I think mainly they are counting on the fact that we all have precious little vacation time - and it is so very precious, considering the costs at Disney! - and most of us are not willing to spend a huge chunk of that time waiting around to talk to a manager (who will probably not be helpful anyway.)
I wanted to let you know that if you dial the hotel directly or even if you're staying in the hotel and dial the front desk, you get a call board. Most of the time, they don't know the correct information.
Next time, fax the info to the hotel. You might get better results. BTW, I have a thread right now about less than magical CMs. The bad service is rampant.
I doubt that calling or faxing would have any effect whatsoever. In the past several years, as service has gotten gradually worse and cost-cutting measures have become more and more noticeable, I have felt at OKW that if we are unfortunate enough to come in on a late plane, we do not get our requests filled, as they seem to assign rooms "first come, first served" instead of having someone look over the upcoming requests and try to match them up. Whoever answers your phone call or fax might possibly make promises, but probably would not be the one deciding where to assign you on your arrival day. The only room that matched our requests recently was one that we lucked into when we moved from a room that we had been assigned but that was reeking with smoke.
I have pretty much given up on expecting my requests to be met, which is probably their goal, to wear us down until we stop asking for what they are unwilling to provide, servicewise. The thing is, before we joined DVC 10 years ago, I never would have thought of making special requests, but they used to encourage us to do it as part of our magical Disney experience.
On the plus side, in the past couple of years we have not had as bad a room assignment as that time they actually booked us into a building that was under construction (and therefore nowhere to park close by, when close parking is one of the main reasons we choose OKW! They didn't care that I had trouble walking), they were trying to paint our room while we were in it, they refused to move us, and they did not even apologize. (This was the first time we encountered the "bad attitude" CMs.) Then there were the many times we had to wait for
hours (while being exhausted from having spent the previous 16+ hours traveling there) to get things repaired like major leaks in the appliances, hundreds of bugs in the curtains, and several jacuzzi jets not working - btw, I stopped calling about that particular problem after I saw the maintenance guy step into the tub with his dirty work boots on and not try to clean out the tub afterward - until I pointed it out, at which point he grabbed one of our towels to swipe at the tub (!!!) and then did not offer to replace it, so we were left having to launder the towel and/or wait for housekeeping to deliver a new one before I could clean up from our long journey (I have this thing about not wanting to be in the tub or shower when someone comes to the door).
Thanks for starting this thread where we can vent!
