Has the front-desk experience ever tarnished your trip?

We've had bad and OK checkins at the All Star resorts. Maybe because we were part of large (650) performance group coming in with lots of kids.....but still....) and I honestly don't remember the experience when we stayed at Pop.
 
Humans are far more likely to complain than to praise so this thread doesn't surprise me and Disney is not perfect. That said, not only have we never had a bad desk experience in our yearly visits since 1999 but last year we had a stellar one. We had requested what's called the Courtyard View at Board Walk and when we arrived on Wed there were none available. The CM, Megan, checked with her supervisor without prompting from us and since we were staying 10 nights offered to move us to a Courtyard room on the 4th day. We jumped at the offer. This doesn't offset any of the bad experiences here it's just that I'd wager more folks get handled as we were than are dealt with poorly.

Bill From PA
 
Yes, we've had bad front desk experiences at CBR and CR Club Level. I would stay at CR again. I have no interest in CBR though. On the other hand, we've had above and beyond experiences with front desk staff at BWI and BC and we go back to those resorts over and over again!
 
We had a very bad check in at the Poly once years ago. We had arrived very early in the morning. We checked in and of course our room was not ready, no big deal, we headed to the park. We came back around 3PM thinking that the room would be ready to go. Nope. So we chilled out in the lobby for about an hour and I headed back to the desk, sorry not ready yet, shouldn't be much longer. I was starting to run thin on patience, we had been going for close to 12 hours at this point and really just wanted to get in our room to relax and freshen up. I let another 30 minutes go and decide to head back to the desk and this is where the melt down took place. As I was standing there waiting for the CM to check on our room, I hear this, "Congratulations Mr. So and So, you've been upgraded from a standard room to concierge!" The guy checking in next to me had just gotten a killer upgrade and I couldn't even get into my regular standard view room!! I'm not a "speak to the manager" person, I am normally calm and cool, but being so tired and so aggravated I just lost it. I felt like we were being treated like 2nd class citizens, and hey if there was a concierge room sitting there waiting to be taken why the heck couldn't my family have it? Now I know that was unreasonable to think like that and that rooms are assigned days before you get there, but reason was not front and center at the time and the tears started to flow. The CM just stood there looking at me like I was crazy and showed no care about the situation what so ever. It was disappointing to say the least. We had stayed at the Poly for many years and that was the last time we stayed there. Between the skyrocketing cost and the bad experience, we just found another place we love at CSR :)
 

Thanks so much for all of the great responses, it has been nice to see some positive experiences people have had too!

It really makes me think about my own delivery in customer service, and how important those first interactions with a guest/customer can be.
 
The next year I was traveling with DH and I went to the desk to pay down my room charges with gift cards (this was before the website where you could combine them, so I had quite a stack). When I told the guy what I was there to do, he rolled his eyes and said "I guess I won't be going to lunch".

Wow, I'm really sorry you had that interaction.
 
We had one very bad experience at YC about 10 years ago. We have been 17 times and stayed CL every trip. We were checking in at the CL desk, staying in the two bedroom turret suite and the CM made a comment about our "free upgrade" in a really nasty tone and was basically dismissive of us the entire check in and made us feel both appalled and embarrassed. We were shocked, first of all because not only was it not a free upgrade-we were paying full rack rate- which was an small fortune for that suite. During our first years of going, we had no idea about discounts and always paid rack rates and we always stayed in two bedroom suites-a very significant sum of money when you add it all up. I think about it now and I feel a little sick to my stomach. Anyway, even if the room had been a free upgrade there was no call for the attitude. I did complain to the hotel manager a few days later and he made it right and I am fairly certain that CM was moved from that position. It was truly the worst experience-mortifying and dismaying and it tainted the whole trip.
 
I'm not recalling any terrible front desk experiences. Some were better than others but they've all been at least "ok" and most have been very positive.
 
Before I mention the less than stellar ones, let me say that we have had WONDERFUL check-in experiences at BLT every time we've stayed there. The staff has been friendly and welcoming and wonderful.

We stayed at BWV last May and the check in process wasn't great. When we drove up to the the front entrance, I asked if DH could pull the car up a bit and wait while I ran in to grab a parking permit. The valet guy snapped "NO!" and insisted DH had to drive out to the parking lot in no-man's land, walk back to the lobby, get a pass, walk it back out to the parking lot in no-man's land, and then walk back to the lobby...all with his bad knee.

So while DH is doing this, I go in to check in and get the pass. Our room isn't quite ready...which is ok as it's 3:45 so technically early. But it's "not ready" because they shampooed the carpet that day and the rugs were still wet, the guy says. 20 minutes later I get the text that the room is ready. I go up and the rug is soaking wet. And there are men standing ON our balcony, painting the building. I go back down to the front desk to ask to be moved to a room without a wet carpet and a usable balcony (politely) and am told "The rug will dry...why don't you go to the parks or something?" and they assure me the workers will be gone permanently by 5pm. The rug was wet when we got home and the workers were back out there all day the next day too.

At the Poly last September we had a CM who was just unenthusiastic. Couln't get him to smile or acknowledge us or engage at all. But we were checking in to WDW so we were nonplussed by his lack of enthusiasm.
 
Ok will say all our check ins have been fine except one. I will say it was the worst Disney experience ever from statt to finish and kind of glad it happened to us "regulars" and not a family on their first vacation.

So we checked into Poly and it was fine. We got a theme park view and everything was great. Take our stuff to the room and head off to the parks. I was a seasonal CM so will be 100% clear we were on a CM discount so weren't expecting anything magical just a here's your room have a nice day. That's exactly what we got and life was good.

So we head out to Animal Kingdom and do rides, fps, no issues. Go to eat at a QS and low and behold we are told we've used all our dinning plan entitlements! We had been in Orlando for all of 3 hours and supposably we used 16 qs, 16 ts, and 16 snacks with in that time?! No way I say cna you check with someone else's band maybe mine just has a glitch. Nope still 0. They let us order and tell me to step aside and wait and manager woukd could out and look at it. Still no manager but food has come. Manager finds us in the dinning room and says oh we couldn't figure it out but we charged your credit card on file and you can just have the resort credit it back later. My then bf now fiance was fuming at that. He was shocked they just charged the card with out asking as we weren't informed that would be the option if they couldn't figure it out. We would have been fine if they were upfront but were taken aback at how easy they charged it with out our pin or anything.

Ao we leave our friends who we treated to this trip and fiance and I head back to Poly to get it straighten out. At no point are we offered an appolgy or smile. Just a ok we fixed it. I asked how can we be sure. They said no way to know until you buy something. We said that is really bad as we weren't hungry. We got a sucks to be you mentality. Finally I remember the cups! We hadn't picked up the included mugs. So i go to captain cooks and of course shows we already picked them ul its a no go. Ugh. So they say they need to do some work on our account why don't we go relax in our room instead of waiting in the lobby. We agree great idea so go to the room. Well we get to the room and as we open the door a cieling tile falls and water is pouring from the ceiling. I call the front desk (i know bad call doesn't equal front desk) and go straigt to asking for the right people using CM terms. That was the trick got who I needed. They appologize, rebook the room, rebook the dinnig plan, gice us a credit, give names and shifts in case there were any other issues. We move rooms it is good dinning plan works all is great disaster averted. We actually got a call from someone even higher up to make sure everything was fixed. So we have what eneds up being a pretty good trip (minus a terrible Ohana reservarion) and it is time to go. Fiance checks his credit card statement before we check out and sees 2 charges only 1 that makes sense as he keeps a tab of everything put on the band. So we look and see one was actually the exact cost of the dinning plan. Weird I know since we already paid our balance and the dinning plan on day 1. We go down get a CP. They are clueless so say let me get you an expert. No problem so called "expert" says it is just pending which we point out that charge isn't it says posted. He fights I mean we are talking hundreds of dollars here. We talked through the earlier issues and reboking to fix the dinning plan plus room change and that it apoeared when they "rebooked" us it charged the dinning plan a second time even though we had paid. He calls us liars insinuates we are trying to steal from Disney. I say this is the worst Disney experience I've ever had. He says your a CM give me your blue id so I can go cut it up because you can not disparage the mouse in front of guests. I say lets take it backstage and I'd love to get the person I spoke to earlier who I know is on duty involved. Fiance says it isn't worth it our magical express is arriving and we can't be late to the airport so he'll just disput the charge with the creit card company. Lo and behold we get to the airport and we have a phone call from the fromt desk CM appologizing saying we were right and they had double processed the dinning plan charge so they initialed the refund and we should see it with in a week. The first and last days of that trip were honestly the worst experience I had ever had at Disney and I'm at least glad management ernt above and beyond to address the situations and make it right but some of those things shoukd have never happened in the first place (saying we were liars, insinuating we were idiots, and threatening my job) so it did make us feel tarnished to the Poly. We gave it a 2nd chance 3ish years later snd was so glad we did as that trip was the exact opposite.
 
My favorite resort check in was at CBR. It was our first time not staying in a value so it made it extra special. We were celebrating my graduation, and when we got off the bus this cast member stopped me and said "are you the --- family?" and i realized they were holding up an iPad that said welcoming the --- family. We went inside where they had pins waiting for us and checked us in right away. The walk to the room was less than magical though since it was HOT and we just flew in from snowy 20 degree weather so we were bundled up!
 
I've never encountered a bad experience at the front desk. Like someone earlier mentioned, some were better than others.
 
Other than one instance at CR where the CM had his eyes set below shoulder level instead of above, we had pretty good experiences although I will say the CMs at CR don't seem to be very cheerful.
 


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