We stayed in a bungalow in early May for 8 nights. We had very similar experiences with bell services - long hold times, long wait to get our luggage, and ultimately it was easier for me to walk to bell services to get things. On arrival day we had luggage, owners lockers, and groceries - so to be fair a lot of stuff. They forgot a bag and I ended up walking back to to get it because I didn’t want to wait another 90 minutes. That was a Saturday afternoon so we figured it was a one off. We had a small
Amazon fresh delivery later in the week - same issue. I walked up to bell services and back with the delivery - husband was still on the phone waiting for bell services to answer when I got back.
We had the same issue with the front desk - one afternoon we got back and the plunge pool was empty. I almost cried. Husband got on the phone and after about 15 minutes of hold time, I just walked up to the lobby and talked to someone.
Our home resorts are VGF, BLT, BCV, and VGC. Two of those have their own desks/bell services (VGF and BLT) and one has a desk which is intermittently staffed (BCV). In all our trips over the past 17 years of ownership, we have only had two issues with bell services at our home resorts that I can recall.
I assume it came down to money when building the tower but I don’t think the bell services issue can be attributed to just busy time periods. It seems to be more of a systemic issue and a pretty big oversight that the tower doesn’t have its own bell services. I also question if not having a front desk is going to become a larger issue.