A short notice November trip... with a twist! Day 7 - The one with the twist!

6^th November

Before I start today’s entry I would like to write a bit of a disclaimer. As referred to in the title, there was a twist in this trip and it occurred on day 7.

As you read you will see that things did not exactly go to plan today BUT what I would like to make clear from the outset is that Disney went over and above to rectify the situation and as a result they turned the negative into a positive (albeit with a bump along the way). This is in part why I continue to visit Disney – for the amazing customer service that they provide. This entry will also be quite long.....!

So, today was our planned rest day. I had booked us a character breakfast at the new Four Seasons hotel. They only offer the character breakfast on Thursdays and Sundays currently and they do not accept the Disney dining plan, they also do not have the ability to charge to magicbands as they aren’t a Disney resort. As a result this breakfast was much quieter than the other character breakfasts that I have been to in the past.

They offer a fairly standard buffet breakfast and you can also get eggs made to order (including omelettes). Goofy is the main character at the breakfast and he is accompanied by Mickey and Minnie; there is a photopass photographer present but they only guarantee to take the photo with Goofy.

 

The breakfast was nice if a little expensive, you have to pay $5 for parking and I think with that and tip we paid around $100 for the two of us. The good thing about the photopass at this location is that downloads are included even if you don’t have Memory Maker.

Unfortunately our server lost our claim check for the valet parking so we had to explain this when we returned to the valet stand. Thankfully they were able to recover our vehicle easily :)

On the way out we were able to see a few of the houses that have been built on the Golden Oak development – this is definitely where I will be buying my Florida home if I ever manage to win the lottery.

 

 

 

After breakfast we were off out shopping, we had been asked to look for some Frozen sparkle dolls for Leona (Rob’s niece who came with us in Feb) so we headed to Toys R Us, the dolls were the same price in dollars as they are in pounds. When we got home I discovered that using my post office credit card 2 had cost around £23 whereas they would have cost £34 over here!

Next up we headed to the Premium Outlets on Vineland Avenue. I had been asked to look for a mug for a guy at work and managed to find it at the Character Warehouse for a bargain price (so I picked up 2 for him). I then started a big hunt for some jumpers for me. I only managed to find one that I liked in the US Polo Association shop :( We picked up a few other bits and then headed back to Pop.

When we arrived back at our room we were a little bit confused. One of our beds was fully made as normal but the other had been stripped and then it looked as if the housekeeper had just walked away. We then noticed that there was a vacuum cleaner in the room and we had a voicemail on the phone.

We were asked to call housekeeping and told that a manager would be up to see us in a few minutes. By now we realised that there was an issue so I returned our shopping bags (which we had just walked in with) to the car.

The manager arrived and we received confirmation that our housekeeper had found bed bugs :( Unfortunately this had been what we expected and we believe that Rob saw one whilst we were waiting for the manager to arrive.

She explained that the building manager was on his way and there was a set procedure for how they deal with the situation. Obviously this involved a room change for us, although by now we were a bit creeped out so we asked if it was possible to move to a different resort. The building manager said he would make some calls.

The next step in this process is that they were to send all of our clothes, suitcases and other belongings to be treated to ensure there was no way to transport any bugs home with us. This obviously posed a problem as we would need clothes for the next day; at this point we were told to go and buy what we needed and Disney would refund us the cost. We were allowed to keep our electrical items, passports etc and our toiletries so these were all packed into a plastic bag to take with us. We were also unable to take any of our snacks with us, but we were offered a credit on our room to ensure we weren’t out of pocket.

The building manager came back and asked us if the Garden wing at the Contemporary would be an acceptable alternative......obviously we said yes! We were told that we could head over there and they would be expecting us. So, we headed to the Contemporary and a cast member quickly checked us in. We checked that all of our room charges etc were still on our account and then went to find our new room. We dropped off our shopping bags and our few belongings before heading back out to the shops to buy some clothes.

 

 

 

We actually went back to the outlets as we had seen some reasonably priced items that would work for the next day or two. Unfortunately I had to buy a pair of shoes as I was wearing my least comfortable pair (and hadn’t anticipated wearing them all day), I also had to try and find somewhere to buy underwear – which I had never previously thought about whilst shopping in Orlando! Walmart to the rescue on that count :)

Back to the Contemporary and true to their word Disney deducted the cost of our clothes from our existing room charges; all we had to do was present our receipts. By now it had reached about 8pm and we abandoned our plans to go out to dinner and got something from the Contempo Cafe (which was fine just not what we had planned).

I had considered popping up to the Top of The World Lounge to watch Wishes but we ran out of time and so we watched from the stairs a couple of floors up from the Contemporary viewing deck ,not quite as good but it was free.

By now we realised that our day had caught up with us and we were actually quite tired so we headed to bed.