coming into long threads late in the game is so fun.
I wonder how the OP is doing? She said that they were fixing the toilet, and that is a pretty darned good reason for a delay in checking in.
We all know what 4pm means ......
It means that starting at 4 is when we can expect to *start* getting access to rooms.
We usually try to stop by the front desk to let them know when we are out of the room on the last day.
You should be able to call Housekeeping. Unless something has changed since the last time I did that.
it would also be helpful for those of us who arrive, drop our bags and go straight to the parks, to let them know that they can do our room later, as we won't need it until after park closing.
Online checkin tells them when we expect to be in.
Of course we don't always tell the truth.
You can? I thought this was impossible.
Late checkout is sometimes, once in a blue moon, every so often, available. Usually when something bad has happened. I had it once on our first trip 11 years ago. We got it on a room we were vacating in order to be moved to another room, and it was a stupid idea to do. It just made us angry. Much like sitting in the lobby stewing over things, every minute reminded us that something wrong had gone on. We should have gone out and had fun. But...it was literally freezing that December and it was the end of our trip and we had apparently taken leave of our senses.
at the advertised 4pm check-in time.
At the advertised 4pm *is the START of* checkin time.
I hear you. We were at SSR in a 2 bedroom lock off and they were knocking at 08:00 AM. I told them we would be gone at 11:00. They never came back though, but we did have another issue. We arrived on a Sunday, Monday at 08:00 AM there was a knock on the studio door, it was maintenance wanting to replace a filter for the HVAC system, I had opened up the 1 bedroom door and spoke with him. He asked if we were in both rooms I said yes. 30 minutes later housekeeping knocks on the studio door. We tell them we are here till Saturday. Tuesday morning at 08:00 a knock on the studio door again and it’s housekeeping, again we advise them we are here till Saturday. We then advised the front desk of this. They said our rooms were ours till Saturday in their system, must be an issue with housekeeping system.
They were knocking about you checking out? Or were they knocking to do their "security" check?
I didn't mind the "Do not disturb" sign. It used to actually mean something.
Even on our first trip it hasn't always meant much.
That all may be true, but other hotels seem to be still able to turn their rooms over without rushing people out the door. Not unreasonable to expect Disney to do the same, especially in hotels they label as "deluxe"
It's a timeshare, not a hotel, though.
My aunt did housekeeping in a past life. For hotels and for a timeshare place that reminds her of DVC. The timeshare was absolutely backbreaking work, and she empathizes with the DVC housekeepers quite a lot.
This is a factor that I don't think receives much attention - every time I see a post stating that they stayed in multiple resorts over as many nights, I cringe.
They built flexibility into the way they created the timeshare. We are all perfectly within the bounds of DVC to move as we wish to or have to depending on how the points worked out. In February I'll be partaking in my FIRST all-one-resort DVC stay in 11 years of WDW trips.
If they want folks to believe that they are the gold standard in the industry
But they don't. They dropped that several years ago.
A 900 room Pop/All Stars has exactly the same challenges, and I doubt housekeeping is waking those people up at 8AM or putting them into rooms at 7PM.
Pop and timeshares do not have the same challenges for housekeeping.
Obviously there will be problems and 100% satisfaction is probably impossible but there is a big difference in the dissatisfaction between having a burned out lightbulb or missing cookie sheet in a room as opposed to not getting in your room on time which is what this thread was about.
The thread was about someone waiting 4 hours when they didn't have to, and 1.5 hours to find out that there was a problem with the toilet (she said that on the first page).
Others have taken the thread elsewhere.
I believe they HAVE enacted a minimum stay for cash rooms. I don't think you can book single-night stays anymore for cash, particularly at the value resorts.
If they did it was temporary or for a specific time period. I just randomly entered 5/16 for a one night stay and I could reserve Pop for that night.
I've never been under the impression that 4p means I have a room; it means that's the earliest I can check in.
To be exact, it's the earliest you can *expect to have a room*. We can check in online months in advance. We can check in at 6am. But we can't start to expect to have a room until 4pm the day our reservation starts.
Many other TS we’ve stayed in provide instructions for preparing the room for checkout. Some are minimal and some are quite detailed. Maybe DVC could do the same, particularly in whether to start the dishwasher or not. We usually start it, in addition to piling all the towels in one place.
I desperately wish they had that. The quandary of what to do with the dishes has bugged me for years. The dishwashers take much longer than the time it would take for a housekeeper to do their job, and they would have to come back to put things into place, so they can't run the dishwasher...
Maybe they should give out a free fast pass (now that they charge for these passes) for every 30 minutes extra the person has to wait for the room.
We don't all go to parks during our stays, FWIW.
The way some people are talking, I feel like I bought a timeshare to a motel 6.
Eh, we're a bunch of people with time on our hands and many checkins, discussing the fine points of it all. If my non-Disney-aficionado friends group is at all like the norm, I think MOST people have perfectly fine stays, and they are in the parks until well after their rooms are ready, they never make cookies to notice if the cookie sheet is there or not, etc etc etc.
