No magic at ASMo--long

[musicmom3]

Is this how things always are at All-Star Movies? I would appreciate a reality check.

1) Pull up to the front, which is empty. Tiffany Towncar driver unloads the bags for our two families. Three bell folks stare at us as they lounge against the wall while he is doing so. The driver and I look at each other and I approach the bell people. One growls "are you cheerleaders?" I say "yes" and the CM waves to the side and says "you have to go back there." The driver reloads the van and since he doesn't know where "back there" is, approaches the bell people. They gesture to the side again. He returns to the van, shaking his head. We drive around and find "back there" eventually. I must say I love Tiffany! Our driver was so pleasant throughout.

2) At "back there" there is a tent where cheerleaders check in. The CM is hostile when she tells me my room is not ready (it is about 3:00). We're pretty easy-going (it's DIsney after all!) and we figure we can go to the pool, but where should we put the luggage? She tells us we should unload the luggage on the sidewalk and wait there. I ask for the room number so maybe the driver can get us close to the room. She says she can't "reveal it until the room is ready" even though we, as part of a group, are pre-assigned our rooms. She says we should check every half-hour with her to see if the room is ready. I ask the driver to drop the luggage as directed on a nearby sidewalk. He refuses, stating he will wait with me until we know what is happening. I feel so bad for the driver that I go back into the tent, approach another CM and ask for clarification. She picks up a walkie-talkie, calls another building, and finds out that our room in fact has been ready all along. To her credit, she is extremely pleasant. Ah, the perils of group travel, I think.

We move in, the room is small but very clean.

3) The next day mousekeeping knocks on the door where my teen is alone, and shoves a heap of towels at her. "Shoves" is her word. My teen volunteers to leave the room so it can be cleaned. The mousekeeper asks, "you want me to clean your room" and leaves. Hey...I wasn't there for this so I am not an eye-witness, but when my daughter called me, upset by this encounter, I asked her to ring housekeeping and, since all the other rooms were done, and it was getting late, just to politely remind them that she was leaving and the room could be cleaned. I figured we should focus on the issue, not the towel shoving, so that is what we did. By 4:15, when I arrived, the room hadn't been cleaned, so I called mousekeeping again. Didn't think it would be a big deal...BUT...

4) The next morning at 10:30 AM the towel-shoving Mousekeeper knocks on the door and asks to clean the room. I tell her we will be leaving in 15 minutes and my daughter is getting dressed for competition. Otherwise I would have run out--she was extremely hostile and angry-looking. She told me that I should not have called housekeeping the previous day and that I should better not be making any calls today. Okay, I did feel threatened. I apologized to her for calling the previous day.

5) After that, I went on alert and stayed there. I felt like she and the other mousekeepers were always watching us. Not a good feeling, and it colored my feeling about the resort.

6) The next morning at the food court my daughter wanted a bagel but they were all gone. The CM ordered (as in "take a muffin period") my daughter to take a muffin...which she did. Later on my daughter confessed she really didn't want the muffin. At this point it was all kind of getting funny. We did a rim shot with the muffin.

7) Our humor managed to continue as we endured bus nightmare. We routinely had a wait of 45-minutes to get to the parks and back. One family waited for 1-1/2 hours for a bus to Animal Kingdom....I saw the mom finally go into the lobby weeping. On our last day, while being dropped back at the hotel, the driver slammed the back doors on me...a fitting departing gesture, I thought!

The Mears transportation that POP Warner had ordered for transporting the kids and parents around to official events was wonderful, by the way.

8) After getting slammed in the door, I did speak to the manager about the things that had happened on our trip. The manager was very nice but in that noncommital way that people can get when they don't really care...he seemed to be looking over my shoulder as I was talking. I asked that he arrange transportation for myself and my kids and our bags early the next morning to CR, which was our last night. No way was I going to leave my bags in their care. He agreed to that and the next morning off we went before mousekeeping arrived! Luckily I had confirmed the transportation to CR later that night--nobody at the desk seemed to know anything about it, but somebody got on it, because the van arrived as promised.

No magic this trip for sure.

 

[DisneyFan79]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I have always had great service and great housekeeping anytime I have stayed on property. I hope you didn't leave mousekeeping a tip!! I think if it had been me, I would have let housekeeping and the manager know that this was in no way "Disney service" and would appreciate an apology for rude behavior. We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge all of last week and not once did I have a rude cast member encounter. All of our mousekeepers were GREAT. We got towel animals everyday and we tipped everyday. Once again, sorry to hear of your experience.

 

[newmousecateer]

Sorry about your experiences.

The mousekeeper told you "you better not make any more phone calls"? Well, right then and there I would have been make a phone call, right in front of her, to as the manager why housekeeping was allowed to talk to guests in that manner.

 

[jann1033]

too bad you had such a bad time but I wonder if it is because *some* of the kids appear to be so rowdy and unchaperoned...someone posted about kids running and banging on doors at all hours ect..unfortunatly even if you aren't involved you get "labeled" with the bad ones. so even though that wasn't the case with your particular group evidently enough others have caused problems to leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of the staff and guests...as evidenced by the number of posts on here talking about that group..

personally we have been at WDW during that time period ( do not know if they groups were there or not, never noticed) and never had a problem but did not stay at the all stars either. it seems it could be helped if people were just responsible for their kids like you were..I assume these kids are high school age...where are their parents? they are still minors and just for safety sake no way my kids would have been out at all hours unchapereoned when they were that age at WDW or any place else

 

[Disney Ella]

Sorry to hear about your problems. I find it very frustrating to complain about something (since I rarely do it) and then find that the person in charge really doesn't care that there is a problem and feels no need to try to improve things. Not the kind of treatment you expect staying on-site. Hope the girls did well in the competition!

 

[JonnyRocker]

There is NO excuse for that sort of behavior. I've made three trips to Disney this year, and I've noticed a change in attitude from *some* of the Cast Members in the parks, too, ranging from disinterest to being downright rude. Perhaps a pep talk from Mr. Eisner is in order. (LOL)

 

[goofy4tink]

Wow, what a miserable experience!!! We stayed at AllStarMu from the 12-17th. I have to say that I was quite pleasantly surprised. We did have a swarm of kids. But, for the most part they were pretty well behaved. Our room was actually larger than I was expecting. In fact, I think the tub area is actually bigger than at POR! WE did find that the CM's were pretty terrific. I actually found them to be more helpful and much nicer than the CM's at the Polynesian last August. My dd, 10, liked the AllStars more than the Polynesian and that had been her dream resort to stay in!! I'm really sorry to hear your stay wasn't very magical. It was almost what I was expecting to get but didn't!! Hopefully, you'll get a letter/email off to the people in the right area and state these issues. They need to be addressed. Otherwise, people will start staying offsite.

 

[CamColt]

Wow! That is horrible treatment, and Im sorry that it happened to you.

As for your question, I dont believe that is how things usually are there. We have stayed there 3 times now and have never had anything like that.
Our experience at check in was great. A CM even worked some Disney Magic for my Mother once to avoid the extra adult charge for her.
The only thing that came close to your experience was 1 day we had our room cleaned late. That was tough because I was trying to get in the room to shower after swimming, before returning to the park for our dinner PS. But even then, when I met the housekeeper, he was very polite and friendly. Almost too friendly, LOL, as he kept talking to me. But one thing he was saying was how great the guests are there and he loves meeting them, etc...
Even in the food court we have had helpful CMS when we have to question if something is made with peanuts(DS is allergic).

I hope things arent taking a downward turn there, because we really do enjoy our stays there. Hopefully, as unfortunate as it was, you were just unlucky.

 

[tjmw2727]

Wow,

While the All Stars are not my favorite resort by far I have had much better experiences than you did. Hope things went better with the competition and CR.

If you haven't already please consider writing a letter to the manager of the resort detailing the facts. If nothing else the next guests or groups to visit won't have the experience you had.

I would definately mention the houskeeping incident with as much detail as you can remember. I have also had "less than stellar" houskeeping, including one "towel shove" but the room did get cleaned eventually. Not to second guess you but I would also have been on the phone with the housekeeping manager on the spot! You have more patience than I!!

TJ

 

[catherines_mama]

I totally agree. A call to the resort mgr is in order. as is a call to the housekeeping mgr..

But also. Call transpo. They shut the door ON you!!! Right then and there I'd take the name and bus # and pick up the ph. That's just wrong.

I am sure these CMs were tired and overwhelmed from the Pop Warner crowd. but as someone who works in cust service, every customer is diff. You leave the junk from the last one behind and move on.

I am so sorry this has happened to you! I actually will be staying at WDW for the 1st time in Feb, but as a traveler, I know how wrong this is.

 

[Joyciemc]

Wow, that is horrible! I'm sorry your stay was unpleasant! I really don't think this is usual at the All Stars. I had a great stay at Sports a few years ago, and a FANTASTIC stay at Movies last May (so much, that we're staying there again in Jan). When we checked in, we had a sweet CM who was very helpful. Mouskeeping was also very good.. I actually felt bad that first day because we had left the vanity area a wreck, and she completely cleaned it up.
The service you experienced was awful, and you should continue to contact the manager until you get satisfaction. I hope that our next stay is more like our last one, and we don't get the evil mouskeeper , I'll keep my eye out for her!

 

[Sammie]

Originally posted by JonnyRocker
There is NO excuse for that sort of behavior. I've made three trips to Disney this year, and I've noticed a change in attitude from *some* of the Cast Members in the parks, too, ranging from disinterest to being downright rude. Perhaps a pep talk from Mr. Eisner is in order. (LOL)

Very possibly Mr Eisner is the problem. I mean when the only remaining Disney family member will not work for the company anymore, what does that say.

 

[musicmom3]

Thanks for all the comments. I am glad to hear that things are usually better at ASMo. During our stay, and this was our third trip this year, I actually found myself wishing that I was staying off-site. It was sad that as we were driving to the airport my kids were pointing at the Radisson and the other biggies and saying things like "we should have stayed there...or at that one, now THAT looks nice!" I came home with a file full of mousekeeping envelopes, since I didn't use even one of them. For me this was one of the saddest parts of the trip. I mean, I print out those mousekeeping envelopes with love!

It just seemed like the magic everywhere was turned down a notch, including in the parks...maybe it's the stress of the approaching holidays. I am going to post on the restaurant boards about our bizarre experience at CRT and how our lunch wound up "on the house" because of a comedy of errors. But that's just how my cookie crumbled this time, and we were able to laugh at just about everything, even the bus door slam. The cheer team performed superbly and earned seventh place in the nation. Now THAT's something to celebrate!

Just one last question--do you really think I should write to somebody about the resort? And if so, who would be the best person to contact? As I said, the manager didn't appear too concerned. Thanks for input!

 

[risy]

There was a lot of Disney "lay-off" talk the 2nd week of December. The CMs might have been a little distracted.

 

[moohammy]

I'm not too positive about who you should call specifically ... but if you call the hotel I'm sure you would be connected to the right person eventually.
It's ashame that your trip went so bad. As a past cast member, I can tell you from experience that these few weeks around Christmas are, unfortunatly, some of the most frustrating. The cast members feel stressed and sad that they can't be with their families over the holidays, and that attitude sometimes trickles down to the guest. I think you have the right attitude about it though, no reason to get disgruntled, just kind of laugh at it and make the most of the trip.

 

[dansyr]

I have stayed at the All-star's both with and without a group. I used to take my dancers down for competition. I have never experienced this kind of treatment. When checking in we didn't even deal with CM's. We were checked in by the tour company who booked our trip.
As for mousekeeping I would've definitely called about them. If I were you, I would contact someone at Disney who can help. They should realize that a huge part of their revenue comes from group activities such as the competitions they sponsor.
I'm sorry for your experience. I would contact someone so they are aware of this. I'm sure it would help for future trips.

 

[laurieny]

We were at AllMu for pop warner during the same time period. My only complaint was the front desk. We got in at 9pm along with MANY other people and they had 2 people checking people in. Then over 3/4 of the keys did not work so we had to keep trecking beack to the lobby to get a new one. They refused to send anyone down to the rooms because they were too busy. Meanwhile you have alot of tired kids standing around waiting. The resort was extremely crowded and it was always a shock to get to the parks and see them not crowded. The rooms are SOOO small! We moved to the Dolphin at the end of the week and enjoyed 2 days of luxury!I would definitely voice youe complaint. I think you have a lot of justified conplaints!!

 

[Kallison]

Originally posted by newmousecateer
Sorry about your experiences.

The mousekeeper told you "you better not make any more phone calls"? Well, right then and there I would have been make a phone call, right in front of her, to as the manager why housekeeping was allowed to talk to guests in that manner.

I agree -- that would be a surefire way to get me calling every day.

 

[wilderness01]

This kind of behavior is totally unacceptable. I would never have tolerated it. As a matter of fact I now would do everything in my power to have the housekeeper reprimanded at the least with a letter of explanation placed in her employment file along with a written apology to you. It is against the law to "threaten or intimidate" anyone and I would surely complain to the executive office about this. You have valid complaints that should be addressed. I'm sorry this happened to you. There is never ever a good enough excuse for this to happen, busy or not/worried about their jobs or not, it is just not nice and completely unacceptable.

 

[musicmom3]

I've decided to write a letter about what happened--thanks for the support...the incident still bothers me, and I am usually one to get over things very quickly. I will consult my Unofficial Guide for the email address of The Complaint Department...unless somebody here knows? I am reluctant to go thru ASMo...although I will copy the manager there on whatever I send to the next authority up.