Where do I send a complaint about our stay?

[JeRmS]

... Just playing Devil's Advocate here ...

YOU - Party A has a room E booked

Them - Party B has a block of rooms A-J booked

So on your last day, you decide that you want to extend your stay and keep the same room BUT Party B is checking in now and your room E falls in their block of rooms.

A B C D E F G H I J

so now the party that has booked and paid for the entire block of rooms has to split one room because you decided to stay an extra day at the last minute.

so instead of Party B having

A B C D E F G H I J

they have

A B C D F G H I J ............ and P becuase the party that would have been in E had to move to P so you could be accomodated.

 

[Airb330]

Honestly? I think it is not something you should complain about. But then I have been on the other side of it--one trip someone extended their stay, and I was moved because of it. I was actually downgraded so someone could stay in "their" room. I wasn't happy.



Someone else shouldn't be inconvenienced because you decided to add time to your trip. I certainly don't think you should get a free night because of it. Sorry, but I think you are making much ado about nothing. They were able to give you another night at the resort, you shouldn't complain because you had to move.

I agree.

I sympathize with having to move rooms, but I am not particularly surprised it had to be done. How much packing needed to be done? Packing until 2AM seems like a lot to me! I would have then canceled breakfast if need be. No one forced the OP to pack until 2AM and then go to breakfast early either. While I hope Disney takes time to consider the complaint, and perhaps be more flexible with room assignments, no compensation should be given.

 

[Reese D]

There is also the posibility that the room that they moved you to was not available for the remainder of the other couple's visit. If that room was only available for one night, they could not have put that couple in that room without shuffling more people/rooms/reservations.

 

[gwynne]

Because they were scheduled to be with the rest of their party, and they could have been staying there together for several days. Why should they have to be away from their party for their entire vacation because you decided to add one extra day the day before they were due to arrive? I would be pretty ticked off if I was stuck being down the hall from my group for a 10 day stay because someone decided last minute that they needed their same room for one more day. These people didn't change their vacation plans last minute, you did. When you change plans, you have to be the one to be flexible. You have to look at the big picture.

WDW gives room blocks very high priority in room assignments. I am not at all surprised they offered OP a room, but required them to move.

I hope OP won't have a problem in the future, but if they do they now know to go to the front desk. Someone at the resort will always have better (and more updated) information than CRO.

And I did read where OP was told to call on a previous visit. That's possibly adequate advice if you don't care where you're located, or what time you will be allowed access to the room.
JMO, if have any other needs beyond a room and a bed, the front desk is the best place to get accurate information. No guarantees, but talking to a front desk CM at least gives you a chance to get something that works a little better for you.

 

[Marionnette]

There is also the posibility that the room that they moved you to was not available for the remainder of the other couple's visit. If that room was only available for one night, they could not have put that couple in that room without shuffling more people/rooms/reservations.

I would bet that this is the very reason. To allow the OP to keep her room could have meant reassigning multiple rooms in order to make her happy. In Disney's eyes, her week-long stay was a totally separate reservation from that single night. It's unfortunate, but even people who make their plans well in advance take their chance doing a split stay in the same room category at the same resort. Every effort is made not to move them, but sometimes it cannot be avoided. I understand the OP's annoyance, but I see no reason to comp them a night because of it.

 

[sunshinehighway]

Op, it sounds like you made a bigger hassle out of changing rooms than it needed to be. You had to pack at some point whether you stayed an extra day or not. It really shouldn't have been too much extra work to leave one bag with the things you needed for the extra day.

You could have just left that bag with bell service but it doesn't seem like that much of a hassle to get it from the car. You were going to have to pack the car anyways so I don't see how that's Disney's fault.

As another poster pointed out, you could have done check in before you went to breakfast. You also could have enjoyed your day after breakfast and checked in later. It was your choice to go right back after breakfast to check in.

I've added night at both the beginning and ending of trips and had to switch hotels. Its really not a big deal.

 

[SheilaHeartsDisney]

Because they were scheduled to be with the rest of their party, and they could have been staying there together for several days. Why should they have to be away from their party for their entire vacation because you decided to add one extra day the day before they were due to arrive? I would be pretty ticked off if I was stuck being down the hall from my group for a 10 day stay because someone decided last minute that they needed their same room for one more day. These people didn't change their vacation plans last minute, you did. When you change plans, you have to be the one to be flexible. You have to look at the big picture.

I agree with this. We had a room block for my family last year. We were told the rooms would all be side by side. I wouldn't be too happy if strangers were just in the middle of my family for the rest of the week. I'm sure with my family the stangers wouldn't have liked staying next to us. So the resort did the next best thing and got you a room down the hall.

But I'm also for do what you need to do and if thats talking with Disney maybe they will do something for you. You'll never know until you try but my guess is they will give the same answer I did about the room block.

 

[disnut8]

... Just playing Devil's Advocate here ...

YOU - Party A has a room E booked

Them - Party B has a block of rooms A-J booked

So on your last day, you decide that you want to extend your stay and keep the same room BUT Party B is checking in now and your room E falls in their block of rooms.

A B C D E F G H I J

so now the party that has booked and paid for the entire block of rooms has to split one room because you decided to stay an extra day at the last minute.

so instead of Party B having

A B C D E F G H I J

they have

A B C D F G H I J ............ and P becuase the party that would have been in E had to move to P so you could be accomodated.

I think you got it right. We had a family grand gathering two years ago. Four rooms in a row - two not connecting, two connecting. All on the first floor so my wheelchair bound father could have a better time and not deal with an elevator (and my stepmother could get a well deserved break from hassles of having to deal with a wheelchair).

We had, basically - A B C D. If the OP had been in B (my father's room), I would not have been pleased for him to be moved somewhere else.

I think the OP also said their was a couple in their orginal room but no one else in the rooms on each side? I'm wondering how the OP knew those rooms were vacant?

Sorry to the OP but it's common knowledge on these boards that if you call for a reservation, you are not talking to a person at that resort. The advice from that Cast Member that said you would just have to call them back was absolutely wrong. 100% wrong.

 

[teentoddlermom]

We did get the feeling from the way the concierge CM explained things that she felt they were doing us a favor.

Exactly the opposite of "what would walt do"
You were doing them a favor by offering to extend your stay, probably at rack rate at higher weekend rate too. They should have bent over backwards to make you happy.

Seems like you are getting flamed here. I loved everything about POR except my check in experience. Three stays for me there in the past 18 months, no check in magic, just some attitude.

 

[smitch425]

Exactly the opposite of "what would walt do"
You were doing them a favor by offering to extend your stay, probably at rack rate for the weekend. They should have bent over backwards to make you happy.

Seems like you are getting flamed here. I loved everything about POR except my check in experience. Three stays for me there in the past 18 months, no check in magic, just some attitude.

Do you honestly think Walt would have split up an already booked family/group to accommodate OP? No one is flaming OP. Just because someone disagrees with them doesn't mean they are flaming them.

 

[disneydacey]

Because they were scheduled to be with the rest of their party, and they could have been staying there together for several days. Why should they have to be away from their party for their entire vacation because you decided to add one extra day the day before they were due to arrive? I would be pretty ticked off if I was stuck being down the hall from my group for a 10 day stay because someone decided last minute that they needed their same room for one more day. These people didn't change their vacation plans last minute, you did. When you change plans, you have to be the one to be flexible. You have to look at the big picture.

Exactly what I was thinking. They booked and paid for their trip well before you decided to exend your stay. They shouldn't be inconvenienced because you didn't want to be.

 

[Mama Who]

The fact that another room was available that close to our original location was what we found upsetting. Why couldn't the new guests have been put in the empty room down the hall instead of giving them ours? Then we wouldn't have been required to move at all and they would have still been close to any family or friends who had been assigned rooms on that hall. Does that make more sense?

I think the problem is that you have your view backwards. You see the other party as "new" and the room as "yours."

In fact, that was *their* room. They had a reservation for it. Your extra day was a new reservation and therefore you were the "new" guest. Whatever the reason that room was assigned to them, your convenience doesn't really outweigh that. They had a reservation, that was their room. Who knows- maybe that's the room they shared on their honeymoon and they requested it.

I am sorry you could not get what you wanted, but I don't think honoring other people's reservations is a terrible thing for the hotel to do.

 

[ilovemk76]

OP here. I don't mind sharing what happened. And knowing the details may help folks understand why we didn't address it with the manager before we left.

Yes, our stay was at POR. We actually liked the resort and were initially very pleased with it - room location was good, room and grounds were beautiful. But we ran into some bad weather - we were there last week for Andrea - so we decided to extend our stay so we could get in some more park time. We've done this once before at CBR and it was easy and convenient. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way this time.

I called Disney Reservations on Friday and explained that we were scheduled to check out on Saturday but would like to extend our stay and check out on Sunday. The CM checked and our room category was available and he said that we could book it and pay over the phone and then just go to the concierge desk at the resort to be issued new room keys. This is exactly how it was handled at CBR so we figured all was good. When we got to the concierge desk however, the CM called and checked to see if we could keep the same room and she was told no, that we would have to vacate the room. Their reason was that the room was part of a block of rooms that had been booked by a large group and they all had to be near each other. We let it go even tho repacking everything and loading it all back in the car was a major inconvenience. We also had to go back to the front desk on Saturday and go back thru the check-in line again. Also a big inconvenience. We didn't really get upset tho until we saw where our new room was located - right down the hall from our original room. We couldn't help but wonder why in the world the guests checking in on Saturday couldn't have been given that room so that we could have stayed in our original location. They would still have been close to the rest of their party.

We are not unreasonable - we would have understand if our original room had been handicapped accessible and the new guests needed that feature. Or if a larger family had booked two rooms and needed a connecting door between the rooms. But our first room didn't have either of those features. We would have also understood if the group checking in was a big school or dance group and chaperones needed to be close to the kids. (We're all for that.) But we happened to see the new occupants (our original room was directly between our new room and the ice machine) and there was an elderly couple in our original room and no one at all in the rooms right around them. (We weren't spying, I promise. We just happened to see them as we walked by going to get ice.)

We were not going to make a big issue out of it but it turned out that moving to another room totally negated the advantage of having the extra day there. We had hoped to spend Friday evening enjoying the resort - playing in the pool and maybe taking the carriage ride around the grounds. Instead we were up until about 2AM figuring out how to repack everything so that we wouldn't have to drag every single piece of luggage back out again when we got into our new room. Then we had to get up early Saturday morning to load everything back into the car before we headed to the Polynesian for our breakfast at O'hana. By the time we finished our breakfast, got back over to POR, went back thru check-in, got our new room, and unloaded the stuff we needed for our last night and got it into the room it was after 3:00 that afternoon. And we were all exhausted because we had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep. We were just too pooped to go enjoy the parks - both kids crashed after we got into the new room and slept for several hours.

I have never filed a complaint with Disney before but I just cannot think of a really compelling reason why they couldn't have left us in our original room. So I hope to get some sort of explanation on that. And I have to admit, if they don't have a really compelling reason, I would very much appreciate a refund for that last night's stay because that ended up being a total waste of our money. I don't have high hopes for that. But I won't get an explanation or a refund if I don't ask. As for why we didn't address it while we were still there...well, by the time we knew where our new room would be we had already taken the time to repack and load everything back in the car. Our initial reaction was "oh well, the damage is already done." Asking for a refund did occur to us but it has taken awhile to convince ourselves to do it. That's just not something we would normally do.

We were at POR at the same time as you were. We checked out on Saturday. There was a Hugh group coming in on Sunday. Our housekeeper told us all about it.

I dont't know what you expected to get done on Saturday, as the deluge started a little after three and it never really got better for hours.

Our luggage was soaked. It must have got caught in the down pour at MCO.

A split stay is never guaranteed to be in the same room. Since you dove, you could have left all your stuff but a day of clothes and toiletries in your car. What time did you start packing that you were up until 2am?

You still had to pack on Friday if you were leaving on Saturday and had a breakfast planned. How is the room change the cause of any of your issues?

 

[nkereina]

I have both worked in a hotel (not Disney) and have been a guest asking for my pre-assigned room at Disney to be changed because I didn't like the location. I know firsthand what a time consuming hassle it is to reassign rooms on the fly. Took me 30 minutes of having a manager work on it at Disney when I was the guest. So, frankly, I think the easy way out for them was to say "no, we must move you". If you argued it at that point, I bet they would have had someone work on the reassigning of the other rooms. No one is going to create more work for themselves unless they have an unhappy guest in front of them. If they test the waters to see how the guest reacts by saying they need to be moved, and the guest is fine with it, then its a win win for the employee.

And for the PPs saying why should the arriving guest be inconvenienced? Because OP was a paying guest that was there in the flesh. All guests that have not arrived yet are potential no-shows. Everything about future guest's reservations is expendable until they are there in person, so if they need to downgrade John Smith coming in tomorrow to make Sally Jones in front of them with credit card in hand happy, they are doing it. They will not risk making Sally Jones mad to keep John Smith happy on the chance that John Smith may not show up. Hotel industry standard practice/thought process, I'm afraid. But since OP didn't bring their unhappiness with the situation to their attention, nothing happened.

 

[mb187143]

I think this could have been touched on already but OP, if I'm reading the thread right you only overlapped with the new occupants of your original room for one night. So really those rooms around them could have been filled on the second night by whomever else blocked them.

We did room blocks at 4 Disney resorts for our wedding in November. At all 4 resorts, the rooms were assigned together and were all in clusters. Only one guest was able to get her room moved out of the block because her room wasn't ready and she needed one that was to put her baby down for a nap after a 17 hour drive. It took calls to the event group and managers to move her because the block could not be altered by the front desk. So it's possible there's more to the story that you haven't been privy to.

 

[maxiesmom]

And for the PPs saying why should the arriving guest be inconvenienced? Because OP was a paying guest that was there in the flesh. All guests that have not arrived yet are potential no-shows. Everything about future guest's reservations is expendable until they are there in person, so if they need to downgrade John Smith coming in tomorrow to make Sally Jones in front of them with credit card in hand happy, they are doing it.

I'm guessing if it hadn't been a large group coming in, they probably would have let the OP stay in her room. But the odds of a large party not showing up are pretty slim.

 

[smitch425]

And for the PPs saying why should the arriving guest be inconvenienced? Because OP was a paying guest that was there in the flesh. All guests that have not arrived yet are potential no-shows. Everything about future guest's reservations is expendable until they are there in person, so if they need to downgrade John Smith coming in tomorrow to make Sally Jones in front of them with credit card in hand happy, they are doing it. They will not risk making Sally Jones mad to keep John Smith happy on the chance that John Smith may not show up. Hotel industry standard practice/thought process, I'm afraid. But since OP didn't bring their unhappiness with the situation to their attention, nothing happened.

Maybe in other hotels that is true, but Disney offers online check in, so the group could have already checked in well before OP decided to add the extra day.

I'm guessing if it hadn't been a large group coming in, they probably would have let the OP stay in her room. But the odds of a large party not showing up are pretty slim.

Yep. I don't think this was anything other than an unfortunate set of circumstances for the OP. I don't think Disney did anything wrong.

 

[Anna114]

Maybe it's just me.... but adding on you take the risk of being moved, albeit it really sucks. If that room was booked, it was booked. I fail to see how the management was wrong. Sadly it didn't go as you hoped but I don't think that is Disney's fault. The checking in a second time. You had two different reservations, I think Disney should make the process easier but it is still two different reservations. I hope you do get a satisfactory response from Disney.

 

[GigglyFigment]

I'm really not understanding what the issue is. You would have had to take the time to pack anyway. Disney didn't do anything wrong - they didn't have control over the way YOU chose to react to them complying with your request to the best of their ability.

It seems like instead of just taking a deep breath and trying to make the situation work for you, you spend that night stressed and upset at having to move and ruined your extra day - for you AND your kids. Apparently you also decided to also stakeout your old room to feel pretty confident that you didn't *really* need to be moved. (And obviously they could have come and dropped off their things and left while you weren't watching.)

What exactly is Disney supposed to do?

In my mind, it would have been a lot easier to take the time to pack up everything that night and then just worry about leaving what you would need the next day where it's easy to get to. You'd have been able to pack when the parks are closed and do whatever you wanted up to the last minute because everything would have been taken care of already. Of course, I would have also just accepted the situation for what it was and made the best of it and moved on, too.

 

[Yellowstonetim]

All guests that have not arrived yet are potential no-shows. Everything about future guest's reservations is expendable until they are there in person, so if they need to downgrade John Smith coming in tomorrow to make Sally Jones in front of them with credit card in hand happy, they are doing it. They will not risk making Sally Jones mad to keep John Smith happy on the chance that John Smith may not show up. Hotel industry standard practice/thought process, I'm afraid. But since OP didn't bring their unhappiness with the situation to their attention, nothing happened.

Not that simple at all! A large group coming in that has already checked in and arranged contiguous rooms cannot just be discounted for one family that wants to extend one day at the last minute! That is not good business!

Fortunately, Disney does not operate on the "you don't count until we have your credit card in hand" attitude.

I have been turned down at other hotel chains trying to get a room or a room for an additional night while standing at the desk with credit card in hand.