$500 a night and no running water. Updated with news on page 5

[PHXscuba]

We got in later than planned (car trouble) at the PPH in June and found out that the hot water heater was being serviced from 9 p.m. until 4:30 a.m. It was after 10 p.m., we had been stranded in the 110-degree desert for 3 hours waiting for a tow truck, and now we had no realistic way to clean up. The PPH did offer us a room credit, and there was a letter in our room when we trudged upstairs:



The letter did us no good as we got there after they shut it off.

I think there should be a way to turn off hot water or water to only parts of the hotel at a time. That way anyone inconvenienced (like the OP) could at least have a short-term courtesy room to shower in. I can't imagine how hard it is to do maintenance doing everything 24/7, but it seems like you'd want to plan some redundancies that could cover while you serviced equipment or it broke down.

PHXscuba

 

[Dentam]

What a horrible experience! What if you needed to use the toilet suddenly between 1-5am that night because Mother Nature suddenly called? A bottle of water wouldn't fix that!

You would wait to flush until the water was back on. It's not like you'd be forced to go on the carpet or something.

 

[5forMickey]

You would wait to flush until the water was back on.

That's what we have to do at work or home when the water is turned off (see it happens everywhere). And as funny as it sounds, a bucket of water dumped in the toilet will actually flush it -- just saying

 

[Sherry E]

You would wait to flush until the water was back on. It's not like you'd be forced to go on the carpet or something.

True. I know what you mean -- but that's just gross. They're not living on "Survivor" island, or staying in some antiquated sort of cheap motel. They're staying at the Grand Californian Hotel. They should be able to flush a toilet at any time of the day or night! (When I stay onsite, often times I am awake before 5 a.m., and I need a bathroom.) The need for a bathroom is something that might not be able to 'hold' until the guest crossed the street to get to the PPH.

 

[VandVsmama]

You would wait to flush until the water was back on. It's not like you'd be forced to go on the carpet or something.

Ok, good point. But....

(how to put this delicately?)

What if you had eaten something that did not agree with you or if you had a sudden case of a copious amount of #2 exiting one's rear end with or without projectile vomiting?

That would be a very miserable 4 hours. Very icky. I can see why the OP was upset. I would have been, too!

** Edited to add **
Consider this...
You're spending $500/night to stay at the fanciest hotel on site. And you have 1 of the following:

• Crohn's Disease
• Celiac Disease - and you'd just returned to your room after a late night in the parks only to discover that now your stomach is VERY upset because you inadvertently consumed something with gluten in it due to cross-contamination
• You have a colostomy bag that you need to change regularly in the middle of the night and you need access to clean running water (and alcohol-based hand sanitizer isn't enough)
• You're a cancer patient on chemotherapy drugs and this is your "last hoorah" trip to Disneyland and the chemo drugs do a number on your GI tract
• Your doctor has you on a new medication for something that has a negative side effect that involves access to a flushing toilet at night.

 

[Dentam]

I don't disagree with any of you - $500 is more than I've ever spent on a hotel room for a night and if I was really ill and couldn't flush it would for sure be unpleasant. It just wouldn't be the end of the world, that's all.

Like I said before, the hotel should have phoned, left phone messages, told people at check-in and given out letters. They should have covered all of their bases so that people who had any of the ailments listed above could make alternate plans to stay elsewhere if needed with plenty of notice to do so.

 

[kylie71]

I don't disagree with any of you - $500 is more than I've ever spent on a hotel room for a night and if I was really ill and couldn't flush it would for sure be unpleasant. It just wouldn't be the end of the world, that's all.

Like I said before, the hotel should have phoned, left phone messages, told people at check-in and given out letters. They should have covered all of their bases so that people who had any of the ailments listed above could make alternate plans to stay elsewhere if needed with plenty of notice to do so.

Taken it Elsewhere?? After spending $500.00 a night????????
OK- pack up, we are going to the Alpine, their toilets work!

Wow!

--Lori

 

[CAmommy]

I didn't read all of the responses. We had a major problem when we visited a value hotel in Florida for our WDW trip. Our keys didn't work continually the entire stay and my brother's baby was screaming his head off while we dealt with the situation. I was the swueaky wheel and demanded a fix. Finally, after much fighting, they gave us all 1 day park hoppers for free. Trust me, the people at GCH have the ability to comp you in a major way.

 

[MommyJKM]

Ugh I feel like everyone is being REALLY dramatic about a 4 hour water shut-off...maintenance has to happen SOMETIME. We once had a water shut-off at the Majestic in Cannes, France at $3,500/ night and all they gave us was a free breakfast.

But to speculate...what if and be dramatic is really pushing too far. If there was a medical issue I'm sure GCH would have addressed it. Why invent "What Ifs" if they don't apply to you? They offered other showers, they could have also gone to the gym downstairs. Slight inconvenience, but it's not an ongoing problem. If you expect constant perfection because you paid $500 you're going to be really disappointed. If you're budget conscious then stay somewhere where a 4 hour in the middle of the night water shut-off doesn't bother you.

I would have been annoyed, but just showered and gone to bed and enjoyed my breakfast the next day. BTW- this is not directed at the OP who seems to have gotten over it.

 

[Sherry E]

Ugh I feel like everyone is being REALLY dramatic about a 4 hour water shut-off...maintenance has to happen SOMETIME. We once had a water shut-off at the Majestic in Cannes, France at $3,500/ night and all they gave us was a free breakfast.

But to speculate...what if and be dramatic is really pushing too far. If there was a medical issue I'm sure GCH would have addressed it. Why invent "What Ifs" if they don't apply to you? They offered other showers, they could have also gone to the gym downstairs. Slight inconvenience, but it's not an ongoing problem. If you expect constant perfection because you paid $500 you're going to be really disappointed. If you're budget conscious then stay somewhere where a 4 hour in the middle of the night water shut-off doesn't bother you.

I would have been annoyed, but just showered and gone to bed and enjoyed my breakfast the next day. BTW- this is not directed at the OP who seems to have gotten over it.

People are expressing themselves, on either side of the issue. No one is being too dramatic, so it wasn't even really necessary to make that comment -- was it? Sometimes people are being funny, or trying to be, and it comes across as something that is dramatic. I don't think anyone here is legitimately upset on a personal level -- just expressing themselves in a thread that was posted to complain about the issue at hand.

 

[MommyJKM]

People are expressing themselves, on either side of the issue. No one is being too dramatic, so it wasn't even really necessary to make that comment -- was it? Sometimes people are being funny, or trying to be, and it comes across as something that is dramatic. I don't think anyone here is legitimately upset on a personal level -- just expressing themselves in a thread that was posted to complain about the issue at hand.

While I appreciate your thoughts, I DID feel it necessary because I think this is PRETTY dang DRAMATIC, Sherry! You liked it so you saw it before you responded to me, it seems odd you felt the need to "chide" me.

Consider this...
You're spending $500/night to stay at the fanciest hotel on site. And you have 1 of the following:

• Crohn's Disease
• Celiac Disease - and you'd just returned to your room after a late night in the parks only to discover that now your stomach is VERY upset because you inadvertently consumed something with gluten in it due to cross-contamination
• You have a colostomy bag that you need to change regularly in the middle of the night and you need access to clean running water (and alcohol-based hand sanitizer isn't enough)
• You're a cancer patient on chemotherapy drugs and this is your "last hoorah" trip to Disneyland and the chemo drugs do a number on your GI tract
• Your doctor has you on a new medication for something that has a negative side effect that involves access to a flushing toilet at night.

 

[5forMickey]

Ok, good point. But....

(how to put this delicately?)

You're spending $500/night to stay at the fanciest hotel on site. And you have 1 of the following:

• Crohn's Disease
• Celiac Disease - and you'd just returned to your room after a late night in the parks only to discover that now your stomach is VERY upset because you inadvertently consumed something with gluten in it due to cross-contamination
• You have a colostomy bag that you need to change regularly in the middle of the night and you need access to clean running water (and alcohol-based hand sanitizer isn't enough)
• You're a cancer patient on chemotherapy drugs and this is your "last hoorah" trip to Disneyland and the chemo drugs do a number on your GI tract
• Your doctor has you on a new medication for something that has a negative side effect that involves access to a flushing toilet at night.

I'm going to go back to my original thought.....I'm sure if any of that were the case, the Hotel would have taken care of it. I'm often times not the easiest traveler to please, and I know that the Grand does everything they can to make sure their guests are happy and taken care of. It would be really bad if any of the above happened when the water was off, and if that was the case, I'm sure a phone call to the front desk and they would have done something -- and I'm really not be snarky when I say if you use a bucket of water it will flush the toilet so as terrible as it might be, you could empty some water bottles.

 

[Sherry E]

While I appreciate your thoughts, I DID feel it necessary because I think this is PRETTY dang DRAMATIC, Sherry! You liked it so you saw it before you responded to me, it seems odd you felt the need to "chide" me.

Liked what? Someone else's post? I do that all the time. It's a polite thing to do, and there are lots of statements within posts that people make which I agree with, even if not the entire thing.

 

[kylie71]

I sometimes wish we had a "dislike Button".....

 

[lurkergirl]

Inconvenient, but it does happen. These hotels have a high-occupancy rate and work still needs to get done. I've had to get up hours before my early morning flight at the Boardwalk to get ready because we got a letter about cutting the electricity - turns out it didn't go out in our room, but they couldn't tell us which rooms would be without.

I've had much worse issues in Disney hotels (including the last trip at the Wilderness Lodge that featured a smoke detector ripped off the wall and hanging from wires, covered by a park map...and a toilet that didn't work - ask yourself how housekeeping missed both of those issues?).

It honestly never occurred to me to seek some compensation in any of these (and other) cases, I just wanted to make sure that issues were dealt with.

 

[AustinTink]

Absolutely. It's directly across the street. Easy peasy!

It didn't feel easy peasy at 1:30 in the morning after walking for 12 hours in the heat. Mid-afternoon would have been no problem or "easy peasy" even. 1:30 am is a definite no.

 

[Halloweenqueen]

We stayed at Disneyland back in January and they were working on our elevators. Minor inconvenience until our second night when we returned for a break and found a note from housekeeping that there would be rolling blackouts during the rest of our stay. They left us glow sticks to use during an emergency. I thought they should have told us at check in, before we requested the top floor. We cut short our Trader Sams evening time because we were fearful that we would have to climb 14 flights of stairs. We were there for a convention, with a fantastic rate, so I did not feel it was appropriate to complain. I would have sprinted to the front desk if I was paying rack.

 

[gottalovepluto]

To OP the really sad part is that this happens so often at GCH that I had to reread the date to see if this was a current post. It happened to us on one night a couple stays back. 5 people using one can't flush it toilet for the night is not sanitary. I'm shocked Orange County Health Department hasn't fined them egregious sums of money because there must be some health code they are violating with the water nonsense. Well, I don't know if that's even possible but I wish it could be! It's ridiculous that you're shocking experience is par for the course at that hotel.

 

[Sherry E]

Inconvenient, but it does happen. These hotels have a high-occupancy rate and work still needs to get done. I've had to get up hours before my early morning flight at the Boardwalk to get ready because we got a letter about cutting the electricity - turns out it didn't go out in our room, but they couldn't tell us which rooms would be without.

I've had much worse issues in Disney hotels (including the last trip at the Wilderness Lodge that featured a smoke detector ripped off the wall and hanging from wires, covered by a park map...and a toilet that didn't work - ask yourself how housekeeping missed both of those issues?).

It honestly never occurred to me to seek some compensation in any of these (and other) cases, I just wanted to make sure that issues were dealt with.

You know, this actually reminds me of something I saw on Facebook the other day. It has to do with the Candy Cane Inn (not a water issue, but another issue which I will explain), and I wonder what you (and anyone else here) think of it.

On the Candy Cane Inn page on Facebook, in the posts on the left-hand side of the page, a woman wrote a long, angry review. From what I could gather, it sounds as if she and her husband booked a room for some time away from the kids. It doesn't sound as if she had the Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door. Apparently, in the morning (before check-out), the maid came to the door, briefly knocking and then opening the door to enter the room. The woman/guest of CCI said that she stood there, half-dressed, watching as the maid walked into the room. She said she explained to the maid why she and her husband were there (which shouldn't have been an issue), and that the maid reminded her that there should have been a DND sign hanging on the door.

I agree with the maid -- there should have been a DND sign on the door. And I agree with the guest, that the maid should have knocked more than she actually did. At the end of the day, it seems like it was an unfortunate, embarrassing mishap -- something that could probably even be laughed about later on down the line. The guest who wrote the review, however, is not letting it go. She has tried and tried and tried and tried to get restitution for this episode. It sounds like CCI said they would make it right, and now are either avoiding her or just not giving the responses she wants. (Go to the Candy Cane Inn Facebook page to read the entire story -- it's quite lengthy.)

So, in that particular case -- seeing that it was just a wacky mishap and no one was harmed, or left with an unsanitary situation, or burdened with extra financial expense -- I think that seeking restitution is probably a bit extreme. And, in fact, if I had been the guest who was walked in on, I probably wouldn't want to draw more attention to myself with the CCI people, so they could all snicker every time I wrote in and say, "Oh, there's the half-naked lady again." I don't know for sure what I would do, but I think I would probably just want to drop it and never return to CCI!

What does anyone else think about that scenario?

 

[Dentam]

Taken it Elsewhere?? After spending $500.00 a night????????

No... they would have the option of canceling their stay if they were notified in advance of the scheduled maintenance. Therefore they would not be paying the $500.