Just Back- Our observations

[katt789]

We had an absolutely FABULOUS TIME!!! We arrived the 17th for one night with just 2 of us and then the 18-25th on another resso with 4 of us at All Star Sports.

The biggest issue we had was with Sports, even down to their management team. 99% of the cm's we encountered there were negative or not helpful, and honestly has completely turned us off of staying at any of the All Stars in the future, definitely not happening again.

Other downside was that the welcome show at Magic Kingdom was down for the last half of our trip because of platform construction, and because of the races, the others in our group didn't get to see it at all.
(dont know if this was posted anywhere, but many other families were confused as we were)

The others who ran the glass slipper challenge had minor complaints about the races being way over crowded, specifically those who were walking the course, and were all in the road blocking the way, they said there was a lot of having to weave in and out of people who were going slowly, or that all the runners ended up running on the grass, and people stopping out of nowhere in the middle of the road instead of the side of the road.

We ate at:
-Le Cellier (lunch)

-Be Our Guest

-Cinderella's Royal Table

-Skipper Canteen

-Morimoto

-Hoop Dee Doo

And enjoyed all of the a ton! The one that we all agreed was no longer worth the money was CRT. The service was just okay, the food wasn't much special, and the character interactions were lacking. We did have a super magical evening the last time we were there, so that might have helped make this one seem lackluster.

Skipper Canteen we walked right in no problem, and fully enjoyed the food and service, the prices were a little high (IMO) for it, but once they get fully situated and do some menu upgrades and changes I'm hoping it will be more worthwhile.

Food quality, efficiency of being sat and getting meal items, service and overall experience everywhere was great!!QS wise we really enjoyed the new toppings bar at Pecos, and usually ate there in MK.

MK wasn't too crowded, we managed to do everything we wanted to get done, and spent most of our trip there. Added bonus with all the marathon crowds!

DHS we went straight to Launch Bay and were the first ones in line for characters, we'd been stressing over that since everyone seemed to be headed that way but veered off to TSM. Had a fabulous (though slightly terrifying) time with all of that.

We only spent a half day at DAK and found despite all the construction walls that things were still good there, though pretty heavily crowded. Epcot got no complaints since we ate, and then made a meandering walk around WS with a margarita stop afterwards.

Weather was FANTASTIC the entire time, humidity was pretty much non existent until the last few days,only needed a sweater early in the morning the first day and evening on the last, and it never once got too hot!

Overall we had an absolutely fantastic time and and cannot wait to go back, there was a lot of (sometimes joking, sometimes very serious) #budgetcuts and #thanksshanghai moments throughout the trip, but that won't stop us from going home

 

[Robo]

**
We had an absolutely FABULOUS TIME!!! We arrived the 17th for one night with just 2 of us and then the 18-25th on another resso with 4 of us at All Star Sports.

The biggest issue we had was with ASSports, even down to their management team. 99% of the cm's we encountered there were negative or not helpful, and honestly has completely turned us off of

OTOH, we just returned from Sports (a "nicer" name) earlier this month and found very (VERY) nice CMs there.

 

[katt789]

OTOH, we just returned from Sports (a "nicer" name) earlier this month and found very (VERY) nice CMs there.

guess it just depends on the day? i dunno we didn't deal with the general ones much, but encountered a rude cm in the foodcourt on my first morning, and we had an issue the first day with something left in the room (under a separate reservation and we'd checked out) and no one was helpful or nice with that including the manager until the manager for the next day came in; she was fabulous but everyone else we dealt with throughout the week (minus bell services) was not enjoyable

 

[Robo]

guess it just depends on the day? i dunno we didn't deal with the general ones much, but encountered a rude cm in the foodcourt on my first morning, and we had an issue the first day with something left in the room (under a separate reservation and we'd checked out) and no one was helpful or nice with that including the manager until the manager for the next day came in; she was fabulous but everyone else we dealt with throughout the week (minus bell services) was not enjoyable

Interesting that you had the "left in the room" after check-out situation.

So did we.
I had my car key (car at our hometown airport lot) but didn't want to carry it for 12 days at WDW.
So, we locked it in the room safe (nothing else in the safe) and my wife carried the safe key the entire trip.

On our last day, we checked out and left for Ft. Wilderness breakfast and a trip to DS for a few hours.

At some point, hours after checkout, I suddenly remembered the car key that we left locked in the room safe!!
(It had been 12 days without touching the safe, so we just forgot.)

We bussed back to Sports and approached a CM at the front desk with our story.
He said that the room had been cleaned and assigned to another family, but they had not gone to the room yet.
That CM asked his manager if he could take the safe key and walk to the room and retrieve our key… and he DID.
Very quickly and very nicely, with a smile, he handed us our car key and our trip home was saved!

 

[LumosQ102]

Those food photos are making me hungry.

So strange that the welcome show was out, I didn't see news about that anywhere and like you would have been pretty miffed if I had turned up for rope drop and no welcome show...

Sounds like a great trip overall though. Reminds me why I'm always so keen to get back.

 

[GPC0321]

OMG, love the pics with Kylo and Chewie! That lightsaber skirt!

 

[katt789]

Interesting that you had the "left in the room" after check-out situation.

So did we.
I had my car key (car at our hometown airport lot) but didn't want to carry it for 12 days at WDW.
So, we locked it in the room safe (nothing else in the safe) and my wife carried the safe key the entire trip.

On our last day, we checked out and left for Ft. Wilderness breakfast and a trip to DS for a few hours.

At some point, hours after checkout, I suddenly remembered the car key that we left locked in the room safe!!
(It had been 12 days without touching the safe, so we just forgot.)

We bussed back to Sports and approached a CM at the front desk with our story.
He said that the room had been cleaned and assigned to another family, but they had not gone to the room yet.
That CM asked his manager if he could take the safe key and walk to the room and retrieve our key… and he DID.
Very quickly and very nicely, with a smile, he handed us our car key and our trip home was saved!

We got pretty much the opposite of that! Lol.

We checked out of the room, dropped bags at the front, and hopped on at MK bus. Before we'd even driven under the sign, Kara remembered her camera battery was still plugged into the wall! We googled the number, hopped on the phone to try and get transferred to Sports,the first two times, they just transferred her to lost & found, where it would NOT be yet since we'd left the room all of 30 mins ago, and l&f was closed anyways! We called again to try and get transferred to the right place, still weren't getting proper answers or any kind of help. The first time, they transferred before even letting Kara finish her sentence...not impressed.. I took the phone and called and ended up leaving a very detailed message with a return call number and lost an found (and again, was never told by anyone if this was the hotel's lost and found or if this was the general lost and found at ttc) and urged them to call back with ANY information throughout the day.

No phone calls were received and Kara called again during the day with no answers or help.

We get back to the hotel that night, pick up the magic bands for our new room (2 ressos, SAME HOTEL) and ask to talk to a manager about the camera battery. We explain the entire situation, AGAIN, and explain that we've gotten no help or sympathy from anyone we'd dealt with. Manager checked lost & found,doesn't find it, explains that a family has already checked into the room so no one can go check for it. She says no one's at housekeeping at this hour so if it was there, she doesn't have access to it either. She can't do anything until midday tmr when managers change over.

(to put this all into more perspective too I'll explain that Kara & I are both...amateur photographers..would be the best way to describe it, it's passion, a way of life, a thing we do to really enjoy making memories. Not to mention that she's going on a cruise her FIRST cruise after the vacation, this was all explained to the manager)

She asked if we could just go buy another one tomorrow..uhm,..no...we don't have a car, that would be a MAJOR waste of park time, not to mention it's a Nikon DLSR, they're SUPER expensive and we can't exactly find one at walgreens. Manager said she'd done everything she could, there was nothing she could do to help us anymore. Kara's tired and frustrated and upset and obviously starts to cry which leads to me being upset. Manager says then FINALLY goes to check on the room it had been left it, she manages to pull up that the family had only done online check in, and they're not there yet, so she sends a runner up to t he room to check. (WHICH IS ALL WE NEEDED DONE 12 HOURS AGO WHEN WE CALLED)

We wait for her to come back, and say that there's nothing there. We ask again about housekeeping, do they have a separate area for stuff? Manager says maybe they put it on one of their carts while cleaning and it's there, but she has no access to it, sorry, nothing else she can do.

Cool.

We go up to our new room, find a message from the manager saying that she's checked the housekeeping carts and there's nothing there. Oh..you mean those carts you had no access to 10 mins ago? How interesting.

Kara gets up in the morning to run her 5k, on barely any sleep since she's so stressed about her camera, I get up to head into MK and meet her there later. In the meantime, she heads down to the front desk with the morning managers names. Morning manager is IMMEDIATELY apologetic, and is genuinely worried that Kara can't take pictures, and hasn't been able to so far. She was a MILLION times nicer and more helpful, saying that she was so so sorry, and if they couldn't find her battery, she personally would find/get a new one for Kara and apologize for the issues so far. She also explained that if it had been found yesterday by housekeeping that it could be in place A or B before it actually made it to Sport's l&f...another thing that the night manager hadn't bothered to mention. She took Kara's information and said she would personally call her as soon as she new more.

A few hours later at MK Kara got the call they' found her battery and it was being brought up to our new room.

Day manager, 10 points, gsf card, all the love.

 

[SoCalTrojanSkip]

So glad your that your issue was resolved and that your friend was able to resume her picture taking fun...

I just bought a Cannon DSLR for my trip last October and I would have been pretty upset if I hadn't been able to use it. It's funny because I almost bought the Nikon version of the Cannon I bought.

That being said,
I will never for the life of me understand why people apply for and take jobs in customer service...and have no desire to work with customers/guests.
This is ESPECIALLY at places like Disney when people have no interest in providing even the most basic service (say hello, smile, don't be rude). The pay and the benefits aren't that great and working with Disney is a real hassle sometimes..I know I used to work for them in California. So if these people hate what they do so much...why are they there...?

Sorry,
[/rant]

PS
Your food pics were amazing.

 

[katt789]

So glad your that your issue was resolved and that your friend was able to resume her picture taking fun...

I just bought a Cannon DSLR for my trip last October and I would have been pretty upset if I hadn't been able to use it. It's funny because I almost bought the Nikon version of the Cannon I bought.

That being said,
I will never for the life of me understand why people apply for and take jobs in customer service...and have no desire to work with customers/guests.
This is ESPECIALLY at places like Disney when people have no interest in providing even the most basic service (say hello, smile, don't be rude). The pay and the benefits aren't that great and working with Disney is a real hassle sometimes..I know I used to work for them in California. So if these people hate what they do so much...why are they there...?

Sorry,
[/rant]

PS
Your food pics were amazing.

SO were we!!!

Nice!! I use a Canont5, got it just over a year ago and am considering upgrading for the wifi capabilities already lol!!

TRUTH!! That's the other thing, is we're both ex CM's, and we know how things work, like, if I was the not so great manager I would have at LEAST offered up some balloons, or a mickey sticker, if not an extra fast pass, or SOMETHING. It just left a super bad taste in our mouths and we won't return to all stars because of it! if she had been a little bit nicer maybe that would change things!

and OMG thank you, i only used my phone and bad lighting for them! lol

 

[katt789]

OMG, love the pics with Kylo and Chewie! That lightsaber skirt!

They were some of the best meet & greets! Kylo was ACTUALLY TERRIFYING, and chewie was legit the cutest thing ever! Lol, the lightsaber skirt is mine but I let her borrow it lol. I bought it from the Her Universe line at SWW last year!!