Disney gave my room away after I was in it

[HappyMommy2]

What a funny coincidence that we got to hear the story from both angles here! Sorry to hear that happened to both of you. I'm glad it turned out okay. It could have been MUCH worse!

Once I was staying at a large resort (non-Disney) while attending a conference. After the day's meetings I went back to my room and couldn't get the key card to work. A housekeeper happened to be walking by and she saw me struggling and said, "Here Honey" and opened the door right up for me. I walked in and to my HORROR (and to the horror of the people in the room) discovered it was not my room! I had gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor. I turned around and made a quick escape, but what if I had intended to do some kind of evil?

Just goes to show that we need to be extra careful about storing valuables securely, locking our deadbolts, etc. at hotels!

 

[Cora's Mom]

What an experiance for both of you. I recently stayed at a hotel and the headboard came off the wall. When I told someone at the front desk awaiting to be charged, the manager ended up tell me how sorry she was and gave us half off our night stay. That was not my intention. The hotel had a few problems after we left giving me the credit and I simply emailed the headquaters and ended up getting my credit about one month after it happened. The point of my story - follow through with telling someone, this might prevent it happening again. What would have happened if you had your luggage in there - would they have know who to move? Glad everything worked out for both families and you enjoyed you time at the park

 

[TSirgey]

How funny you were both on the same forum. Not that there is any other forum that compares!!!

I ALWAYS make sure to get a room with a safe. I lock the purse in the safe when I don't want to bring it with me.

I hope you both write a very strong letter to the GM and get a good response!! Good luck!!

 

[Pats Dragon]

This is a very discouraging post. Right after my divorce I was very scared and carried a pistol (with permit) when we stayed in a motel. The possibility that I might have shot a nice family assigned to my room is really scary!!!I DON'T carry a gun anymore.

 

[goofy4tink]

We had a similar experience at BWV on Thanksgiving Day. We were given a room key and sent on our way. Well, when we put the key in and the door opened all I could see were toys everywhere!!! It was quite obvious that the room was in fact occupied!!! Back to the lobby. The manager came back with us because he wanted to see for himself. Yep, people lived there all righty. Back to the lobby again. The manager, Alfredo, couldn't apologize enough. Said how sorry he was, that the computer showed the room as vacant and cleaned but the present occupants had decided to stay an extra night. Hmmm. You have to wonder why the room showed as cleaned/vacant. Anyway. We did mention to Alfredo that we really needed to either get into another room quickly or just store our stuff since we had a PS at Chef Mickey's in one hour. He told us he would have someone drive us there! When we had finally gotten into a room and trekked back to the lobby for our 'car service', Alfredo told us he was putting a $100 credit on our account in hopes that it would make up for some of our trouble. I tried telling him he didn't need to do that, that we were fine and no harm done. But that credit showed up on our final bill.

I guess we have to be very careful about leaving belongings around and also careful about just charging into a new room!!! Can you imagine if someone had been walking around naked or something?? I would have just died!!

 

[CheshireVal]

I guess we have to be very careful about leaving belongings around and also careful about just charging into a new room!!! Can you imagine if someone had been walking around naked or something?? I would have just died!!

And that is EXACTLY why I *always* leave the room latch on when I'm in there!!

 

[mom_rules]

Ahhh! The AllStars! Had a wonderful experience with management and a scorpion there last spring. Complained to the front desk -they laughed at us. After a bit they decided maybe they should warn housekeeping-good idea. No apology - no action taken. Wrote a letter, along with a picture of the critter on the vanity and after 4 months received a phone call from a very nice WDW CM who wanted to let me know that this was not typical behaviour in such a circumstance and how sorry she was that it wasn't handled properly. End of conversation.

 

[DizBelle]

I guess we have to be very careful about leaving belongings around and also careful about just charging into a new room!!! Can you imagine if someone had been walking around naked or something?? I would have just died!!

Note to self - lock the deadbolt on the hotel room door whenever I am in the room.

 

[YankeeFan51]

A scorpion? aren't those indigenous to drier areas (ie; the southwest)? And I was just getting used to spiders (remember that thread awhile back about the really huge ones?), snakes, and alligators. Yikes!

 

[Wendi]

Ok, situations happen. Lucky for this situation the people where VERY nice and VERY understanding. With that being said, when the 2nd party entered the room and found the purse~they took it up to the front desk. Why at that time did they NOT pull up a record or history and find out WHO else they had registered the room too. Computers down or not. They should still have been able to do that. When they are dealing with the safety of Families, they should be able to do that. Once they found the match, they could have asked the party that was then "Officially" checked in if they could leave a note for the 1st party on the door. Then they would not have tried to re-enter the room.

This entire situation was VERY fortunate. Pixie Dust was sprinkled on you guys. There are shady people that would have taken advantage of this situation, so that goodness this was not the case.

I agree with others about leaving valuables locked up. I don't even take my purse with me to Disney. I give my husband my drivers license, credit cards and insurance cards. That way it's one less bag to keep track of. After all he is with me 90% of the time. The rest of the time I just get my stuff from him and take the fanny pack.

Glad that everything worked out for the best.

Wendi

 

[ellyn2000]

I would have expected better service than that from Motel 8---never mind that it was a Disney resort. I hope you intend to follow up on this and get some satisfaction and some changes in how a mgr. handles their mistakes.

 

[catbad]

Thank you for all the nice replies. I recently had $120 stolen from me at a movie theatre and that back tracked us until next paycheck. I understand the meaning of money and the violation of someone stealing from me. It hurts and I don't wish that on anyone. Now don't get me wrong, if there was a bag full of money I would have left the country.

Thanks again and I am sending my complaint to WDW Gest Communication POBOX 10040 Lake Buena Vista 32830.

Does everyone agree that this address is the best way to go? What do you think Princessof QuiteAlot?

 

[Luvmyfam3]

Let me just start off first by saying that I LOVE Disney!! (I better..I own a part of Disney until 2042!! ) But, I wonder with stories like this whether Disney Resorts are getting too big. It seems that times when mistakes are made sometimes their attitudes are not quite what we would envision as "Disney magic". I wonder if they have grown to the extent that they hear so many things like this that it doesn't really faze them anymore. I've had similar experiences on a MUCH smaller degree and many times it seems that they are so overwhelmed with other guests' needs that they may write it off as a flitch, and move on hoping that no one will notice without an apology.

I certainly don't mean to be negative. Just voicing my thoughts as I was reading this thread. I am so sorry this happened to both of you. I think most people are very understanding with mistakes if the attitude is appropriate. It sounds like the management's attitude was definitely not.

Kim

 

[Scoootch]

Thanks again and I am sending my complaint to WDW Gest Communication POBOX 10040 Lake Buena Vista 32830.

Does everyone agree that this address is the best way to go? What do you think Princessof QuiteAlot?

I would definetly send your letter to that address and I'd also make sure you cc it to the Manager of the resort and anyone else at WDW that you can get an address for that may benefit from hearing what happend.

How awful - this kind of situation should never have happened but there's just absolutely no excuse for the way they handled it - all CM's involved should be put through a new training course on how to treat guests

FWIW, I saw another thread recently who had a pretty big problem and wrote to all managers at WDW she could and it took a few months but they did do something to rectify the situation post-trip so don't give up hope.

Happy holidays to you and your family and lots of pixie dust to you!
~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~

 

[kahiko]

Yep, lock up what you can. Which isn't easy with the very tiny safes they have in the rooms.

I have come back to my room at WDW and other hotels and found the mousekeeper/housekeeper had proped the door open and was not in the room.

Once in Hawaii they were putting in new carpet and I returned from the beach to find the door proped open. The airline tickets, cash etc. were in the safe but you can't put your clothes etc in the safe.

WDW did try to give me a camcorder about 7-8 years ago. I rented a locker under the train station and when I went to put some stuff in it I found a very expensive looking camcorder in the locker. I locked it back up and took the key back and told them what happened. They just sluffed it off gave me a key to another locker and that was that. Except, I always wondered if they rented that key out after I walked away as they just laid it down.

 

[PrincessofQuiteAlot]

Hey Catbad, thanks for the address. I will be sending out my letter this weekend. Haven't had a minute since I returned. I only took off two days of work, you would think it was two months with the amount of work I have to make up!



P.S. my mother says it was worth the aggravation since it shamed me into finally cleaning out my messy purse!! :

P.S.S. If you and your family every want to visit Sarasota, you're welcome to come and stay with us - my mom has an empty guest house.

 

[grlpwrd]

I checked in to the All-Star Movies at about 5:30 p.m. and was given room 6801 in the Love Bug. My husband, son and I went in after a 45 minute check-in due to only one person working at the desk. I requested Toy Story two months in advance of arrival and confirmed with the hotel 5 days prior to arrival. Well; I got Love bug. Something didn't feel quite right when we went into the room. It was clean yet at the same time.... not. I then proceeded with unpacking and saw a couple of small things on top of the TV and a receipt on the bed. I didn't think much about the receipt (it just happened to have the same price on it that I paid, so I thought the hotel left it there). As I was finishing up unpacking I opened the drawer to put my sons clothes away and there was a purse.

An entire purse, "who would leave this behind?" I thought. I looked inside and saw belongings, credit card, and cash. And thought how could somebody leave this behind. We brought it up to the front desk to the same lady that checked us in. She didn't know how it happened and just said that maybe they were transferred resorts to Pop-Century. I though it was wierd but moved on.

We had a good evening and went to bed early to get an early rise to take our son on his first trip to Magic. As soon as we fell asleep someone was trying to get into our room. At that time it snapped in my head that this has to be the person looking for their things.

Sure enough it was. Basically what happened was the 2 ladies and child had their luggage and thought they had the wrong room and they looked at the paper again and said that they didn't. I said is your last name ******. She said "yes". "I thought it was you. I found your purse and things and brought it to the front desk. I didn't take anything I just looked for a name and brought it downstairs" I then went inside and grabbed the paper with my info on it, it was the same as hers. My son wasn't crying just now awake at 10 pm. We had a very nice conversation while she was between holding times on the cell phone with the resort and her mom (which looked pretty darn good for her age) was very pleasent. We pretty much laughed and tried to make the best of it. The little girl was falling asleep where she stood (at one time she was on her blanky on the cement) and when the guy that came on the segway with her purse I felt very relieved. He had to come back with a golf cart to get the rest of her things and it took awhile and I wished her luck and that's how it happened.......

Here's the funny thing......after we just finally fell asleep again the phone rang. It was the front desk just making sure that the room was VACANT.....not cool. The next morning at 5:30 a.m. I went down to the desk after almost no sleep and spoke to a manager and received 6 free counter service meals. It was a bad start but, the resort was perfect for my son and Magic Kingdom was empty till 3 pm. My son and husband had a wonderful time.

And that is the other side of the story.....

So PrincessofQuiteAlot got no compensation nor apology and you got 6 comp meals?

 

[MarkLem]

Moral of story: Put your bags in the room right away, don't wait till 10:00. Then you would have been the squatter forcing the second party to go elsewhere.

 

[gigi1313]

i'm sorry for both of your families... what a pita to deal w/on vacation!
i was also wondering how catbad's family was compensated yet princess's wasnt... shame on disney!

we had a similar but worse experience when we were at sesame place one summer... at 10pm one of my kids was crying so i sent dh out to the car to get a blankie or binkie or something and upon his return, he did not put the bolt on the door... at midnight, the four of us were sound asleep and all of a sudden a huge man (6'6+) came in our room and flipped the lights on... i screamed with all my might... dh's feet started running before he even got out of the bed! the man ran and dh chased him thru the parking lot to the office... there were three kids and a lady out in the parking lot screaming... my kids were crying their heads off... horrible! i immediately called the front desk, only to learn that there was an error and they gave another late arriving family our room, complete with WORKING room key!

the next morning we met the family in the room next door and made our apologies all around, realizing of course that it is the hotel that owes the apology (yet they did NOTHING!! even after complaints and letters and emails)... in addition, we found out that the man was a baltimore city police officer and he said it's a good thing he was not carrying his gun as when he walked in, he felt like it was an ambush and his natural instinct was to reach for his weapon and begin shooting! it could have had a MUCH UGLIER ending! needless to say, we cut our vacation short and high tailed it out of there! never to return! it was years before my kids were comfortable staying in a hotel and they are SURE to put the bolt chain lock on whenever they are in the room so as not to have it happen again!

 

[catbad]

Actually I got 6 free fast food meals that came out to about $40 but Princess got a free night. I believe that she and I both deserved more.