I know you're not talking ONLY to me, but certainly I'm in the crowd, and I take offense at your implication. You are implying that my opinions are "automatic" rather than well-thought-out based upon the specific situation.
I have no knee-jerk reaction to defend Disney. I call 'em like I see 'em based on the merits. In this particular case, I feel very strongly that it was a case of unreasonable expectations.
I remember another thread a few months ago (different board, I believe), with a guy ripping up CBR, saying how horrible it was. He said it was clean, the cast members were nice enough, the bed was comfortable. But what he thought was terrible about the resort, what he deserved a refund over, was the fact that the rooms were small, the resort had only one table-service restaurant, the resort had no elevators, and the resort had no boat or monorail service. Well, wouldn't you agree that all of those things are very knowable, and that if someone expects those things at CBR then they are "guilty" of having unrealistic expectations? Should Disney refund the man's money because he didn't bother to know about the resort he was going to?
I can TOTALLY understand complaints about bad service, about food not tasting the way you like it, about broken facilities, about poorly managed resources ... all of those things require people to do their best every day, and are also a matter of opinion and taste, and different people have different opinions and different tastes. And it's always possible there's bad management there who don't properly supervise their employees. Employees can be retrained. Hiring and firing practices can be improved. And none of this is knowable before you go there.
But you CAN darn well know if the place has an elevator. You CAN darn well know whether or not the monorail stops there. Those things are not a matter of opinion, They are not a matter of taste. They are dead solid fact that can be found out.
And if someone doesn't bother to find out those things before paying to go there, then that person has no one to blame but himself. I ALWAYS did my homework about travel, buying cars, etc., and I started doing this long before Al Gore invented the Internet. :ROFLOL: I used to go to the book store and/or library with a legal pad and wrote a bunch of stuff down, including phone numbers so I could find out some stuff for myself. I think I spent more time researching our weekend anniversary trip to a B&B on the Chesapeake than we spent AT the Chesapeake. Some people might not want to put in that kind of time, but I'll tell you what ... I knew exactly what to expect and was totally satisfied.
