I recently completed my first time staying at the DVC Bay Lake Tower at Disney's Contemporary Resort and I have a to say I was a little underwhelmed. I'm hopping this isn't the norm for them so I thought I'd post and maybe hear other peoples experiences there.
My partner and I booked the stay months ago using our points for a studio room for our 2 year wedding anniversary and I had been nothing but excited for it. We made reservations to check in on our anniversary - December 12th - and to have dinner that night at the California Grill to kick off our weekend. Check in went fine - the cast members were pleasant and efficient at the front desk. We made our way up to our room which was on the second floor, no big deal we didn't particularly care as we weren't going to be hanging out in the room 24/7. When we got to our room it smelled a little musty so I opened the sliding glass doors. Afterwards we started looking around the room and it just looked... yucky. It was super dusty, the furniture had stains on it, the TV had finger prints all over it.... it was really a deflater after all the excitement pre-trip. We didn't really have time to look around too closely because we had to make our way to dinner - which was amazing, no complaints there!
When we got back in to the room we were both really tired and ready to get in to bed, we had both worked that morning (we are locals) and full from dinner and decided to turn in. While getting ready for bed I really started to look around our studio room and am so glad I did! I found the kitchen counters dirty, the bathroom was clean - you could smell the bleach and the towels smelled clean. The carpet everywhere else was a little dirty and when I opened the closet I found a bunch of beads in the floor. When I sat down on the side of the bed closest to the wall I noticed it looked like someone had spilled something and neglected to clean it up - big splatter and streaks running to the floor. THAT was the final straw for myself but it really hit a boiling point when my partner found peanuts in the floor and in the bed. DONE! I announced we were going home. We grabbed our essentials, locked up our suitcase leaving it on the luggage rack and made our way to the front desk. We encountered a young female cast member and what I'm guessing was the guest services manager down there talking. I politely told them that we were going home, our room was very dirty and it was our wedding anniversary and we just wanted to have a pleasant evening together and were very tired. We had breakfast reservations for Chef Mickey's the next morning so we would be returning but didn't want to wait for someone to clean our room that night - we just wanted to go home and salvage our evening and be comfortable. The cast members were mortified of the details I told them and very apologetic. They refunded our vacation points for that night, offered to move us to closer in on property (HOW?! We were at the Contemporary for goodness sake - I was too tired to probe this option and really wanted to try and salvage our stay there. It was the last on my bucket list!) Offered to refund our dinner costs, and said they would do a VIP cleaning on the room. We thanked them and politely declined the dinner refund - it wasn't the restaurants fault and we hate someone else losing money over another mistake. We thanked them for the points refund and said we will be back in the morning.
The next day we came back and went straight to our room. It was clean! Apparently a VIP clean means that they do little touches like tie the dish towel in a minnie bow, and replace all the furniture with a stain with brand new. No really, we spent 5 minutes staring at the couch trying to decide if it was a new couch (it was! the couch was orange the day before and khaki the next) Unfortunately the TV was till dirty and they did not dust and missed dirt around the bed. We decided to go to Magic Kingdom and enjoy our lunch reservations at BOG and try to walk off the mild disappointment. Nothing like some Mickey Mouse time to fix this! Unfortunately we came back to the room and still were unhappy so we checked out early. The cast members were again really apologetic and offered to try and do something but I was already turned off the whole thing and just wanted to finish my anniversary weekend back at home. If I'm going to be in a dusty place it might as well be my living room!
Other DVC'rs - have you used your points to stay at Bay Lake recently and what type of experience did you have? Word of mouth among my Disney obsessed family and friends who've stayed there is that they really weren't too impressed either, but I feel like this experience has to be out of the norm - right or wrong?
-Windless Sails LillyKate
My partner and I booked the stay months ago using our points for a studio room for our 2 year wedding anniversary and I had been nothing but excited for it. We made reservations to check in on our anniversary - December 12th - and to have dinner that night at the California Grill to kick off our weekend. Check in went fine - the cast members were pleasant and efficient at the front desk. We made our way up to our room which was on the second floor, no big deal we didn't particularly care as we weren't going to be hanging out in the room 24/7. When we got to our room it smelled a little musty so I opened the sliding glass doors. Afterwards we started looking around the room and it just looked... yucky. It was super dusty, the furniture had stains on it, the TV had finger prints all over it.... it was really a deflater after all the excitement pre-trip. We didn't really have time to look around too closely because we had to make our way to dinner - which was amazing, no complaints there!
When we got back in to the room we were both really tired and ready to get in to bed, we had both worked that morning (we are locals) and full from dinner and decided to turn in. While getting ready for bed I really started to look around our studio room and am so glad I did! I found the kitchen counters dirty, the bathroom was clean - you could smell the bleach and the towels smelled clean. The carpet everywhere else was a little dirty and when I opened the closet I found a bunch of beads in the floor. When I sat down on the side of the bed closest to the wall I noticed it looked like someone had spilled something and neglected to clean it up - big splatter and streaks running to the floor. THAT was the final straw for myself but it really hit a boiling point when my partner found peanuts in the floor and in the bed. DONE! I announced we were going home. We grabbed our essentials, locked up our suitcase leaving it on the luggage rack and made our way to the front desk. We encountered a young female cast member and what I'm guessing was the guest services manager down there talking. I politely told them that we were going home, our room was very dirty and it was our wedding anniversary and we just wanted to have a pleasant evening together and were very tired. We had breakfast reservations for Chef Mickey's the next morning so we would be returning but didn't want to wait for someone to clean our room that night - we just wanted to go home and salvage our evening and be comfortable. The cast members were mortified of the details I told them and very apologetic. They refunded our vacation points for that night, offered to move us to closer in on property (HOW?! We were at the Contemporary for goodness sake - I was too tired to probe this option and really wanted to try and salvage our stay there. It was the last on my bucket list!) Offered to refund our dinner costs, and said they would do a VIP cleaning on the room. We thanked them and politely declined the dinner refund - it wasn't the restaurants fault and we hate someone else losing money over another mistake. We thanked them for the points refund and said we will be back in the morning.
The next day we came back and went straight to our room. It was clean! Apparently a VIP clean means that they do little touches like tie the dish towel in a minnie bow, and replace all the furniture with a stain with brand new. No really, we spent 5 minutes staring at the couch trying to decide if it was a new couch (it was! the couch was orange the day before and khaki the next) Unfortunately the TV was till dirty and they did not dust and missed dirt around the bed. We decided to go to Magic Kingdom and enjoy our lunch reservations at BOG and try to walk off the mild disappointment. Nothing like some Mickey Mouse time to fix this! Unfortunately we came back to the room and still were unhappy so we checked out early. The cast members were again really apologetic and offered to try and do something but I was already turned off the whole thing and just wanted to finish my anniversary weekend back at home. If I'm going to be in a dusty place it might as well be my living room!
Other DVC'rs - have you used your points to stay at Bay Lake recently and what type of experience did you have? Word of mouth among my Disney obsessed family and friends who've stayed there is that they really weren't too impressed either, but I feel like this experience has to be out of the norm - right or wrong?
-Windless Sails LillyKate
Bill
