9/10
Hubby and I left at 5:30am with a three hour drive ahead of us and a romantic anniversary weekend to look forward to. We had booked deluxe concierge at the Grand Floridian and we couldn't wait to arrive. We were told when we made the reservation our room may not be ready at 8:30am, we said not a problem, we will play at EPCOT for a while first.
We arrived at the Boardwalk to have breakfast at Spoodles about 8:30am. The breakfast was delicious..I had the Breakfast Flatbread (pizza) and hubby had the Italian. He raved about it.
We had a nice chat with the manager, great fella. Loves to hear feedback good/bad and I truley believe he does act on it. We hadn't been to Spoodles in a long time. We have put it back on our list of favorite breakfast spots.
After that we headed to EPCOT to play..we stayed until about noon and then headed to GF. We had already paid for valet at Boardwalk and had the hang tag which allowed us to valet the rest of the day at any disney resort (keep that in mind). We were promptly met by a concierge castmember who took us to the third floor to check in. Everything was already paid for, so we just had to give him a credit card for express check out. They said our room still wasn't ready to give them another hour or so. We said ok, and popped up to the 4th floor lounge for a snack and some water. They had Vittel and Perrier bottled water. Fresh Veggies with dip, turkey/ham slices, cheese platter and cookies (chocolate chip and sugar). There were some bagel slices, rye slices and a couple other slices..cracker style breads all very mild in flavor but nice with the cheese. After our snack hubby decided to grab a hair cut at the Ivy Trellis Salon. If you go..see if Carmen is available..she was excellent. We told them we were going to V&A's for our anniversary dinner..she said..well you must have an updo then..lol. I agreed..what the heck..we had to wait for the room anyway. So hubby headed to the pool bar and I got my hair done. she also did excellent..probably the best I have ever had, and the biggest surprise..the prices are totally reasonable. A very impressive salon.
By now it is after 2:30 so we head back to the 3rd floor concierge desk to see if our room is ready. Nope..now they tell us..the people before us broke the bed and the room is not ready. Adamarie (concierge cm) calls maintenance/engineering to see when the bed will be fixed. They said give us at least an hour. We said ok..we are very easy going, and it wasn't check in time yet. Adamarie let our room number slip..so we walked down there..no one was in the room working on the bed...the only problem was the guest before us had busted one of the bedposts off, other than that the room was ready to go. Nice room, overlooking marina/lagood with a view of the castle. Although..I don't know who the heck decorates these rooms..the decor is ugly!!!
So, we cruised around the resort a bit more...went up and had some water in the lounge..watched the news/hurricane weather..lol. By now all the third floor concierge people were worried about taking their dinner breaks and we were an hour from our ps time at V&A's. Heather (concierge cm)...says..is there a problem Mrs. W. I said..yes..if our room isn't going to be ready soon..we are going to need somewhere to change because we have dinner reservations at V&A's in one hour. She said, oh yes, I am aware of that problem..let me call the room assigner. The room assigner said..well, they can go in the room, not a problem at all, so she escorted us down to the room. We had our luggage delivered and made to to V&A's just in time for dinner. Which luckilly we had a reservation at all..I had called concierge the day before to confirm..concierge said we were good to go...but we weren't..our reservation had been cancelled because of non-confirmation. Within the time we were dressing for dinner..a supervisor from the maintenance/engineering came to the room to check the bed...he said..I am very sorry about this..but I don't have anyone on staff today who can fix the bed. Today (friday) and saturday are his days off. We said..what...we just waited over 5 hours to get into a room where there was never going to be any bedpost fixing going on at all today. Adamarie had not followed up with anyone in the whole five hours and didn't have a clue. She just kept telling us to wait..bright girl..jeesh. While he was standing there..lol, he looked at the wall above the bed and saw the previous occupants had also pulled the light fixture out of the wall..he said he would have someone here to fix that shortly. Lady light fixer knocked on the door minutes later. I said we will be out of here in about two minutes for dinner..she said she would come back and fix the light fixture while we were at dinner. That did get done.
Keep in mind..we checked into the room and within the 30 minutes we took to get our luggage delivered and try to change for dinner..all of a sudden, now they were concerned with getting the room ready..2 1/2 hours after official check in time..when we had already been waiting over 5 hours for the room. After all this not one I am sorry for the inconvenience..nothing..the concierge cm's acted as if we were bothering them. We couldn't believe it. We get treated better at the all star resorts..lol.
We had a wonderful dinner at V&A's. I will post the current menu on the restaurant board. It was our first time in the dining room, we can say..we much prefer the chefs table over the dining room, even for a romantic night, even if we have to eat with other people.
9/11
Next morning (Saturday) we decided to take a swim and enjoy the pool area before heading back to epcot. Pool areas are very nice..the water slide is excellent. We had lunch and dinner in EPCOT, excellent as usual. The bedpost was fixed by the time we got back from EPCOT on Saturday night.
9/12
Sunday morning we headed over to the Poly, Kona Cafe for breakfast. Excellent as usual. We stopped at the wedding pavillion on the way back..a cm let us in to look around. It is lovely..definately in the running for our 25th anniversary vow renewal..only hubby laughed and said..we aren't staying at the GF though. I agreed. We enjoyed some more pool time Sunday afternoon and some football with other guests at the pool bars. I have to say though..the pool bar was not busy..there was one girl bartender at the larger bar..two guests that had already been served and three people waiting to be served. One bar manager standing there watching the bartender. The manager just kept saying she will be with you shortly..15 minutes later..the three of us got served (we were not traveling together).
She didn't look happy to be there at all and there was definately no hustle in her bustle. Hubby said..lets go to the other pool bar, at least the bartender is friendly. Although by the time we got thiere..his shift was about over..he left..someone new tookover..and he didn't have a clue what he was doing either.
We ordered from the poolside room service delivery menu also..ugh..quality horrible. I think they let it sit while a rainshower passed instead of bringing it out when it was done cooking.
We headed up to the room to watch a little football and catch the fireworks from our balcony. We had a great dinner at Citrocos as well. That was nice.
9/13
Monday morning..bill arrived promptly on our door..of course it was wrong. Went to 3rd floor concierge to have it fixed. Again...no sorry about that, hope you enjoyed your stay, nothing..the man stared at his computer the whole time..pushed the paper new copy of bill back to us and that was it. We grabbed some fruit upstairs and headed back to the room to get our luggage and leave. We called to valet to have the car brought around..they told us that wasn't possible, they don't go get the cars until we are standing right there in front of them. That must be something new at disney, because we valet at all resorts that have valet and none of them have ever told us that before. So..they leave their guests standing in the heat/humidity while they walk..yes walk to get our car. They had also double charged our valet parking on our bill.
Needless to say we found the Grand Floridian to be less than grand and could not recommend it to anyone wanting to stay there. We paid and outrageous price..which would have been fine if we would have had some level of superior service, but there was none. Even hubby said..gone are the days when disney employees greet you with a friendly smile and hello. These cm's mostly looked the other way when they saw you coming. The offerings in the concierge lounge definately don't justify the price. So, we are not quite sure what exactly we paid for. My husband said he has never felt so ripped off in his entire life.
Keep in mind we had not done one bit of complaining while at the resort, we were nothing but pleasant and patient. We were expecting a totally magical, wonderful stay..instead we got treated like 2nd class citizens.
Hubby and I left at 5:30am with a three hour drive ahead of us and a romantic anniversary weekend to look forward to. We had booked deluxe concierge at the Grand Floridian and we couldn't wait to arrive. We were told when we made the reservation our room may not be ready at 8:30am, we said not a problem, we will play at EPCOT for a while first.
We arrived at the Boardwalk to have breakfast at Spoodles about 8:30am. The breakfast was delicious..I had the Breakfast Flatbread (pizza) and hubby had the Italian. He raved about it.
We had a nice chat with the manager, great fella. Loves to hear feedback good/bad and I truley believe he does act on it. We hadn't been to Spoodles in a long time. We have put it back on our list of favorite breakfast spots.
After that we headed to EPCOT to play..we stayed until about noon and then headed to GF. We had already paid for valet at Boardwalk and had the hang tag which allowed us to valet the rest of the day at any disney resort (keep that in mind). We were promptly met by a concierge castmember who took us to the third floor to check in. Everything was already paid for, so we just had to give him a credit card for express check out. They said our room still wasn't ready to give them another hour or so. We said ok, and popped up to the 4th floor lounge for a snack and some water. They had Vittel and Perrier bottled water. Fresh Veggies with dip, turkey/ham slices, cheese platter and cookies (chocolate chip and sugar). There were some bagel slices, rye slices and a couple other slices..cracker style breads all very mild in flavor but nice with the cheese. After our snack hubby decided to grab a hair cut at the Ivy Trellis Salon. If you go..see if Carmen is available..she was excellent. We told them we were going to V&A's for our anniversary dinner..she said..well you must have an updo then..lol. I agreed..what the heck..we had to wait for the room anyway. So hubby headed to the pool bar and I got my hair done. she also did excellent..probably the best I have ever had, and the biggest surprise..the prices are totally reasonable. A very impressive salon.
By now it is after 2:30 so we head back to the 3rd floor concierge desk to see if our room is ready. Nope..now they tell us..the people before us broke the bed and the room is not ready. Adamarie (concierge cm) calls maintenance/engineering to see when the bed will be fixed. They said give us at least an hour. We said ok..we are very easy going, and it wasn't check in time yet. Adamarie let our room number slip..so we walked down there..no one was in the room working on the bed...the only problem was the guest before us had busted one of the bedposts off, other than that the room was ready to go. Nice room, overlooking marina/lagood with a view of the castle. Although..I don't know who the heck decorates these rooms..the decor is ugly!!!
So, we cruised around the resort a bit more...went up and had some water in the lounge..watched the news/hurricane weather..lol. By now all the third floor concierge people were worried about taking their dinner breaks and we were an hour from our ps time at V&A's. Heather (concierge cm)...says..is there a problem Mrs. W. I said..yes..if our room isn't going to be ready soon..we are going to need somewhere to change because we have dinner reservations at V&A's in one hour. She said, oh yes, I am aware of that problem..let me call the room assigner. The room assigner said..well, they can go in the room, not a problem at all, so she escorted us down to the room. We had our luggage delivered and made to to V&A's just in time for dinner. Which luckilly we had a reservation at all..I had called concierge the day before to confirm..concierge said we were good to go...but we weren't..our reservation had been cancelled because of non-confirmation. Within the time we were dressing for dinner..a supervisor from the maintenance/engineering came to the room to check the bed...he said..I am very sorry about this..but I don't have anyone on staff today who can fix the bed. Today (friday) and saturday are his days off. We said..what...we just waited over 5 hours to get into a room where there was never going to be any bedpost fixing going on at all today. Adamarie had not followed up with anyone in the whole five hours and didn't have a clue. She just kept telling us to wait..bright girl..jeesh. While he was standing there..lol, he looked at the wall above the bed and saw the previous occupants had also pulled the light fixture out of the wall..he said he would have someone here to fix that shortly. Lady light fixer knocked on the door minutes later. I said we will be out of here in about two minutes for dinner..she said she would come back and fix the light fixture while we were at dinner. That did get done.
Keep in mind..we checked into the room and within the 30 minutes we took to get our luggage delivered and try to change for dinner..all of a sudden, now they were concerned with getting the room ready..2 1/2 hours after official check in time..when we had already been waiting over 5 hours for the room. After all this not one I am sorry for the inconvenience..nothing..the concierge cm's acted as if we were bothering them. We couldn't believe it. We get treated better at the all star resorts..lol.
We had a wonderful dinner at V&A's. I will post the current menu on the restaurant board. It was our first time in the dining room, we can say..we much prefer the chefs table over the dining room, even for a romantic night, even if we have to eat with other people.
9/11
Next morning (Saturday) we decided to take a swim and enjoy the pool area before heading back to epcot. Pool areas are very nice..the water slide is excellent. We had lunch and dinner in EPCOT, excellent as usual. The bedpost was fixed by the time we got back from EPCOT on Saturday night.
9/12
Sunday morning we headed over to the Poly, Kona Cafe for breakfast. Excellent as usual. We stopped at the wedding pavillion on the way back..a cm let us in to look around. It is lovely..definately in the running for our 25th anniversary vow renewal..only hubby laughed and said..we aren't staying at the GF though. I agreed. We enjoyed some more pool time Sunday afternoon and some football with other guests at the pool bars. I have to say though..the pool bar was not busy..there was one girl bartender at the larger bar..two guests that had already been served and three people waiting to be served. One bar manager standing there watching the bartender. The manager just kept saying she will be with you shortly..15 minutes later..the three of us got served (we were not traveling together).
She didn't look happy to be there at all and there was definately no hustle in her bustle. Hubby said..lets go to the other pool bar, at least the bartender is friendly. Although by the time we got thiere..his shift was about over..he left..someone new tookover..and he didn't have a clue what he was doing either.
We ordered from the poolside room service delivery menu also..ugh..quality horrible. I think they let it sit while a rainshower passed instead of bringing it out when it was done cooking.
We headed up to the room to watch a little football and catch the fireworks from our balcony. We had a great dinner at Citrocos as well. That was nice.
9/13
Monday morning..bill arrived promptly on our door..of course it was wrong. Went to 3rd floor concierge to have it fixed. Again...no sorry about that, hope you enjoyed your stay, nothing..the man stared at his computer the whole time..pushed the paper new copy of bill back to us and that was it. We grabbed some fruit upstairs and headed back to the room to get our luggage and leave. We called to valet to have the car brought around..they told us that wasn't possible, they don't go get the cars until we are standing right there in front of them. That must be something new at disney, because we valet at all resorts that have valet and none of them have ever told us that before. So..they leave their guests standing in the heat/humidity while they walk..yes walk to get our car. They had also double charged our valet parking on our bill.
Needless to say we found the Grand Floridian to be less than grand and could not recommend it to anyone wanting to stay there. We paid and outrageous price..which would have been fine if we would have had some level of superior service, but there was none. Even hubby said..gone are the days when disney employees greet you with a friendly smile and hello. These cm's mostly looked the other way when they saw you coming. The offerings in the concierge lounge definately don't justify the price. So, we are not quite sure what exactly we paid for. My husband said he has never felt so ripped off in his entire life.
Keep in mind we had not done one bit of complaining while at the resort, we were nothing but pleasant and patient. We were expecting a totally magical, wonderful stay..instead we got treated like 2nd class citizens.
So sorry to hear of your experience with the GF CM's and overall service. 
Someone must have been having a GRAND old time.
I'm sorry to hear that the lounge offerings were a let down. We didn't get a chance to sample many of the offerings, but the evening desserts were great while we were there. I wanted to try the tea service, but we were never there during that time of day.
That valet deal is ridiculous...one more reason I just self-park. I don't need that kind of hassle for whatever they're charging for that "privilege." For the supposed showpiece resort at Disney to have this many problems is depressing and unacceptable.
