There were 3 CMs there. I can understand if one is having a bad day, or is new, but all three of them! And my purpose of the thread wasn't to complain here, it was really to find out if anyone had had a bad experience and if a CM had made it better. That got a little... derailed.
Hi Ginny,
I'm sorry about your experience! Not the most magical way to introduce a child to Disney, that's for sure.
FWIW I didn't see any entitlement in any of your posts, in fact to me they seemed very much NOT entitled. You didn't express any expectation of being GIVEN something, you expressed some desire for the CM's to have DONE something. And your three-year-old sounds like a normal three-year-old, too.
Finally, I think it is totally normal to start a thread like this asking for other folks' experiences.
______________________
To answer the actual question...
My dd's first trip to Disney was in 2009, at age five years old. We arrived in the afternoon and went to MK for the evening.
Early in the evening I bought her a Tinkerbell light-up toy from one of the cart vendors. $15 or so. Other places, I'd have refused to spend that on a glow toy... but we were at Disney, and I figured a week of spoiling dd was okay.
So she got her toy and within a half hour, she dropped it on the pavement and it broke. She was disappointed. Not tantruming, but disappointed.
It occurred to me that maybe the vendor who'd sold it could tell us how to fix it. (It wasn't shattered, it was just the battery cover had come off and when I tried to put it back together, it wouldn't light up. It did look like something that might have a "trick" to it in terms of fixing it.)
We were close to the vendor, so we walked over. I told the CM what had happened and started to ask if she knew of any way to fix it, but she just smiled, took the broken toy, handed us a brand new one, and refused any payment.
The look on dd's face was PRICELESS. We made sure to say many thank yous.
In that moment, in my daughter's first hours ever in Disney World, that one CM made me a loyal customer. We went on that trip thinking it would be years, if ever, before going back. I grew up with day-trips to DL, but living in Pennsylvania now, regular trips to Disney World just weren't on my radar.
But that was 2009, and in 2010 when my sister and I wanted a vacation together (just us), we chose Disney World. And in 2011 when I was in Orlando for a work conference, I had to stop into MK. And now in 2012, I'm taking my daughter back again....
...while trying to figure out how to get us back in 2013 for the new Fantasyland.
And yes, that $15 glow toy is an integral part of that. It set the stage for me in how I think about the place. Even thinking about it now, I get a smile on my face and swelling of appreciation for that CM.
P.S. We still have that toy, it still lights up, and dd still plays with it and remembers the kindness of that CM.
Dd and her magical glow toy...
Tinkerbell Aglow by
nicole_lynn_, on Flickr
