musicmom3
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2003
- Messages
- 826
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.
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.
, I'll keep my eye out for her!
