cal5755
10-15-2008, 11:18 PM
I just thought I would share the letter I wrote to Disney after we returned from our trip. I know I wrote about this in our unmagical trip report but I just thought I would share what I actually wrote to Guest Relations.
From: <snip>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Too Much UN-Magical.........
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:16:34 -0400
Hello,
I just came home yesterday from our 10 night 11 day stay at All Star Movies resort. I traveled with a party of 12 consisting of me, my husband, my 3 children, my mother, my aunt and her husband and my uncle and his friend and our very special guest of honor 96 year old Aunt Apple. It was her first trip to Disney. We had her first visit pin and were set for a super magical vacation like we have always had in the past at Disney World. This was our 4th family visit, my 10th visit and my mothers 12 visit. WE LOVE DISNEY. Now I will start with the bad news first and then end this letter on a positive note as we do want to give Disney another chance.....however if this was my first visit to Disney World it would most certainly have been my last. I apologize in advance for the length of this email. Please know however, this is the first time I have ever had complaints in Disney or a poor experience.
First I will start with transportation. Yes I said first....because if we only had one incident in one area of the park we would not be complaining as we know everyone has an off day and one incident is not going to ruin the magic of a week in the happiest place on earth. Transportation was a wreck this week for us. We had Aunt Apple with us who uses a wheel chair and I would say 1 in 5 buses did not want to deal with the wheel chair and we were made to feel like an inconvenience more times than I can count. We had a very poor experience with 2 bus drivers. The first was Jasen. We were leaving Animal Kingdom and as we were coming to the bus Jasen was standing outside the bus. When we came into view of Jasen he went back onto the bus. We thought we had missed the bus and were going to wait for the next one...that would not have been a problem....however when we came to the bus Jasen was still there sitting in the seat looking at us. He said " so you want to get on". I said yes please that is why we are in line. There were only 4 people on the bus at the time. Jasen did not want to deal with the wheel chair but put the lift down and put Aunt Apple on the bus. As we left and made the first turn Aunt Apple and her wheel chair starting moving and I had to keep my foot on her chair to keep her in place. There were not straps to her front wheels put on and no lap belt put on. This issue I complained about at the resort as her safety was an issue. The very next day as we were yet again leaving Animal Kingdom we were already in the wheelchair line for our resort when the bus pulled up. We were the only wheelchair and the second family to show up at the stop. There were 7 of us together for this trip to the resort. The bus driver, Paul from Boston Ma, was rude as he did not want to deal with the wheel chair. He told me transfer Aunt Apple on the bus and fold the wheelchair. I said she is 96 years old and does not walk well enough to get up and down off the bus she needs to stay in her chair. So he was not so nice about strapping her in. Once she was safely strapped in the rest of our family boarded the bus like we always do. Paul then yelled that only 4 of us could board with the wheel chair. Then stated he would let it slide this time but no other drivers would let it happen. We had been on vacation for 4 days at this point and never had a problem getting on the bus with Aunt apple. It was rude, especially considering my youngest daughter sat on my mom's lap and my 13 year old son and my husband were standing....and the bus line was not even full to begin with!! After my husband complained with some other guests that he was being rude, we arrived at the hotel and Paul came over to my husband and put his finger on my husbands chest and said "maybe I miss stated myself what I was saying is that not all drivers will allow your whole family on the bus and if you read the pamphlet you got you would see that." We went immediately to concierge to ask about the policy and did ask more than one Cast Member the policy and they stated there was no such policy or pamphlet for us to read. These were the two really bad experiences we had but there were a few other times when we felt like an inconvenience having a wheelchair on the bus.
Second was our dining experience. We were on the deluxe dining plan and our party for dining was never less than 7 so gratuity was included for our party at 18 percent. I am a waitress myself...my tip change and tax return every year go to our now annual Disney trip so I know how important tips are to waitstaff. I also know it needs to be earned not expected. In several restaurants this year we were "forgotten". It did not happen just once or twice it happened several times where we had to hunt down waitstaff for extra drinks, napkins etc. They knew what our tip was going to be so didn't have to work for it. We had one waitress complain about how heavy it was to carry our drinks and she did not refill our drinks until we asked at the very end of our meal, that was at Captain Jacks. We had 3 or 4 wait staff that came to us with our slips after we told them we would be paying cash for the gratuity and they said "the balance is what you OWE me". It came off very rude and really made us not want to continue our table services for the week. We ended up canceling 3 during our vacation actually. Our worst dining experience was at 50's prime time cafe. We were a party of 12 and 8 sat at one table and 4 sat at another. I was at the table of 4 with my 2 daughters and Aunt Apple. My server was Nicole and she was beyond rude. She did not realize we were with the party of 8, who had a different server and having a fun time. We love the atmosphere in this restaurant and wanted the rest of our party to experience it. Well the party of 8 had a server that played the part and made my son set the table etc. She really played it up. My server set the basket of silverware down without saying anything and walked away. So I set the table. When Nicole came back to take our drink order the other table of ours was laughing loud at their server and Nicole rolled her eyes....my 8 year old daughter then said "they are having so much fun over there" Nicole said "well they are just weird". She left the table and my daughter was in tears because Nicole had called the rest of our family weird and believe me it was not "in character". There was nothing fun about that experience for our table of 4 at all. I did call immediately about that situation too so maybe it has already been dealt with. The manager was nice when we spoke to him and offered to refund our meals to our card but we declined as we had too much food on the plan already.
Third is mousekeeping. We have never had bad service in this area but this trip was bad. We had to ask for wash cloths in one room because there was none. We had 3 rooms all together. Room 4742 had the worst service of the 3. My uncle had a pillow case on it that had a dirty sneaker print on it and he used the spare pillow..the second day the same pillowcase was on that pillow. We had to strip the beds ourselves to get clean linens. One day we came back to the rooms and in 4742 they had knocked over our bottle of pantene shampoo and broke the cap, now we don't mind accidents as we could have done the same thing, but mousekeeping left it beside the tub and toilet with the shampoo spilling over that we had to clean ourselves. Another day we came back in the same room and our air freshener was knocked over behind the toilet and it was broken so we could no longer use it. There was a bug in one of the windows that we had to remove ourselves shortly after check in and food crumbs on the floor between the beds in one of the rooms.
I did not call and complain about everything while on vacation because I would have spent way too much time on the phone and I did not want to waste more time being upset on the phone and I wanted to enjoy more of my vacation. I was so disappointed this year. We work hard for our money...and my family of 5 makes less than XX,XXX dollars a year. Not only do we save all change in a jar for our trip we use ALL of our tax return every year towards our trip. Not only that our children make sacrifices so they can go to Disney every year. It is their choice too to go to Disney and they work for their trip. They give up big birthday parties and pick one present each so money can be saved for Disney. If this kind of service continues we will no longer put our hard earned money to Disney vacations.
CONTINUED BELOW........
From: <snip>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Too Much UN-Magical.........
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:16:34 -0400
Hello,
I just came home yesterday from our 10 night 11 day stay at All Star Movies resort. I traveled with a party of 12 consisting of me, my husband, my 3 children, my mother, my aunt and her husband and my uncle and his friend and our very special guest of honor 96 year old Aunt Apple. It was her first trip to Disney. We had her first visit pin and were set for a super magical vacation like we have always had in the past at Disney World. This was our 4th family visit, my 10th visit and my mothers 12 visit. WE LOVE DISNEY. Now I will start with the bad news first and then end this letter on a positive note as we do want to give Disney another chance.....however if this was my first visit to Disney World it would most certainly have been my last. I apologize in advance for the length of this email. Please know however, this is the first time I have ever had complaints in Disney or a poor experience.
First I will start with transportation. Yes I said first....because if we only had one incident in one area of the park we would not be complaining as we know everyone has an off day and one incident is not going to ruin the magic of a week in the happiest place on earth. Transportation was a wreck this week for us. We had Aunt Apple with us who uses a wheel chair and I would say 1 in 5 buses did not want to deal with the wheel chair and we were made to feel like an inconvenience more times than I can count. We had a very poor experience with 2 bus drivers. The first was Jasen. We were leaving Animal Kingdom and as we were coming to the bus Jasen was standing outside the bus. When we came into view of Jasen he went back onto the bus. We thought we had missed the bus and were going to wait for the next one...that would not have been a problem....however when we came to the bus Jasen was still there sitting in the seat looking at us. He said " so you want to get on". I said yes please that is why we are in line. There were only 4 people on the bus at the time. Jasen did not want to deal with the wheel chair but put the lift down and put Aunt Apple on the bus. As we left and made the first turn Aunt Apple and her wheel chair starting moving and I had to keep my foot on her chair to keep her in place. There were not straps to her front wheels put on and no lap belt put on. This issue I complained about at the resort as her safety was an issue. The very next day as we were yet again leaving Animal Kingdom we were already in the wheelchair line for our resort when the bus pulled up. We were the only wheelchair and the second family to show up at the stop. There were 7 of us together for this trip to the resort. The bus driver, Paul from Boston Ma, was rude as he did not want to deal with the wheel chair. He told me transfer Aunt Apple on the bus and fold the wheelchair. I said she is 96 years old and does not walk well enough to get up and down off the bus she needs to stay in her chair. So he was not so nice about strapping her in. Once she was safely strapped in the rest of our family boarded the bus like we always do. Paul then yelled that only 4 of us could board with the wheel chair. Then stated he would let it slide this time but no other drivers would let it happen. We had been on vacation for 4 days at this point and never had a problem getting on the bus with Aunt apple. It was rude, especially considering my youngest daughter sat on my mom's lap and my 13 year old son and my husband were standing....and the bus line was not even full to begin with!! After my husband complained with some other guests that he was being rude, we arrived at the hotel and Paul came over to my husband and put his finger on my husbands chest and said "maybe I miss stated myself what I was saying is that not all drivers will allow your whole family on the bus and if you read the pamphlet you got you would see that." We went immediately to concierge to ask about the policy and did ask more than one Cast Member the policy and they stated there was no such policy or pamphlet for us to read. These were the two really bad experiences we had but there were a few other times when we felt like an inconvenience having a wheelchair on the bus.
Second was our dining experience. We were on the deluxe dining plan and our party for dining was never less than 7 so gratuity was included for our party at 18 percent. I am a waitress myself...my tip change and tax return every year go to our now annual Disney trip so I know how important tips are to waitstaff. I also know it needs to be earned not expected. In several restaurants this year we were "forgotten". It did not happen just once or twice it happened several times where we had to hunt down waitstaff for extra drinks, napkins etc. They knew what our tip was going to be so didn't have to work for it. We had one waitress complain about how heavy it was to carry our drinks and she did not refill our drinks until we asked at the very end of our meal, that was at Captain Jacks. We had 3 or 4 wait staff that came to us with our slips after we told them we would be paying cash for the gratuity and they said "the balance is what you OWE me". It came off very rude and really made us not want to continue our table services for the week. We ended up canceling 3 during our vacation actually. Our worst dining experience was at 50's prime time cafe. We were a party of 12 and 8 sat at one table and 4 sat at another. I was at the table of 4 with my 2 daughters and Aunt Apple. My server was Nicole and she was beyond rude. She did not realize we were with the party of 8, who had a different server and having a fun time. We love the atmosphere in this restaurant and wanted the rest of our party to experience it. Well the party of 8 had a server that played the part and made my son set the table etc. She really played it up. My server set the basket of silverware down without saying anything and walked away. So I set the table. When Nicole came back to take our drink order the other table of ours was laughing loud at their server and Nicole rolled her eyes....my 8 year old daughter then said "they are having so much fun over there" Nicole said "well they are just weird". She left the table and my daughter was in tears because Nicole had called the rest of our family weird and believe me it was not "in character". There was nothing fun about that experience for our table of 4 at all. I did call immediately about that situation too so maybe it has already been dealt with. The manager was nice when we spoke to him and offered to refund our meals to our card but we declined as we had too much food on the plan already.
Third is mousekeeping. We have never had bad service in this area but this trip was bad. We had to ask for wash cloths in one room because there was none. We had 3 rooms all together. Room 4742 had the worst service of the 3. My uncle had a pillow case on it that had a dirty sneaker print on it and he used the spare pillow..the second day the same pillowcase was on that pillow. We had to strip the beds ourselves to get clean linens. One day we came back to the rooms and in 4742 they had knocked over our bottle of pantene shampoo and broke the cap, now we don't mind accidents as we could have done the same thing, but mousekeeping left it beside the tub and toilet with the shampoo spilling over that we had to clean ourselves. Another day we came back in the same room and our air freshener was knocked over behind the toilet and it was broken so we could no longer use it. There was a bug in one of the windows that we had to remove ourselves shortly after check in and food crumbs on the floor between the beds in one of the rooms.
I did not call and complain about everything while on vacation because I would have spent way too much time on the phone and I did not want to waste more time being upset on the phone and I wanted to enjoy more of my vacation. I was so disappointed this year. We work hard for our money...and my family of 5 makes less than XX,XXX dollars a year. Not only do we save all change in a jar for our trip we use ALL of our tax return every year towards our trip. Not only that our children make sacrifices so they can go to Disney every year. It is their choice too to go to Disney and they work for their trip. They give up big birthday parties and pick one present each so money can be saved for Disney. If this kind of service continues we will no longer put our hard earned money to Disney vacations.
CONTINUED BELOW........