Last week I presented a seminar in Orlando, at a Disney facility.  The Disney Yacht Club and Resort is a really beautiful facility and true to Disney standards, the property was well-maintained with beautiful grounds. 

Once I got to my room, it was late in the day and I was hot, tired and didn’t want to trek from my room back to the restaurants. I looked for the room service menu to order dinner … no menu pages in the resort amenities book.  I picked up the phone to request that a menu or new book be delivered to the room … the phone didn’t work at all.  I looked in the hallway and found someone from housekeeping who confirmed that the phone was broken and she provided me with a complete amenities book.  She then radioed engineering who arrived to replace the broken phone.  

Ah, dinner arrives and I can now relax and fine tune details on the seminar I’ll present in the morning.  I decide to save part of my fresh fruit salad for the morning.  What a treat that will be!  I open the mini refrigerator door and … you guessed it … it was not operating up to par!  So far this is not a stellar Disney experience.  I turned the refrigerator dial to maximum figuring that it would be fine by morning.  Then I went to bed, exhausted from the heat, humidity, travel and kafuffle I’d dealt with so far.

Morning comes and I’m looking forward to the chilly fruit.  Uh, NOT.  I had been mistaken the night before. I thought because the refrigerator dial had been set to minimum, resetting the dial would take care of the problem.  Not so.  The refrigerator was apparently broken.  So on the way to the meeting room I placed a request with the front desk to either repair or replace the refrigerator while I was at the meeting.  A-OK I was told. 

The meeting is over and I’m hot, sweaty and exhausted while schlepping my stuff from the meeting room back to my own room.  Boy, I can’t wait to get in that nice, cool room (the A/C WAS great) and have a long pull on the bottle of water I had placed in the refrigerator in the morning and it would now be icy cold.  I’m so thirsty after speaking all day that I can down a bottle of water in one swig.  Alas, I open the refrigerator and … no change.  It’s still warm.  I’m bewildered, do I apply the “three strikes and you’re out” rule here? 

I call for the Manager on Duty – it’s really important that management be aware of issues like this.  I’ve stayed at numerous Disney properties and have spoken on a Disney cruise, and I’d not experienced anything like this.  This experience was not up to their standards.  Now the person who answered the phone would not direct me to the MOD and instead insisted that I inform her of the problem so that it could be corrected.  This issue was looming large for me and it became clear that management may not be aware of many problems because of issues just like this.  I explained the current problem and said that if she got this refrigerator fixed, I still wanted to speak to the MOD.  She never acknowledged my request and instead said she’d get someone on this right away. 

In short order a pleasant woman from housekeeping appeared at the door.  I was surprised, expecting to see someone from engineering wearing an impressive tool belt!  In her lovely Jamaican accent, she asked me, “there is a problem with the refrigerator?”  Then she peeked behind the very large furniture piece to find that the refrigerator had been unplugged!  I couldn’t believe it!  Why would anyone unplug it?  To plug it back in required 3 people to move the heavy piece of furniture it was seated on.  She called another housekeeper from the hallway and together we were able to move it just enough to plug it back in.  Sure enough, I heard the motor rev up.  I felt a bit silly about this, however, if they’d had someone check the refrigerator during the day as requested, it would be cold now and I wouldn’t feel so ridiculous!! Finally after a couple of hours the fridge is cooling beautifully. 

And now the MOD does call.  I explain the series of events that were not up to par for Disney.  I just wanted to be sure that someone in management was aware of this.  She thanked me, indicated that this information would be provided to key people and then offered to comp my dinner.  Though that was not the purpose of my call to her, I wouldn’t turn down the dinner!

So I’ve had dinner and packed my suitcase for a very early departure in the morning.  I turn in for the night, with the knowledge that I’m leaving the room in better form than it was when I arrived: the property amenities book has been replaced, the phone works, the refrigerator works.  Sleep comes … and so does the reason that the refrigerator was unplugged.  I now understand.  This is absolutely the loudest refrigerator I’ve ever heard!  I didn’t notice it earlier because I was moving around, talking on the phone, had the TV on.  But once lights were off and it was quiet, the fridge motor was definitely problematic.  The guest who stayed in the room before me knew it and unplugged it.  Maybe that person was so irritated in the middle of the night that he/she threw the phone across the room and broke it! This was beginning to feel like a Mickey Mouse operation to me!

I put in earplugs and slept.

In the morning as I was departing, two staff members stopped me and said, perkily, “We hope you had a magical time here, would you like to complete a survey about your stay?”  As pleasantly as possible I said, “I really don’t have time right now!”