HRH and Charley

[bg4]

Had a great week at HRH (Aug 12-19) BUT

HRH dropped the ball on customer service on Friday the 13th.

Friday morning every guest gets a letter from the managaer of the hotel stating that that the Kitchen will be open all night and that there will be a buffet on the third floor from 5:30 to 10:30 PM.

Fortunately we stayed in Club Lounge from 5PM til 7PM and ate the food there. Go to Kitchen for dinner at 7:30 PM and told, rather rudely, that all reservations are taken for the evening and basically to go away. We then go to third floor convention hall for buffet and are told, this time in a much nicer fashion, that there is NO FOOD left. HRH never got the shipment of food they were expecting and no food was left at kitchen or at the buffet (The Beach Club was running this buffet). Apparently the only food left was at the Palm Restaurant and I was not going to pay that kind of money. BTW the buffet was priced at around $18.50 per person so that would have cost us over $80 anyway.

Read in the Orlando Sentinel that othet hotels had Hurricane parties with category four this and so and so mile per hour that.
Hard Rock Hotel had NOTHING. Its not like you could go out. Everything, including Citywalk, was closed and travel was discouraged, dangerous or impossible.

Loews and Hard Rock Hotel dropped the ball BIG TIME on this one in not giving anything (other that club level food and drink) to its guests free or not. Not even an apology and certainly not a credit for Friday the13th.

Of course I will stay there again, and they know it. I actually had little or no other complaints about HRH after my initial check-in fiasco (Thanks Angela, CSR at check-in for screwing it up) and CSR's in club lounge are always helpful.

 

[SpideyHulk24]

Sorry to hear about your experience. I love the HRH, but they are lacking when it comes to customer service.

 

[poohkinandpiglet]

WOW!

We were at HRH on Friday the 13th. Our original flight was supposed to leave at 6:00pm but we managed to get a noon flight out of Orlando.

Glad we weren't stuck there. My 5 and 3 year olds would have been really grumpy if the only food they had to eat was what was left in our mini bar.

 

[Motherfletcher]

Did you lose power? The hotel I was in not only lost power but their roof as well. There wasn't any kind of party there other than the impromptu hallway gathering under the emergency lights while we were in the eye. One of the guys on our floor couldn't speak English too well but he had video of the roof flying off and a lightpole smashing a car. We were pretty happy to be alive. My 16 year old later told his mother that it was the scariest thing he has ever been through. My 10 year old was crying uncontrollably as we huddled on the floor under the mattress from the second queen bed.
There was a big guy across the hall from the Bahamas that worked at Atlantis who thought we should not have to pay because we were without water and electricity. I may be wrong but I couldn't blame the hotel for an act of God. If it weren't for the shelter they provided we might not have made it.
I bet HRH was operating with a skeleton staff and all non- essential personnel were sent home for last minute preparations and to be with their families.

 

[Mercy]

Bob, sorry about HRH. We checked in there on the Sunday the 15th after Charley and after leaving CSR. I thought CSR did a pretty good job handling the hurricane. The lines for the Pepper Market were long and had limited menus, but they didn't run out of food. They did open a buffet in the convention center for $7.00 per adult, but we had already eaten at the PM. I think they did a pretty good job, considering the circumstances and the fact that it appeared the resort was booked full at that point. Many people came from Florida's west coast looking to get away from the Charley, only Charley took an unexpected turn.

$18.50 for the buffet doesn't surprise me, I thought everything at HRH was expensive. And even though HRH is a very nice hotel and would probably stay there again, I found the customer service lacking as well. Maybe it's just that we had such great customer service over at CSR and Disney in general.

BTW, what happened at CSR with Angela, I'm curious?

 

[PatMcDuck]

We were at RPR for Charley. We had a large lunch at Nascar (GREAT burgers!) after our late morning arrival. We only picked for dinner at the Club food, so we did not notice any real problems. It WAS sort of boring, but what can you do?

The WEIRDEST thing was all the animals. All over the place, birds, cats, and loads of dogs. These mostly were from evacuatees, we discovered.

The storm seemed at it's worst at about 8-10pm. We were very happy parks re-opened at 9:30am Saturday, with all rides running, it appeared.

 

[bg4]

during Charley - HRH never lost power - probably generator although lights did flicker a bit, couple of times while I was riding elevator to 7th floor.

All over Universal (HRH/CityWalk/Parks) they were short-staffed, as you would expect as people had homes and lives destryoyed. I will not be writing any letter of complaint as that is just not my way. Hurricanes happen. Besides food situation, had a ball on Friday the 13th mostly because of Club lounge.

Just that what was promised didn't happen without so much as am apology or explanation. I would definetly stay at HRH again.

As to Angela, she is the CSR at front desk who checked us in on Thurs 08/12 about 2PM. Didn't even check to see if pool view club room was available. Sent us to a smoking wing (wife has asthma) and when we got to end of long hallway, the key didnt even open the door. I felt like William Shatner on that Priceline commercial. DW went back to front desk and spoke with another CSR who gave us a non-smoking pool view room (7044) - 7 rooms from club lounge. Funny how one was available wasn't it?