sent over to a make-shift room to the side of the counter, where people were asked to open up their luggage so the security people could go through it. Once it was complete, they tagged it and handed it off to a baggage handler. The whole process took about 30 minutes, 28 of which was spent waiting in the baggage check line.
Just back from doing some work in St. Petersburg, and since I wound up having the last day (9/21) of the trip open, I thought I could nothing better to help our economy than by making a quick trip up to WDW. I chose the Boardwalk because I wanted to grab an ESPN t-shirt as well as lunch (and a beer) at the Big River Grille, which I missed on our trip back in May.
Well, a quick survey of the parking lot told the story: license plates from all over the eastern US and Canada. I counted 9 states east of the Mississippi as well as Ontario and Nova Scotia. The lot I went into (on the right after the main entrance) was about half full; I don't know if that was normal for noon on a Friday, but somehow it just didn't feel right.
Anyway, they are doing a lot of work on the on the right-side exterior of the hotel (is that the hotel or timeshare part?), and I would guess that by the presence of all that scaffolding that those rooms were not in use.
So, I walk out back, and sure enough, it's deserted. Went and grabbed my t-shirt and a mug at the ESPN store, and then walked over to the S/D hotels, as I had never been in those before. The Swan lobby resembled a ghost town, and the Dolphin wasn't much better.
Now back to lunch at Big River Grille. I walked in at 11:55am--yes that's right, I'm the only customer there! Only two servers and one bartender, Oliver, on. I got to talking with Oliver, mostly about sports but we also touched on business at WDW. He told me that on Tuesday last week, they were so slow that he wound up doing the entire lunch shift by himself--no other servers, busers, etc. Just him. And he only did about $500 in sales, which is just a ridiculously small amount. By the time I left, there were a few other people at the bar and 3 or 4 tables going as well.
Incidentally, both flights between Boston and Tampa were about 1/3 full, as I'm sure you all must know by now. I got very lucky getting to the Delta ticket counter line in Boston, as there was no one in line, and I just had to wait a minute for an agent to free up. However, their computer randomly picked me for a manual luggage search, so I was sent over to a make-shift room to the side of the counter, where people were asked to open up their luggage so the security people could go through it. Once it was complete, they tagged it and handed it off to a baggage handler. The whole process took about 30 minutes, 28 of which was spent waiting in the baggage check line.
