I know lots of people rave about the Wilderness Lodge, but I had a horrible stay a few years back. I don't know if I just had a string of really bad luck, but one thing after another went wrong during our stay. I chalk some of it up to unresponsive managers during our stay. Some of it was just plain bad luck. Now, in this PM, I'm going to sound like I'm the pickiest, most spoiled traveller ever, but I'm really not. Alone any of these things I would have just taken in stride. Together, they made for a rotten trip.
Our first night there, as soon as we walked into our room, we were greated by loud banging every few minutes. Our room overlooked the construction of the villas, but it was too late for them to be working on that, plus it sounded like it was coming inside. Before we even unpacked, we called to switch rooms, but there were no non-smoking rooms available. The manager we spoke to this time was the only helpful one we encountered during our trip. She took me to several smoking rooms to see if any of them didn't smell too bad, as they had been recently renovated. But they were all too stinky for my allergies. She agreed to move our room in the morning if we didn't mind packing up and storing our luggage for the day.
When my friends luggage arrived from the POR, we realized that the lock had been damaged in transit. We couldn't open it, so we called to try to get someone to come up and break the look. We called several times, and waited nearly an hour. I finally carried the bag downstairs, and was told they would send someone right up.
The next day, we moved to our new room. I plop down on the bed, and there is a huge sag in the middle of the mattress. It had to go down two or three inches. Any slight movement on the bed, and it started squeaking really loudly. We call downstairs, and were told to go out for the day, and maintenance would switch the mattress. So we go out, and we come back after a long day at the parks, plop down on the bed, and the mattress wasn't changed. We both just started laughing. We didn't know what else to do.
I decided I would just live with the squeaking saggy bed. We get in bed, share a few giggles over my bad mattress, and fall to sleep. We are woken up by a child screeching in the next room at about midnight. This wasn't a toddler. Based on his vocabulary, I would guess he was at least five or six. He would yell, and scream, and cry until about 2:00. We finally fall asleep, and the screecher wakes us up again at 5:00. As if the screeching wasn't bad enough, we also have to listen to the father and older sibling of the child yelling at him to shut up. Now, I don't blame Disney for the screeching kid, but boy was he loud.
We try to shrug off the screeching kid, and go off to the parks for the day. We have the same screeching until 2:00 am, and back up at 5:00 am. After our second sleepless night, we go to speak with the manager again. We are told to pack up again, and they will move us to another room (our third room of the trip).
We head out to the park, and come back. We go to our new room, and as soon as we open the door, we hear the screaming coming from the pool. I just start laughing because I don't know what the heck they were thinking when they put someone who had complained about noise right next to a poolful of screaming happy kids. At that point, we decided we'd just deal with this noise, and just try to enjoy our last two nights at the Wilderness Lodge.
We went to the character breakfast one morning, and none of the in the first half hour we were there, only one of the characters came over to us. We watched as other tables had the same character go over to them twice. We waited and waited, and finally had to ask our server if she could send the characters our way, as we had been there for close to an hour with only one character coming to us, and my friend wanted to go to the breakfast because it was a Pooh one, and she loves the Pooh characters.
On our last night at the Wilderness Lodge, we had a special guest in our room. A big ugly **** roach was crawling on our vanity. My friend drowned it down the drain.
That was not the way we wanted to end our trip.
I know a lot of people love the WL, and I've heard lots of people rave on and on about it, but our stay there was less than magical. I had dreamed about staying there since the day I first saw it, and it should have been the highlight of our trip, but it wound up being our biggest disappointment.
Karen
(oh and no it wasn't my child who was screaming at 2 and 5 am.
Mine only scream at midnight and 4!!
