Just want to vent a little. You might have read a couple of postings on how we’re trying to find the best room situation for our family of five, including three teenaged or beyond kids. We prefer the Epcot area and debated squeezing us into a BC room (2 queens and a day bed) vs. two rooms at the Swan. We’ve stayed at BC twice and GF three times in one room and it’s worked. But with the kids grown this will probably be our last vacation at WDW with all of us, so my wife and I thought we’d make it special and splurge for a 2 bedroom BC villa (at $545 a night). Turns out they are booked for the only time we can all get away this summer. So we thought we’d go down to two studio villas (at $289 each, or $578). Since a 2 bedroom villa is essentially a one bedroom and studio combined, I realized that I’m overpaying – less space yet $33 more per night. So I thought I’d see if I could get the 2 bedroom rate. I will say the reservationist and his manager were very friendly, but there was absolutely no budging or negotiating room whatsoever. Despite the logic, and despite our option of getting two rooms at the Swan (with a sizable discount since my wife is a teacher) they would not offer any type of discount at all.
Now I suppose they figure they will sell those rooms to someone else at the full rate (and with the 2 bedrooms sold out already I guess I can believe that). Still, it was surprising to me that they were so stringent. I mentioned it was our 28th anniversary during that time – but after saying “congratulations” it was still $578 per night. For $400 per night we can get an executive suite at the Dolphin and have a sizable amount of money left over. But that’s not our first choice. The kids prefer BC, and we’d love to make this as perfect as possible. But at the same time we want to teach them some life skills – when a consumer has a choice, a company should make some accommodations, especially to a repeat customer (they know we’ve stayed at BC and GF five times because they looked it up as we were talking). There is a limit to what something is worth - they set the limit by saying a 2 bedroom villa is $545, so two studios isn’t worth more than that.
So we’ll likely end up at the Swan / Dolphin, and from everything I’ve read I’m sure we will like it very much. It’s just too bad Disney couldn’t bend just a little to make our last family trip there special.
Now I suppose they figure they will sell those rooms to someone else at the full rate (and with the 2 bedrooms sold out already I guess I can believe that). Still, it was surprising to me that they were so stringent. I mentioned it was our 28th anniversary during that time – but after saying “congratulations” it was still $578 per night. For $400 per night we can get an executive suite at the Dolphin and have a sizable amount of money left over. But that’s not our first choice. The kids prefer BC, and we’d love to make this as perfect as possible. But at the same time we want to teach them some life skills – when a consumer has a choice, a company should make some accommodations, especially to a repeat customer (they know we’ve stayed at BC and GF five times because they looked it up as we were talking). There is a limit to what something is worth - they set the limit by saying a 2 bedroom villa is $545, so two studios isn’t worth more than that.
So we’ll likely end up at the Swan / Dolphin, and from everything I’ve read I’m sure we will like it very much. It’s just too bad Disney couldn’t bend just a little to make our last family trip there special.
