Obviously, posters here will be mostly intractable on her/his given points, so I don't present the following as further argument on either side of the "they should" vs "they try" tit-for-tat. I do present it as a behind-the-scenes look and in no particular order.
Phones: Disney policy is to not have your personal phone visible anytime you're "on stage." No doubt some do, but the overwhelming majority are on company-issued cell phones loaded with apps that show which rooms are ready for which service.
Check in: As rooms come available, they are released so that guests can check in. There is no slow-rolling the rooms.
Housekeeping: Work their tails off to get rooms ready. If guests don't mind a quick wipe down, sweep, and new sheets, then yes rooms could be ready 99% of the time by 4 p.m. That's not what happens. The cleaning is quite thorough to include sanitizing all hard surfaces, vacuuming, steam mopping, running the dishwasher, running the clothes washer, scrubbing toilets, wiping down all showers and tubs, stripping old linens, putting on new linens, checking/wiping out bedroom drawers, replacing missing amenities or broken items, gathering trash, cleaning balcony, unfolding sleep sofas/murphy beds for cleaning, sanitizing bathroom sinks and faucets, cleaning mirrors, and more. Yes, sometimes areas/items are missed or not cleaned properly, but given the thousands of rooms flipped daily, human error will occur.
Inspection: Once cleaned, the rooms must each be inspected by a second person who comes in and attempts to make sure the room is up to standards. This process includes, but is not limited to, rechecking all the areas listed above for housekeeping. If something amiss is found, the room can't be flipped until the issue is resolved. For example, say there is a missing mug or dish detergent (or choose any number of dozens of items), then a request is made via a phone app for the item. Somewhere on property, there are a few runners whose job it is to secure said item(s) and take them to the proper room. The runner may be delivering a new cutting board to a cabin on the opposite side of the property where the room is located, and then he/she has to leave there, go to the warehouse, find the item(s), and head over to the room in question. Multiply that act by 10, 20, or more depending on the size of the resort.
Room Ready: Many guests do not want a ready room--they want their requests, and the room assigners attempt to match requests to guests. Obviously, not everyone gets what they want. Frequently, guests who say "yes" to a ready room then call or come by the front desk to complain that they don't like the room. Often, in fact, guests who get the type room they requested don't like the actual location: "I know it's a 1BR on a high floor with a view of the pool, but it's not as close to the elevator as I'd like."
Check out: Check out time is 11 a.m. While many/most guests do leave by 11, a significant portion of them don't, or they leave at, say, 11:20 because "that's close." Housekeepers can't start on a room until the guests have gone. Further, unless the guest stops in at the front desk on the way out (most don't) or calls the front desk to say they've left (again, most don't), the only way to know if a guest is gone is to knock...or wait until 11 at the earliest. If everyone were to stay as late as between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. (which many do), then many rooms open up all at once. However, housekeepers can only take one room at a time, obviously. So, if Housekeeper A is assigned three 1BRs for cleaning that day, and she/he can't start on any of them until after 10 a.m., then the housekeeper's 8-9 hour day is pushed back, as well. So, yes, they do go around knocking on doors to see if guests have left so that they can get started cleaning sooner.
Trash Service: As noted, Disney began this daily check/service soon after the Las Vegas mass shooting. It's not always consistently applied though it is supposed to be done to every room, every day. Policy is these checks (called visuals) can't begin until 11 a.m. In a perfect world, they're done while guests are out of their rooms...obviously, that can't always happen. At a smaller resort, there may be as many as 60 visuals on one day, rarely fewer than 40. Housekeepers, as a general rule, do not do visuals, at least not those assigned to clean rooms that day. The visuals are done by a dedicated person (or two) who must follow the same procedure: knock and announce yourself; wait a few seconds; knock a second time and wait again; then knock a third time, wait, then if no one has come to the door, proceed to enter. The presence of a Room Occupied sign is not a deterrent. Technically, the person doing the visual/trash collecting should have the front desk call your room before proceeding if a Room Occupied sign is on the door, though I realize that doesn't always happen. Sometimes, the guest asks the visuals/trash person to come back at another time. Fair enough, but when you get that request from 8-10 different guests, then the timetable for completing these visuals becomes jumbled, often pushing the last one until the evening. Sometimes even, guests will engage this CM in a discussion about how stupid the policy is, that they don't like it, asking why it has to be done, etc., all the while talking to someone who has zero input on the policy and simply wants to do his/her job in a timely manner. Doing visuals does not in any way slow down the process of getting rooms cleaned--two different tasks by two different teams. Oh, and for the record, you might be amazed at the frequent instances when unsavory or illegal items have been discovered doing these checks during trash removal.
Issues affecting room readiness:
Dogs. Service animals are allowed. Any time a dog has been in a room, that room must be deep-cleaned with vacuum, carpet shampooer, steam mops, rolled with a giant lint roller, and often the couches/chairs must also be steam-cleaned. Sometimes areas have been soiled by the dog. All of that extra cleaning takes time, a lot of it, especially since they should allow for extra drying time.
Untidy guests. Most guests do a reasonable job of leaving the room in decent shape: dirty linens, towels, typical trash, dirty dishes. However, you might be surprised at the number of guests (
DVC and non-DVC alike) whose room looks like a bomb went off in it. Food in the refrigerator, sinks and counters full of dirty dishes, paper strewn on the floor, sand and dirt in numerous locations where shoes were left haphazardly, overflowing trash cans, stains on couches/chairs, cushions of said couches and chairs on the floor (sometimes used as a bed for a "service" dog), dried food on the dining table and chairs, left behind air mattresses, dirty pack-n-plays, and more. Again, imagine the housekeeper who has three 1BRs on his/her schedule, and the first one doesn't come free until 9:30 a.m., and said housekeeper walks into a room as described above. The day just got longer.
Late check outs: Many guests request late check-out, and even if for an understandable reason such as a departure character breakfast reservation at 9 a.m., housekeepers can't get into that room until the guest leaves. Many others won't leave until right before or right after 11; some don't even leave until noon and Disney can't very well kick them out. In a small 120-room resort, and you have 40 people arriving on a particular day, if just 10 of those rooms leave between 10-11 or 11:30, then that creates a cascading affect on how soon rooms can be handled and cleaned.
Broken equipment. It happens. A dishwasher will leak, a leg on a table is loose and unstable, a refrigerator runs warm, and so on. These have to be fixed--if at all possible--before releasing a room to a guest.
All of this very long tome to say that while it may be "reasonable" to expect your room to be ready by 4 p.m., the reality is that if you have a room by 4 p.m. on most of your trips, that is due to the sheer tenacity of the CMs at any given time. Think about the times you have guests coming over to your house and you want to pick up, clean, and make things look good for them. Now, imagine that housekeepers have to not only do that but make sure the clean is as spotless as humanly possible since people get freaked out by a single hair in the shower at a hotel or timeshare. It's a tall task. If you wish to take Disney to task over their level of hiring, their pay structure, their organization of the housekeeping force, how it's run from the top down, the wording in the POS about room availability, what should constitute a reasonable expectation for the room to be ready, their IT, and other such issues, I say go for it. That is reasonable in itself. However, please don't focus any ire or disapproval or attitude about company policy on the actual CMs--they're just trying to do their jobs as best they can, day in and day out, servicing thousands of guests and their rooms each year.
If you've read this far, thank you. If not, I don't blame you!
) walked out on pier, got text room was ready!
