Just Back from a week at the world - observations

Hey Kids. I just got back from a wonderful week of Disney!

I am working on the trip report and will post it but wanted to share a few thing I noticed but they did not ruin my trip in the least...

First off, All of the parks look amazing! Everything looks clean and well maintained. (Except the one light bulb that was out on a chandelier over by the Pirates bathroom. I noticed it every day and laughed) For 5 days the mermaid projection was not working at Pirates but on Sunday (9/15) morning was working great.

Splash was looking great! Everything except that pesky wabbit and jumping fountains was working.

I did get a CM in trouble though. I have been using PhotoPass for years. I pre-pay each trip and we go 2-3 times a year. I have an old waterpark card with the blue rubber band and it works great. It hooks inside my sling bag and every PP CM has no problem using it........ Except the guy that was at Donald in Storybook Circus... He proceeded to tell me I had to use the new card and I "was" going to like it and refused to put my pictures on my existing card linked to my PP account. I could not use my old card, that just worked 2 minutes ago with Goofy. It was not RFID, it was the same type of card, just bigger and with a new picture on the front. I told the area manager and she was quite taken back. I was nice about it but she could tell I was not happy. She went as far as to say, she would be letting HR know about his behavior!... oops!

Over at Epcot, San Angel Inn was delicious as usual, so was the fish and chips quick service... The only thing I could find not working was the wave/splash effect on the Living Seas sign outside. (mine mine mine) The waterfall at Norway was lookin' good!

Kali and Everest were down most of the day on Thursday, Stitch must have caused havoc!
Our tour guide, Claire, on our 2 week safari was amazing! We had a giraffe and white rhino within 3 feet of the vehicle! woot woot! I had to tell the area manager how amazing she was!

Great Movie ride was boring this time, everything was working great, but it's time for a refresh... Our CM was sooooooo drab and just didn't want to be at work!

MNSSHP was incredible as usual and we got a pic with Maleficent and SOOO much candy. YAY ME!

I don't drink coffee so I could care less about Starbucks, but it sucked not being able to grab a bfast sammy in the morning there. We wandered aimlessly in search of morning food! I did not want a Starbucks muffin! We found nothing.

However, the buses ran SUPER slow a few times. Our buses at AKV were great, but we wanted to go to DTD from HS and the boats were shut down, so we hopped a bus over to POFQ and I had to call the front desk and have them notify Disney Transport because 70 people were waiting for a DTD bus for 65 minutes. I thought people were going to tip the bus over when it finally arrived. LOL

Overall, It was an amazing time as usual. Only 81 days till I go back!
 

Goofnut1980

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I noticed the mermaid's were not working on Friday (9/13) on Pirates but Sunday, I did see them. I agree that the parks look great. Much better than they have in awhile. I wish I could say the same for Bay Lake Tower!! lol

OOOO what was going on with BLT??? I did see at Kidani, stupid things like the little cover for the can lights, over the elevators doors, were either missing or just plain disgusting! Why do they neglect the tiny things! That is a $4 fix?!
 

PolynesianPrincess

Well-Known Member
OOOO what was going on with BLT??? I did see at Kidani, stupid things like the little cover for the can lights, over the elevators doors, were either missing or just plain disgusting! Why do they neglect the tiny things! That is a $4 fix?!

Well for starters, most of the staff we came across was not very nice at all. Of course, this was after coming off a cruise where every CM you passed by said Good Morning or Hello. The woman at the gift shop was the worst. We went to pick up some packages and one wasn't there. We were told it would be there after 5pm and by this time it was 10pm. We were concerned as we were leaving the next day and her attitude was basically like "oh well, check tomorrow" With the amount of money people spend to stay there, they should be bending over backwards to help you out, not basically say "too bad" and not help at all. She was so rude. In the room, there was about a 2 inch gap between the door to the room and the floor, the shower curtain rungs were rusty, the lock on the bathroom door was lose (its a sliding door) and there was scratches all over the door. NOT a deluxe level room in my opinion. The Poly on the other hand looked WONDERFUL. The refurbed rooms were great and the staff was super helpful!
 

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Hm. Mermaids were down at least since the 6th when I was there. Glad to hear they're back up.

Were you able to do Muppetivision and/or Space Ranger Spin?
If so, did you notice whether or not the conductor penguin and/or queue Buzz were up and running again?
 

cfry06

Well-Known Member
Well for starters, most of the staff we came across was not very nice at all. Of course, this was after coming off a cruise where every CM you passed by said Good Morning or Hello. The woman at the gift shop was the worst. We went to pick up some packages and one wasn't there. We were told it would be there after 5pm and by this time it was 10pm. We were concerned as we were leaving the next day and her attitude was basically like "oh well, check tomorrow" With the amount of money people spend to stay there, they should be bending over backwards to help you out, not basically say "too bad" and not help at all. She was so rude. In the room, there was about a 2 inch gap between the door to the room and the floor, the shower curtain rungs were rusty, the lock on the bathroom door was lose (its a sliding door) and there was scratches all over the door. NOT a deluxe level room in my opinion. The Poly on the other hand looked WONDERFUL. The refurbed rooms were great and the staff was super helpful!

So sorry to hear you didn't have a great experience :(:(. We stayed at BLT in June and overall had a great. Very friendly CMs on the BLT side - but I had a rotten run in at the Contemp Gift Shop too- and same scenario! I remember being so taken aback by the response I just kind of walked out in a daze! Would love to stay at the Poly- happy it was great!

@Goofnut1980 - so happy to hear everything is looking great! We leave in 3 days for a long weekend (just DH and I this time!) and I'm so excited to hit the parks. We are staying at SSR for the first time, so I'm hoping for some bus pixie dust! Thanks for your updates :).
 

l4dybu6

Active Member
Hm. Mermaids were down at least since the 6th when I was there. Glad to hear they're back up.

Were you able to do Muppetivision and/or Space Ranger Spin?
If so, did you notice whether or not the conductor penguin and/or queue Buzz were up and running again?
Queue Buzz was up and running last time I was there.... Like 2 months ago.
 

Goofnut1980

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Hm. Mermaids were down at least since the 6th when I was there. Glad to hear they're back up.

Were you able to do Muppetivision and/or Space Ranger Spin?
If so, did you notice whether or not the conductor penguin and/or queue Buzz were up and running again?

I did get to do both. I apologize on the Muppets, it started to rain and about 250 people ran in at once, so I did not see... Space Ranger... No Buzz, just a big curtain. For the life of me when I was walking through the queue I kept scratching my head saying something was off and could not figure it out!!!
 

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Buzz has been down for quite a while, then.

buzz_by_mr__jack-d5emifc.jpg
 

jensenrick

Well-Known Member
Great news to hear Splash looks good. You were absolutely in the right with that photog- he was way out of line.
I'm looking forward to MNSSHP myself next month.

One thing puzzles me, so I thought I'd ask. You mentioned you couldn't get a breakfast sandwich at Starbucks- was it because they were out of sandwiches, or you didn't want those sandwiches? Just curious.
 

PolynesianPrincess

Well-Known Member
So sorry to hear you didn't have a great experience :(:(. We stayed at BLT in June and overall had a great. Very friendly CMs on the BLT side - but I had a rotten run in at the Contemp Gift Shop too- and same scenario! I remember being so taken aback by the response I just kind of walked out in a daze! Would love to stay at the Poly- happy it was great!

The BLT side wasn't too bad. The room (other than the things I mentioned before) was good. Very spacious and a great location. It was on the Contemp side we experienced the cranky CMs. The first one we encountered was when we arrived off the cruise. We told the bellhop we needed to grab some stuff out of ours bags (magic bands, my extra camera lens...) before we headed to the park. He proceeded to tell us not to worry that they would bring our bags right to our room and took our bags away. We figured we needed to go to the room anyway so we went and waited a good 20 minutes and we had to get somewhere so we walked back up to the front entrance. The bags were still there on the cart. They hadn't even moved. I told the man I needed to get some stuff from my bag and we had an ADR to get to and that we were told the bags would arrive immediately in our room. I was very angry they had not arrived. The man told me to go ahead and get what I needed and they would bring the bags down shortly. He seemed like he could have cared less that we were in a hurry. When we got back to the room that night around 9pm, the bags were not there. My mother called down to the bellhop stand and they were all huffy like "Well, were you in the room?" and my mom told them "look, we said we had an ADR to get to, the guy at the bellhop stand knew we weren't going to be in the room. He said NOTHING to the effect that we needed to be there. If we needed to be there and he failed to tell us, then that is completely unacceptible." They brought the bags down about 5 minutes later.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience in the gift shop, too :( I wonder if it was the same woman (I think her name was Iris? She was a short, older woman) I'm sorry but I don't pay good money to be spoken to like I am a moron, which is what she and the bellhops did. I had better service at the Super 8 in Hartford I stayed at a couple weeks ago!! And that only cost me $85!

We did manage to locate the package the gift shop woman wouldn't/couldn't help us find the night before though.... This is after I received a phone call from the front desk at the Contemp letting me know I had a package there and since we had already checked out, they wanted to know where they could mail it to. We were at MK until we had to be back for our DME so I wanted to call and let them know we would be back to the resort shortly. We assumed this was my sisters package that we had been trying to locate but they called my number and asked for me when it was her name and number that was on the package slip. So we weren't quite sure what it was. I tried to call them back while in the park but he did not leave a number on the message. I called the number back that showed up on my phone, gave the woman on the phone my info and why I was calling and she transferred me. I assumed I was being transferred to the front desk, but another woman picked up and I again had to give her all my info and why I was calling. She then transferred me AGAIN. This time whoever she transferred me to did not answer and the line kept rininging and ringing. No voicemail picked up. I wasn't about to stand there all day and wait for someone to answer. It was just a very frustrating situtation. All those bad incidents will be mentioned in a letter I am going to write to Disney. I'm sure it will fall on deaf ears, but I will feel better knowing I complained about those things because they were completely unacceptible.

Not all was bad there though. We did have a really great bellhop on the way out named Ray. He was VERY helpful and nice. And the man at rhe front desk my sister talked to who FINALLY located her package was VERY awesome, too. Every other person we crossed paths with there though seemed like they would rather be anywhere else.
 
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Goofnut1980

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Great news to hear Splash looks good. You were absolutely in the right with that photog- he was way out of line.
I'm looking forward to MNSSHP myself next month.

One thing puzzles me, so I thought I'd ask. You mentioned you couldn't get a breakfast sandwich at Starbucks- was it because they were out of sandwiches, or you didn't want those sandwiches? Just curious.

They only had pastries and muffins, like a normal Starbucks. No sandwiches on the menu that we could see.
 

laynalee07

Well-Known Member
Did anyone else that was at animal kingdom on Saturday sept. 7 see what they were filming on the walkway between Africa and Asia? There was about 20 crew members around setting up special lighting. The people looked pretty official... They had ALOT of film equipment set up.
I wanted to stay and see what they were doing but my hubby made me move on.:mad:
 

jensenrick

Well-Known Member
They only had pastries and muffins, like a normal Starbucks. No sandwiches on the menu that we could see.

Actually a normal Starbucks has breakfast sandwiches, several of them in fact. Other websites say that the Main Street location has 4 of them on their menu, that's why I was confused when you stated that they weren't there. I don't mean to discount what you are saying, just hoping for clarification- the spinach feta eggwhite wrap is my fave breakfast sandwich, and I was looking forward to getting one at Magic Kingdom one morning.
 

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