AoA - make sure you have "proof"!!!

[jcjen519]

Actually the last time it happened they were not even going to mention that I was downgraded. I was fortunate that I knew which rooms were standard and which ones were preferred. They even argued with me! It is a good thing I always bring my reservation papers with me, or else I would have been totally out of luck. As it was, I had to e-mail Disney once I was home to get the extra fee back. They offered to move me IF a preferred room was to open up. And apparently to them that absolves them of any sort of compensation. I'm also not the only poster who it has happened to either.

Anyway I was just trying to show that not getting the room you booked does happen. And maybe in general it is a rarity, but out of 16 trips to WDW I've had it happen twice. So maybe it is not as rare a thing as we all would like to believe.

that really sucks. we talk about upgrades a lot but i wonder how often this happens.

 

[grkmbee]

Just an FYI: There is/was/could have been a difference between the Nemo and Cars suites. When the summer and late summer discounts became available there were an extremely limited number of Nemo rooms offered (like I called at 7 AM the day the offer came out and there were none available). Because of this, for the strong majority of guests, Cars rooms were gotten at a 15% discount while Nemo had only rack rate. So if the OP did take the Nemo room, she would have gotten it for the (hopefully) discounted price she paid for the Cars room. However, I'm glad everything worked out in the end. The theming is very important to many families, mine included.

 

[ADisneyQueen]

I'm not surprised you had a weird/bad check in at AOA. I was there last week and had the rudest guy that checked me in. The worst was when his nametag fell off and he said "son of a". He was so undisneylike! I wish I would have gotten his name but I was so tired and it was late.

 

[Figee17]

I wasn't thinking about the fact that we DID book the room at a discount. I supposed its possible that they thought they were giving us an "upgrade" by putting us in a Nemo suite when we paid for a discounted Cars suite, but my DS would have been "crushed" (pun intended) if he couldn't stay in the Cars section.
I had proof in an e-mail and my mother had the print out, so we were fine, but I thought it odd that they didn't even try to look up the reservation in the system first? Should they not have that on record?
It all worked out for us, so I can't complain, I just thought it was odd.

As for the pin, I didn't realize it was only required for RFID cards. We have annual passes that are RFID so it makes sense our KTTW cards were only room keys, really.

 

[juliebug1997]

I wasn't thinking about the fact that we DID book the room at a discount. I supposed its possible that they thought they were giving us an "upgrade" by putting us in a Nemo suite when we paid for a discounted Cars suite, but my DS would have been "crushed" (pun intended) if he couldn't stay in the Cars section.
I had proof in an e-mail and my mother had the print out, so we were fine, but I thought it odd that they didn't even try to look up the reservation in the system first? Should they not have that on record?
It all worked out for us, so I can't complain, I just thought it was odd.

As for the pin, I didn't realize it was only required for RFID cards. We have annual passes that are RFID so it makes sense our KTTW cards were only room keys, really.

We booked a king room at POR on our last week long trip. I arrived before DH and checked in and was offered a great room on the 3rd floor with two double beds (not all the rooms had two queens just yet). I said, "No, we paid for a king and we'd like to be on the first floor." She dug around and did find it, but I think she thought she was doing me a favor by giving me something close to the main building. However, we paid an additional $20-30 a night for that king bed.

 

[toystorymom]

We stayed at AoA in July and at checkin were never asked/told anything about setting up a PIN number though we had charging privileges on our cards. Well, when we were buying lunch at Cosmic Rays they asked me to punch in my pin. Huh? I didn't have a picture ID on me, I had 4 kids in tow, trays of food, and a Long line behind me! They finally took my word for it and let the charge go through, but it was chaotic. I couldn't charge anything for the rest of the day at. MK either.

The CM at checkin really should have known to explain this, especially since we discussed charging privileges on each card.

 

[bumbershoot]

As for the pin, I didn't realize it was only required for RFID cards. We have annual passes that are RFID so it makes sense our KTTW cards were only room keys, really.

I'm pretty sure that ALL of the KTTW cards are now RFID, so you should have a pin set up for charging. Now whether it works or not is another story.