Just wanted to share my experience with online check in.
Our recent trip had two reservations for the week - the first two nights in a Fort Wilderness cabin and the final five nights at Kidani Village. I had checked in for both before we left home and, ultimately, the actual checkin actually worked fine.
However, on our first night, when I went to pick up our stuff for Fort Wilderness, I encountered a problem (or, rather, was impacted by someone else's problem) which made the process take much longer than it should have. When I got to the "front desk" at Fort Wilderness, I looked for the sign designating the counter for guests who had checked in online. I was happy to see a single guest at that counter, while 6 or seven families waited in line to be served by the other 3 guest service counters. The one person at the online checkin counter, though, was not an online checkin guest, but was a guest who was in the midst of a spat with the front desk cast members. Apparently, she had arrived a day before her actual reservation date and, was demanding "compensation." As she continued to rant and rave and, eventually, get placed on the phone with a higher up somewhere, I waited patiently for my turn at the desk.
This dragged on long enough for the other desk cast members to process all of the stand by checkin guests, so I jumped the velvet rope into the standby line and a cast member there helped me.
I found it frustrating since there were three cast members standing by, watching the woman with the issue talk on the phone, all of whom saw me standing patiently - the only person - in the online checkin line. Since the checkin paperwork is already put together, it would have taken one cast member all of a minute to get my name, collect my checkin folder and hand it to me, and they could have gone back to standing around watching the other guest have a meltdown. After waiting fifteen minutes or more, I only got service when I took it upon myself to get into the "wrong" line and ask another cast member to help me.
So, online checkin worked fine, but on the night I got there, basic customer service and customer flow skills seemed to be lacking with the cast members on hand.
Checkin at Kidani went smooth as can be, despite us arriving several hours before our scheduled checkin time. Staff there found us an available room with no problem and we were moved in within ten minutes of our arrival (despite the quarter mile walk to the room!).
