Sorry this has taken so long to post. We were at Shades 12/3 to 12/6 (Myself, my son 11, two 13 year old boys and my 70 year old parents). The hotel is beautiful, as are the grounds, and the rooms are huge compared to others at Disney, but those are the only positives I can come up with. We had nothing but problems with the staff from the time we checked in. I don't think the people working at the desk could have cracked a smile for a million bucks! We had been guaranteed rooms close to the elevators for medical reasons - my father is handicapped. At check in, we were given rooms as far away from the elevators as possible on the fourth floor. I immediately called the front desk and they moved my parents to a first floor room, but this move then snowballed into one problem after another. Saturday, after a looong day at MGM, I hurt my back leaving Fantasmic. By the time we got to the Shades bus stop, I could barely walk. We got back to the hotel, walked the "mile" back to our room, only to find our room keys weren't working. We looked around for a house phone so I could call the desk, but there weren't any. One of the boys went down to the front desk to tell them what was happening. 20 minutes later, when he still wasn't back, the other 2 boys went after him. Now, before I get totally flamed here, understand that I really could barely walk. It wasn't that I just didn't feel like going to the desk myself, I just didn't think I could get back to the room if I did. Anyway, another 15 minutes go by before the boys came back up. Seems that the staff at the front desk completely ignored them. Even they were using words like urgent, and emergency, and injured, no one would help them, taking adults in line behind them instead. Finally, one of the boys got really angry and just busted his way up to the desk and told the girl what was going on. She told them to go back to the room and she would send security up. When security finally let us in the room, we had been waiting to get in for an hour. We walk into the room only to find that it had never been cleaned. Nothing. No beds made, no towels picked up, nothing. I immediately called the front desk and honestly, I wasn't too nice. Asked to speak to the manager on duty. Was told he was away from his desk, and that she would have him call me right back. I hung up with her and called my parents to let them know we were back (they left MGM before Fantasmic). While I was talking to my mother, she asked if I got her message. There was no message on my phone. She said she had tried to call us to leave a message and the phone system told her that our room was unoccupied. She went down to the desk and told the clerk what had happened. The clerk told her she must have dialed wrong, looked something up in the computer, dialed a number on her phone and handed it to my mother to leave the message. But there was no message for us. So, half hour later, I call the desk again. Got a different clerk, who said the manager was still away from his desk and would have him call me. I finally got called back right before 11:00 p.m., 2 hours after my first call. I explained what had happened, in great detail, and was basically told that it was OUR fault!! Apparently, when they switched my parents room, instead of checking them out of their room and moving them (in the computer) they checked us out of our room! Makes sense - that's why our room keys didn't work and we had no maid service. Now, I understand that mistakes happen, but was infuriated when he said that if we hadn't switched my parents' room, none of this would have happened. He flat out denied that any of his front desk staff would have ignored the children. After 15 minutes, I finally told him to just send someone up with new room keys and some clean towels so we could go to sleep. More than a half hour later, a bell man showed up with both. The next day, after breakfast, my mother spotted the day manager. We told her the whole story and she admitted that the desk staff did, in fact, often ignore children, that they had had a previous meeting about it, and she would schedule another one. I told her I thought they should really install some house phones, for safety reasons. Alot of elderly retirees stay at Shades and if something happened outside a room, there was no way to get help. She agreed. I have to say, she seemed to take our concerns seriously, and offered us a free dinner that night to make up for our inconvenience. We accepted, reluctantly on my part, but my mother doesn't like to make waves. Dinner turned into another ordeal - if any of you were in the Garden Gallery restaurant that night, I was the one crying into my napkin!! Since this post is already so long, I won't even get into that. I'm sure that these incidents, taken individually, will probably sound petty, but it was really the snowball effect. We had such a great time at the parks, and at
MVMCP, but it just seemed like every time we walked into the hotel, there was some kind of problem. I know that we will never stay there again. Sorry this was so long.
Who am I to complain, the rent is cheap in a flight zone lol.
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