I bought into DVC about 6 years ago; when the resort being sold was BCV. Since then we have had the perennial problem so many other members have, not enough points. We are constantly borrowing from the future or renting points from others. Living in South Florida, we have visited many times and over the years have stayed in most of the DVC resorts.
What has happened over this space of time is that we have become climatized to DVC so that we have come to expect the same level of 'everything' when staying in other properties. This week we have come to realize just how wrong we were and just how much we appreciate being DVC members. We planned a two stage vacation, several days at the Nickelodeon Resort in Orlando and finishing it with 5 days at Vero Beach.
The suite that we rented at Nick was almost $500 per night, so we thought that this most be up to par with DVC. Where do I start to tell you just how wrong we were.....
Maybe I should start with the first guest I encountered; a young man with a wife beater shirt, showing off his tattooed arms, back, neck and face hanging out with what can only be described as a group of hoodlum gang bangers in the middle of the hallway...
Or maybe I should start with my impression of the dingy motel hallways, mildewy smelling rooms, stifling hot and slow elevators, and general lack of maintenance all over the grounds..
Or maybe with a description of the decaying remodeled interiors, decrepit condition of the kitchen furniture and appliances, and the lack of cooking and eating utensils in the suite (an experienced member in our party actually brought her own cooking pot as she had been here before)...
No, maybe I should start with a description of the dilapidated mattress, whose springs were worn out a long time ago under the onslaught of the masses of visitors and whose exaggerated slope made you roll off the bed...
Actually, a better place to start my review would be describing the mayhem at the lagoon pool - an area that should be about 6 times as large to handle the amount of guests. The bathing load is something that needs to be witnessed to be believed - hundreds upon hundreds of people in a pool that should accommodate less than 100. The water turning into a toxic stew that requires the pool to be cleared out of people and treated several times a day - not counting the times the pool is cleared out and the attendants come out to fish out the floaters ( and I a not referring to dead bodies)....
Actually, a great place to start would be the chaotic scene of the pool lounge area, where, within 30 minutes of opening, all seats have been claimed. This led to an interesting (to say the least) confrontation between a family of morbidly obese guests traveling in those automated wheelchairs who commandeered a table to eat their lunch. When the guests who originally placed their belongings on the table returned, you could just imagine the scene. Security had to be called out, supervisors arrived to sort it out and the whole scene erupted into a melee with each party calling out racial epitaphs to the other and a physical mess of vehicles, lounge chairs, and morbidly obese bodies.
And the noise...the sheer noise...everywhere you went was the noise of thousands of kids screaming, pool pumps,water rushing, etc. The enclosed spaces were terror on the ears as they were not designed to handle the noise, it just reverberated, trapped, and amplified the noise. There was nowhere to escape this noise as the resort is basically a box, with the rooms around the perimeter and the waterpark in the middle.
Never in my life have the expectations been at such odds with reality. Come on, it was a $459 per night suite - surely you cannot blame me to have expected something in the range of luxury and to expect to be mingling wIth a more civilized group of people.... If I wanted an urban vacation, I would of signed up for one.
And then we left and arrived at Disney's Vero Beach Resort.....
It was like finding inner peace.... The quiet tranquility of order amongst paradise. Yes there are hundreds of kids, but the space is designed to mitigate the effects of them allowing for noise to be abated or muffled in enclosed areas and the grounds spacious enough and well planned to allow for the luxury of seclusion and quiet if you so desire.
The accommodations seemed fit for a king; clean, functional, comfortable, and complete. The staff courteous and willing to please. The grounds immaculate...
With a sigh of relief, I thought, IT'S GOOD TO BE HOME.....
What has happened over this space of time is that we have become climatized to DVC so that we have come to expect the same level of 'everything' when staying in other properties. This week we have come to realize just how wrong we were and just how much we appreciate being DVC members. We planned a two stage vacation, several days at the Nickelodeon Resort in Orlando and finishing it with 5 days at Vero Beach.
The suite that we rented at Nick was almost $500 per night, so we thought that this most be up to par with DVC. Where do I start to tell you just how wrong we were.....
Maybe I should start with the first guest I encountered; a young man with a wife beater shirt, showing off his tattooed arms, back, neck and face hanging out with what can only be described as a group of hoodlum gang bangers in the middle of the hallway...
Or maybe I should start with my impression of the dingy motel hallways, mildewy smelling rooms, stifling hot and slow elevators, and general lack of maintenance all over the grounds..
Or maybe with a description of the decaying remodeled interiors, decrepit condition of the kitchen furniture and appliances, and the lack of cooking and eating utensils in the suite (an experienced member in our party actually brought her own cooking pot as she had been here before)...
No, maybe I should start with a description of the dilapidated mattress, whose springs were worn out a long time ago under the onslaught of the masses of visitors and whose exaggerated slope made you roll off the bed...
Actually, a better place to start my review would be describing the mayhem at the lagoon pool - an area that should be about 6 times as large to handle the amount of guests. The bathing load is something that needs to be witnessed to be believed - hundreds upon hundreds of people in a pool that should accommodate less than 100. The water turning into a toxic stew that requires the pool to be cleared out of people and treated several times a day - not counting the times the pool is cleared out and the attendants come out to fish out the floaters ( and I a not referring to dead bodies)....
Actually, a great place to start would be the chaotic scene of the pool lounge area, where, within 30 minutes of opening, all seats have been claimed. This led to an interesting (to say the least) confrontation between a family of morbidly obese guests traveling in those automated wheelchairs who commandeered a table to eat their lunch. When the guests who originally placed their belongings on the table returned, you could just imagine the scene. Security had to be called out, supervisors arrived to sort it out and the whole scene erupted into a melee with each party calling out racial epitaphs to the other and a physical mess of vehicles, lounge chairs, and morbidly obese bodies.
And the noise...the sheer noise...everywhere you went was the noise of thousands of kids screaming, pool pumps,water rushing, etc. The enclosed spaces were terror on the ears as they were not designed to handle the noise, it just reverberated, trapped, and amplified the noise. There was nowhere to escape this noise as the resort is basically a box, with the rooms around the perimeter and the waterpark in the middle.
Never in my life have the expectations been at such odds with reality. Come on, it was a $459 per night suite - surely you cannot blame me to have expected something in the range of luxury and to expect to be mingling wIth a more civilized group of people.... If I wanted an urban vacation, I would of signed up for one.
And then we left and arrived at Disney's Vero Beach Resort.....
It was like finding inner peace.... The quiet tranquility of order amongst paradise. Yes there are hundreds of kids, but the space is designed to mitigate the effects of them allowing for noise to be abated or muffled in enclosed areas and the grounds spacious enough and well planned to allow for the luxury of seclusion and quiet if you so desire.
The accommodations seemed fit for a king; clean, functional, comfortable, and complete. The staff courteous and willing to please. The grounds immaculate...
With a sigh of relief, I thought, IT'S GOOD TO BE HOME.....
Thanks for sharing.
