jeanico2000
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2010
- Messages
- 544
Hello fellow Canadian travellers! We just returned from Orlando and wanted to share some words of caution. Our story has a happy ending, but the stress level was pretty high!
1) BeeperMD: Having read about this service right here on the disboards and not having a rental car, we booked our appointments before leaving Canada and payed the small fee of $15 per person in order to secure a specific time window on the Wednesday evening before our return to Montreal on Saturday. On Wednesday afternoon, we decided to call their toll free number to reconfirm our appointment time, but were informed to call back because their schedule was not yet finalized. We called them 10 times that day, only to finally be told that there was nobody available to come do the tests and promising the technician's visit at 7AM on Thursday morning. Our stress level was off the charts by this time. We then received a text about an hour later postponing the appointment until 8:55AM on Thursday morning. On Thursday morning, we decided to wait for the technician in the lobby of the hotel (we were told we had the option to do so and I recommend this option over an in room visit), and my husband waited at the lobby door to make sure we didn't miss them. The technician and her assistant arrived on time and were stellar. We received our results at 3:30PM on Friday afternoon as well as a prompt refund of the extra fees we'd paid as our original booking time was not respected (I'd emailed them to ask for my money back). The fact that BeeperMD tests went from paying to free, plus word-of-mouth recommendations and social media have created such a high demand for their services that they don't have the necessary manpower at this point and are scrambling to remedy the situation. The technician also advised us that they cannot directly call clients with out of country phone numbers, so everything has to go through dispatch in Southern Florida.
2) Check-in at MCO airport: We were flying back home to Montreal via Toronto on a 5PM Air Canada flight and arrived a good 3 hours prior to departure. Check-in was horrendous. The 4 agents at the desk were clearly overwhelmed, and even though we had checked-in at the kiosk and printed our baggage tag, there was no luggage drop per say and it took us 2 hours in line before we were good to go and had to race over to and through security. We finally had about 15 minutes left to grab a quick bite before boarding. Again, our stress levels were off the charts! I therefore recommend arriving 4 hours prior to departure if you are flying in economy class or don't have a frequent flyer status that allows for priority check-in.
These issues aside, we did enjoy our trip, although crowd levels at Disney World were much higher than we thought they would be and lines were very long.
1) BeeperMD: Having read about this service right here on the disboards and not having a rental car, we booked our appointments before leaving Canada and payed the small fee of $15 per person in order to secure a specific time window on the Wednesday evening before our return to Montreal on Saturday. On Wednesday afternoon, we decided to call their toll free number to reconfirm our appointment time, but were informed to call back because their schedule was not yet finalized. We called them 10 times that day, only to finally be told that there was nobody available to come do the tests and promising the technician's visit at 7AM on Thursday morning. Our stress level was off the charts by this time. We then received a text about an hour later postponing the appointment until 8:55AM on Thursday morning. On Thursday morning, we decided to wait for the technician in the lobby of the hotel (we were told we had the option to do so and I recommend this option over an in room visit), and my husband waited at the lobby door to make sure we didn't miss them. The technician and her assistant arrived on time and were stellar. We received our results at 3:30PM on Friday afternoon as well as a prompt refund of the extra fees we'd paid as our original booking time was not respected (I'd emailed them to ask for my money back). The fact that BeeperMD tests went from paying to free, plus word-of-mouth recommendations and social media have created such a high demand for their services that they don't have the necessary manpower at this point and are scrambling to remedy the situation. The technician also advised us that they cannot directly call clients with out of country phone numbers, so everything has to go through dispatch in Southern Florida.
2) Check-in at MCO airport: We were flying back home to Montreal via Toronto on a 5PM Air Canada flight and arrived a good 3 hours prior to departure. Check-in was horrendous. The 4 agents at the desk were clearly overwhelmed, and even though we had checked-in at the kiosk and printed our baggage tag, there was no luggage drop per say and it took us 2 hours in line before we were good to go and had to race over to and through security. We finally had about 15 minutes left to grab a quick bite before boarding. Again, our stress levels were off the charts! I therefore recommend arriving 4 hours prior to departure if you are flying in economy class or don't have a frequent flyer status that allows for priority check-in.
These issues aside, we did enjoy our trip, although crowd levels at Disney World were much higher than we thought they would be and lines were very long.
