Hi everyone, first and foremost i want to say thank you all for your condolence for our family. While the internet is full of 'other' things, its good to see that a community like this board, almost feels like family. To be honest, i have been a member for a handful of years, and never decided to post. I' guess i was those selfish lurkers who only reads and doesn't contribute. After the outpouring of post ' both for and against' i feel more comfortable posting my opinions here since i did see everyone disagreeing, but the sense of civility and caring at the same time wasn't lost. there said what i wanted to say to start up with, I'll answer those questions i can from reading the post, if i miss any, i apologize and will go back and answer what i missed.
Here we go...
Question - why did you decide to go back to the park and finish the day, if you were in grief, why did you want to go back to the park.
Answer - I did have my 11 year old daughter with us, and 10 year old niece. I didn't know how i was supposed to behave. I wanted to keep their last day as normal as possible before we headed home. I don't know to this day if that if this was the right thing or not, but at that time what else could have i done? in a childish way, i actually thought being in Disney would lessen their sorrow for a while. During our lunch, we had gone online and changed our airline tickets. (Love southwest airlines by the way- the plane flight was a whole lot more expensive, but it helps they don't charge for baggage or change trip fee) Sorry, i know its unrelated, but its weird how i am remembering what things did help us along the way right now.
Question - can you clarify the confusion on how you ended at the park.
Answer - this one is simple. We were picked up on our resort. there are various stops on the resort. We received a call as we were heading out. (Great customer service here) when we received the news, we immediately went to the driver to let us off. They have a cardinal rule of not stopping on the side of the street so I'm told, but he did. Not only that, he also called a security person in those golf carts, that we saw as we were walking back to the room, so they can pick us up. So we did take the news, hard, but we still have my niece and daughter. We decided not to tell them just yet. We didn't know what we could do. The security guard was extremely helpful and drove us back to our room, we spend about an hour or so there. We hadn't told the kids yet, and us (adults) decide lets just go to a sit-down place and eat with the kids. We went back to the shuttle wait area to be able to go back to the resorts main building where the restaurants was. The first bus was to magic kingdom, next one was to Hollywood (yea, that one came) and the following was to the animal planet. This is where my in-law said ( i know i wouldn't be writing this if we didn't just decide to wait) lets just get on this one and go eat. I didn't question it, and figured since we were already there yesterday, we knew our way around (my first WDW visit remember). So we did go in the park, we did go and eat, and spend approx 1;5 hours there. 'Greg' confirmed this since he did tell me what time i stamped into Animal Kingdom.
Question - Was Greg dishonest in buying back the tickets, sorta a side deal.
Answer - No, he was ABSOLUTELY NOT DISHONEST, everything was processed thru a credit card (ironically it was the Disney Credit Card) we used and he offered the buy back AFTER i had already decided, to buy the upgraded tickets. What I still don't know, but would have been helpful since we are return Disney folks (at least to CA one - only 11 hour drive), it there was the option to upgrade tickets to no expiration. although if i am being honest with myself, i don't know if i would have taken that offer. I just wanted to get in for one last day with my family. AFter reading all your responses, i do agree that Greg did was he was trained to do. and can definitely see how this can be abused if it was widely known. I believe Disney does have legendary customer service to this day - but in my opinion,there are a few things they can still improve on.
Question - What am i going to do now?
Answer - i dont know. I think i may take up the suggestion of writing to the customer service. Just to let them know, since i really dont think they would be anything they can do. I already paid, and already home. Probably will not return till a couple of more years.
Question - Why do i feel Disney owes me something, since its a business
Answer - yeah, your right. they don't owe me a thing. They do market themselves though as the best in customer service and most magical place on earth. We all buy into that product, so really its my fault for decieving myself. take this as a business reason why they should though. I already lost a days in
Disneyland. (although this could be looked at more ways, i guess they lost potential revenue from us purchasing souvenirs. They are able to profit on the meal plan portions i could not use. Letting me in, would have generated more revenue - we still came out with pins and souvenirs but really watched what we spend after that experience.. Bottom line, they could have done this at no cost to them. They did gain more money from me, so they did treat me as a transaction, but the i think they could have had a future return on investment with no loss in their pocketbooks at all.
Folks, once again, thank you all. i probably did miss alot of questions, for that I apologize, but didn't want to leave so many unanswered ones.
Was my original letter a rant? yes, now that i read it back i guess it can be taken as that. But for me it was more therapeutic. it let me get a few things off my chest, Thank you all.
Why go to the bank? Did you take out money from the account before the bank knew the person had passed? Seems an odd first place to go.
