I haven't forgotten everyone!! I appreciate everyone still hanging in there, waiting on me!! I have been sick and not feeling up to doing much, and yet, still busy at the same time!! I'm still quite sick but want to get the TR going before I lose my audience!
Mainly I wanted you all to know that I spent all day yesterday loading photos to Photobucket. Remember these things: 1) my computer is ancient, ailing and slooooow, and 2) I have over 1600 photos to load. So the combo of those things makes for a slow loading process. Add in the fact that Photobucket has many glitches does not help matters any.
Anyway, I wanted to leave my PC alone yesterday and just let it load the pictures to Photobucket. If I tried to open a separate window to do something else online, it would either slow down or abort my Photobucket-loading endeavors. I got 1000 photos loaded yesterday (yes, it took all day), and I have gotten another bunch of them uploaded today. Still not done yet.
Keep in mind, I won't be posting
all of these photos - in many cases, I took 2, 3 or even 4 shots to get one good one. Some of them ended up too blurry and I just didn't delete them from the camera. But I figured it would take me waaaaaaay too long to go through all the photos and delete the useless ones before I post here. At this rate, I may as well just upload them all and then skip over certain ones as I begin the TR. But, even aside from the duplicates or blurry messes, I still have a lot of photos to share.
deejdigsdis - I had been wondering how things were going with your BIL. I hope his health takes a turn for the better, finally.
Molly - Yes, isn't that weird how you see the same people repeatedly during a DIsney trip? I find it even more amazing that it happened to you at WDW, which is so much more vast than DLR.
I think the PPH people messed up on many levels with my reservation. First of all, I got all the mixed information about whether or not I could pay with my gift cards in advance. Then, no one forewarned me that the gift cards would need to be presented upon check-OUT. They led me to believe I could hand them over at check-IN. Also, apparently I needed to have the amounts of each gift card written out when I handed them over to the CM at the front desk - which no one told me to do. I had 7 gift cards and they were for different amounts. Of course, the amounts are not printed on the cards, so how could I remember which card had which amount? But the CM apparently needed to know what the amounts were before he processed them, and no one told me to have that info ready.
Also, the CM at check-in should not have applied a $289 hold to my account in the first place without telling me they were doing it, and without asking me which card I wanted to use for the hold.
BUT - and this is the main thing and the major mistake on their part - when I paid the balance due with the gift cards and it was applied to my account at
check-in, the CM should have immediately entered the code they use to tell their system to release the hold. Instead, he did not do this, and it left the hold intact for 5 full days - that is just unacceptable for that high of an amount. They put me in a position to be hit with all kinds of hefty bank charges because of the other transactions I made while unaware of what they did and they prevented me from being able to use that money for several days. Fortunately, after calling PayPal and finding out exactly what was posting when and exactly how much overdrawn I would be, I was able to avoid it by running down to the bank in the dark of night and depositing the only cash I had on me in my bank to cover the overage. But I should not have had to deal with that, and if I had not had any cash in my wallet to deposit in the bank, I would have gotten hit with the fees.
Let us also not forget that last CM I had spoken to on the phone before arriving at the PPH told me that the Resort Fee is NOT included in the 17% tax like the room rate is. She told me it was 15% tax for the Resort Fee and 17% for the room rate.
However, when viewing my final bill from the PPH that I got on check-out day (before I realized they had put a hold on $289, leaving $0 on my PayPal card), I see they charged me 17% on the Resort Fee, as well as an
extra "tourism tax". They told me they would let the whopping 25 cents in "tourism tax" go. They didn't need it from me. They wouldn't charge me.
And yet, after the $289 finally cleared on my PayPal account, I noticed that the PPH DID, in fact, go in and get that 25 cents from me!!
So I think that PPH made a series of blunders all across the board - part of it was due to the CM's either giving me conflicting information OR failing to give me information that was important to know before checking in. Thankfully, I really loved my PPH room (which you will understand when I finally get these darn photos posted), so it was not a total fiasco.
I think I already told you that I called PPH after discovering what they had done, and the guy I got on the phone clearly sounded as if he realized their CM who checked me in made a mistake, and he was going to be spoken to by the manager. He told me to call them back if it came down to any fees or anything being applied so they could "write a letter" to PayPal to tell them that I didn't really owe $289. But, fortunately, I won't need them to write the letter after all.
I also made sure to send an e-mail in the Contact Us section of the DLR website, explaining what happened. (Hee hee hee - I told them that I moderate on one of the big
Disneyland planning message boards and that I would be sharing my experience with everyone so they knew what to do or ask for when they check in.)
I feel bad - I don't like to get employees in trouble or even get them "spoken to," but you can't be careless with people's money like that - especially nowadays, when people may not have a lot of money to throw around. And I also rarely ever complain to Disney about anything. I was not jumping on the bandwagon and bombarding them with e-mails about the Halloween party 2 months before it started. I was not sending angry messages on the Parks Blog about admission prices going up. I really try to limit my complaints until there is actually something that happens to me to complain about.
Anyway, deej, Michele, Molly, Bret, Marie, Sherri, PHXscuba, Jazz, amamax2 and Liza (and anyone else who might still be out there) - hang in there! Most of the photos are loaded, despite all technical hurdles I have encountered. I'm slugging along, low on energy and feeling a bit feverish, but I will forge ahead in my TR duties!!
Sorry I didn't hop in here sooner. My BIL had surgery Tuesday morning to have a brain tumor removed. He was expected to wake up later that day but he didn't. He had multiple seizures over the course of several days and finally opened his eyes for the first time today. We've been a bit stressed and distracted around here.
But now it is pushed back one week, it looks like a good time to go down for a few days and go to work on Sunday. I would assume that Sherry would say the samething, but I got to find a good price at BWPPI. I don't want to do a lot of walking like I did on my November trip when I stayed at Stovalls.
IMO they are worth hunting down!
)
