All right, Thanlsgiving week group....WE'RE DOWN TO THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!!

[JadeDarkstar]

man i am sorry for all you'll problems and pray we dont have any of those. hope you find a better hotel and I wont stay there ty for the report.

 

[Raidermouse]

I see now, man that must have been frustrating.I don't know if I could shrug off that many instances.One or two things but you had a quite a few, I fell bad for you guys.Glad you made the best of it.Well I said I had more on my last post and here it is.First of it's all about me We get there and have a great Sat-Tues til noon I felt a little ill.By 3pm I am at a 103 temp with the stomach flu going til check out the next morning.Sorry for the details to the week tummies out there.So the next leg of our trip is to Carlsbad to stay at my sister-in-laws til Friday but I can't with the flu so I am go to a hotel down the street.There was to be 10 of us all together in that house 4 being kids and did not want to get them sick too.Well it doesn't end there.I try to rest not realizing I am dehydrated and now have strep throat on top of all. Next morning I find myself in a clinic "full on strep" hooked up to IV fluids with a anti-biotic booster and a steroid shot to open up my throat! Can you tell I am one for drama?Finally I recover by the next morning,Friday,just to come home.Other than the check ups it's miserable spending a holiday sick in a hotel room alone I almost can imagine what someone less fortunate that is not there by choice would feel like, i.e. without a family, homeless etc.
I can still say it was a great trip.Maybe someone can read this and say "Glad I wasn't that guy" That's enough from me.Next trip is 6/08 WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas

 

[Vanvmom]

RaiderMouse... WOW what a trip! You weren't alone with the stomach bug. My oldest DS woke up Tuesday night with a 24 hr. bug (lucky me... I got to clean up). I spent most of Wed. in the hotel room with him, then DH took the afternoon shift. Luckily by evening he was fine. He thought it was food related, but all of us ate the same foods on Tuesday. Yuck about the strep thing, that sounds worse than we've had in the past. Normally oldest DS comes home from our DL trip with full strep a day or so after we get back. So far so good this trip... he's been home two days and still okay.

Hope you are feeling better soon.

 

[kelmac284]

That is funny you mention the trouble you had with towels and such at Carousel. We had the SAME problems at the Del Sol. Unfortunately we were already booked AND fully paid for our trip this week or I would have switched. We booked with Getaway Today and to switch hotels it is 25 bucks and then to upgrade to a different hotel would have cost MORE than what I paid for the orig room so I didn't want to spend the money. The Del Sol is older and not that great. The room was not filthy but def not super clean and the bathroom was so small you could barely shut the door to use the toilet. Then we had the SAME problem. They kept taking our towel each day and NOT giving us new ones. And we had 5 people and it was OBVIOUS cuz we DID have a rollaway and those rooms really aren't made for them as it was REALLY crowded with it and yet they not only didn't give us enough towels back they didn't give us ANY. In fact one day they left us with no toilet paper.

I think all these maids must be told to be on the strict side or something. SHEESH!

I didn't want to stay there again but as I said it was not worth spending double what I had already paid to move and since we will only be there for a few days and since my daughter is staying in my mom's room this time we are going to deal with it but I won't be staying there again.

We are staying at the Desert Inn in Feb in a Suite so I will be curious how that fares. I haven't stayed there since 2000. I am thinking about trying the Tropicana or the Camelot. We really like the Staybridge Suites and Embassy Suites for the rooms and the breakfast. I just wish they had the great location of the ones on Harbor but I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

[kiwitravel]

samkj - closer is great, but don't do the Carousel... it didn't cost much, but it wasn't worth much either. Fairfield Inn was okay back in 2001, but I wouldn't stay there again during Thanksgiving week - housekeeping had Thanksgiving and the day after off, so we had no housekeeping services those days. We tried Park Vue in 2002, and it was worse than the Carousel. In all our trips, the best non suite hotel (that has rooms big enough for 5 people) that we've stayed at close by is the Candy Cane.

We stayed at the Carousel last year and had a really good stay, we had friends who stayed down the road at the Candy Cane (because of good TA reviews) and hated it... Have to say our room at the Carousel was much bigger than theirs at the CCI, I don't know how you would fit 5 people in one of those rooms. The thing with hotels, they are only as good as their last visit, staff and management changes can have a big affect on service.

 

[Vanvmom]

We've always gotten the deluxe room at the Candy Cane and had plenty of room. I think Carousel just tried to put too much stuff in the room. The armoire with the TV, drawers, Microwave and fridge was fine but large. They had a chair over by the in-wall AC, plus they had a small table with 2 armchairs at it. We had to put one of the armchairs in the closet to have room for all 4 suitcases - there would have been no room to unpack these suitcases into the drawers.

 

[samkj]

We had the 2 room/2 bath suite at the Carousel for the five of us so we had no problem with the size of the rooms. My big issue was the elevator waits. It was almost impossible to catch in the morning, and since my daughter uses a wheelchair, the stairs weren't an option. Then again we had the same elevator issue at the PPH, in the mornings, so its not something limited to the Harbor motels!

 

[Vanvmom]

We had the 2 room/2 bath suite at the Carousel for the five of us so we had no problem with the size of the rooms. My big issue was the elevator waits. It was almost impossible to catch in the morning, and since my daughter uses a wheelchair, the stairs weren't an option. Then again we had the same elevator issue at the PPH, in the mornings, so its not something limited to the Harbor motels!

I'm SO glad your room was big enough. There is NO way that our room would have been considered wheelchair accessible. I've got to add, the elevator by our room was a bit freaky. One evening we walked up to it and it opened - no buttons having been pushed, and no one got out (we felt like we had our own little possessed elevator). We got a lot of laughs at the sign inside that reads "max occupancy: 13 people." Those must have been the same small 13 people that the Small World boats were designed for.

 

[PrincessKell]

HI everyone we are back! We had a great time. We got back last night. Boy the ride home was awful. I 5 was jam packed. We figured it would be slow but not stop and go slow the whole way home. It took us 11 hrs. It normally should have taking 6.5 to 7.5 hours.

We got down there wednesday morning at 4:45am. We were all sooo excited that we couldnt sleep. We hit California that day. Then DL for the rest of our trip. Crowds weren't bad wednesday or Thursday, but friday night and saturday all day there were A LOT of folks. Which we expected. We did encounter more then a few rude people, which kind of shocked me. and lots of unruley kids. There were a few times where they nearly knocked Georgia out of her stroller. Our photopass is missing our pictures in front of the Christmas tree which makes me really upset...
But other than all that. We had a GREAT time. I will do a full trip report when I get the pictures from our camera loaded to the computer.

hahaha DH is already saying he wants to plan another trip. Little does he know I had started planning before we even left home for this one!

 

[Tink208]

Hmmm, we had some issues with the housekeeping at the DLH last week, too. One day it looked like they had been called away in mid-clean. The beds were made, and the dirty towels were gone, but no new towels had been added, and we even found a dustcloth on the table between the beds.

I also had to laugh because this was the first time I was there with four people in the room, and we ended up with a smaller room than either of the two times I was there with just my older son. We were in the Dream tower and had a pool view...but we were only on the second floor and could hear everyone walking by outside. Very late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, a group of rowdy young adults started whooping and hollering right below our window.

But, otherwise we had a great trip! I can't wait to go back...I just don't know when it will be.