[jedijson]

OK. Before I actually start my trip report, I have to post all the bad stuff that occurred in one thread so that people realize that, overall, it was an awesome trip--you can read about the individual days (I'll keep them all happy, as best I can!) in other threads. However, we did have a few issues.

1) never never NEVER stay at the AKL. We will never do it again. Ever. Period.

It's not the grounds/amenities that were a problem (the grounds are GORGEOUS and the amenities are OK), it's the incompetence of the people working there.

We checked in at 2:30, but were told that the room wouldn't be ready until 3:00pm. Not a problem. There's loads to look at, take pictures of, etc. When were we finally able to get into our room? 4:00. Not that big of a deal, but still. Why couldn't we get into our room you ask? Why, because I had specifically asked for a king-size bed, of course! They could give us a room with two standard sized beds quickly, but not the king-size one.

Oh, and, yes, it would still overlook a Savannah--the Sunset Savannah to be precise. The Sunset Savannah view turned out to be a large concrete area with a wooden fence around it. On the OTHER side of that area, there was a small pond with a couple of trees and some vulture-looking birds sitting on an overturned tree trunk. If I held my camera out and around the support beam, I could take pictures of the area, and, occasionally, actually saw some giraffes. Thank God for a digital camera with a viewscreen, or we wouldn't have been able to see the animals. Yes, a giraffe came into that small area one day, and a couple of the long-horned cattle came in one day, but other than that, just those same three vultures. yippee. This is not what I paid for. I wanted a savannah view. If I had wanted a view of a large concrete area, I would have asked to be on the front side and overlook the parking lot.

2) Charging stuff to your rooms is a bad idea--at least it is at the AKL. Whenever we checked in, the dude explained how to use our card to charge stuff to our room, and we could pay it later. Yes, we did have to give them a credit card number, but that's OK. We can pay in cash. They cannot, for any reason, charge anything to the card without our consent. The max was $1500. Not a big deal there, either. Because of the amount of money people had given us to purchase certain items, as well as the little bit of spending money we had brought with us, that's how much we have in cash anyway. Again, I asked to make absolutely sure they would NOT charge anything to that credit card, as the money comes straight out of our checking account. No, they can't do it without our consent. I should have heard the dreadful "duh-duh-duh-duh-duuuuuuuuuhhhhhh" music in the background, but was so enamoured with the look of the place, I was completely deaf.

The evening of the 11th, I lost my card. Not a problem, they can issue me another. However, when the girl went to do it, the computer bounced her out of our account. This corrupted our information. She called the tech guy in the back, and had him do something so that she can give me a new card. Again, no big deal. All they have to do is create a new file for us, and copy all our information over. So, they did. And right in the middle of the information being copied over, the girl hit a button to print not just mine, but also Carol's new cards. Why? Because when you get a new file, they have to re-issue all cards. So, she prints them. And because of when she did it, she corrupted all our information. The tech guy calls her and tells her she just really screwed up. They'd have to create a new file for us, and re-issue us new cards again. He would tell her when she could print them. They did, and she did.

The evening of the 12th, Carol asked me to go check on how much we had spent--yes, we thought we knew, but we wanted to make absolutely sure so that we could keep a really close eye on everything. So, I did. They said we had only charged $109 to the room. I knew that wasn't correct, because we had spent about $850 already getting everybody everything they asked for, as well as some cool Star Wars stuff for me. I questioned it. Thoroughly. Know what I was told? Don't worry about it. It doesn't exist in our records anymore.

This concerned me, because I just knew that they would find it, and charge us for it--as they should. When I questioned it again, I got the same response. Carol, however, talked to a manager. They found the old charges in backups of our information.

I went to pay them on Sunday with the cash, but, lo and behold, they had already charged that amount to our credit card. I went off. Big time. They had promised me they couldn't do that, etc. etc. etc. Well, come to find out, it's an automatic thing. When they screwed up our account, it checked us out of hotel. Because we were checked out, it automatically charged our credit card. After pitching a HUGE walleyed fit, they refunded the money.

Or so we thought. I paid them in cash (for the prior $850 AND the new $109), and they charged us the same amount on our card again. $1700. They overdrew our account really, really bad. When did we discover this? Why upon checkout, of course!

We went to check out yesterday (Wed, the 15th), and the guy started to give us $106 "in change." Um, why? Because we owe it to you. No you don't. Yes we do. Why? Because we overcharged your credit card. What do you mean, you overcharged it? You weren't supposed to charge ANYTHING to it without our consent. We want to talk to a manager. He came out, and explained that they had overcharged us "here, here, and here." Ummmmmm... No. Please pull our records.

Keep in mind, we have 9:30 PSs for Chef Mickey's. It's now 8:45....

In the records, it showed that we paid them for everything in traveller's checks and cash. And that's when we discovered that they had double-charged our account.

After a screaming fit by Carol, they refunded us all the money, except for the last three dollars. Why three dollars? Because they charge you .75 cents for every 1-800 call you make from your room. This finally finished about an hour later.

3) Never trust the AKL to do what they tell you they're going to do. We told them about the PSs that they have caused us to miss. Oh, we'll call Chef Mickey's and tell them it was our fault, yadda yadda yadda, and to seat you as soon as you get there.

It took us almost an hour to get there. Why? Because of the bus situation that I'll talk about in a minute.

Anyway, yes, we got there. At 11:00am. Not only did the AKL NOT call, but the idiot Chef Mickey's talked to at the AKL when we explained the situation told them that WE WERE MAKING THIS UP!!!!!

We finally got it all straightened out, and we still got to eat as well as see Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy.

4) The bus situation with the AKL. The AKL is SUPPOSED to have their own bus service. "Top of the line" the guy told us at check-in. "They run every 20 minutes, so you're sure to get where you're wanting to go in no time at all. Because we have our own busses, and we don't share them with anyone else, they run a lot faster." Bull-you-know-what. We spent an AVERAGE of 45 minutes waiting on a bus every single place we went. Every single time. We saw all the other resorts come two to three times before an AKL bus would show up--we were ALWAYS the last to be picked up. This is completely unacceptable, especially when it comes to how much we were paying to stay at the AKL. If they are going to do that to their customers, they should at least install benches to sit on at the parks. The only two places we saw benches to sit on were at DTD and the lodge. Children were crying because their feet hurt. One lady passed out at the AK waiting on a bus--she had gotten too hot. That day (Sunday) we found out what was going on. The AKL is waaay out there on its own, and the bus drivers are to pick up the people who share busses first to deliver them. I know this because I asked a bus driver. Never have I been so angry. Who gives them the right to make the people staying at the AKL have to wait until everyone else is gone before we get to be picked up?

So, we're never staying at the AKL again. Ever. And yes, I'm lodging a complaint with Disney over our treatment. Apparently, I'm not the only one, either. We heard a LOT of people griping about the AKL while we were staying there. They had gotten screwed around as well. Big time.

Oh, and, one other thing: when we were "checked out and then back in again," it screwed up our meal plan, so we lost a full days worth of meals and snacks. Carol tore into a manager, who was able to fix it, and he did give us each two extra snacks and two extra table meals to compensate.

6) And as for when we finally got back in to Oklahoma City? 2:30am this morning. And I had to come to work today.

Why so early? Because there was a storm in Orlando, and they will not do anything while it is lightning outside. I don't understand this. Planes can take off during lightning, but they cannot be boarded/unboarded during the lightning. Why? It makes no sense.

So, we missed our connecting flight in Dallas by, oh, several hours. And because it was weather-related, American doesn't have to do anything for us. Plus, they couldn't guarantee we could get on a flight home today, but they could tomorrow. Yes, they had gotten us a "great deal" on a room--$49/night, but we'd have to stay there two nights to be sure we finally got home. For $104, we got a one-way rental and drove home.

And to top it all off, I gained 6 pounds this week. I know it was my own fault, because I ate like I haven't in months. The meal plan does that to you.

Here's something I would recommend: get the meal plan. It is AWESOME. And, if you're like us, you probably won't use the snacks portion, so you can, at the end of your trip, load up on snacks to bring home to your kids (which is what we did). We spent $35/person/day (or, $70/day for both of us combined) on the meal plan. We kept track to see if we were saving anything at all. Yes, in fact, we were. Average counter service cost? $30. Average table service cost? $75. Average snack cost? $2.50 (I know this, because we saved up our snacks and picked up a load of Mickey-shaped rice krispy treats that had been dipped in chocolate). Total, about $107.50/day. Savings of $37.50/day. Not bad. Not bad at all. I would recommend anyone get the meal plan.

Now, why didn't we use the snacks? Why would we? We'd eat our fill, and stay full throughout the day, and when we were thirsty, we'd get free ice-water. Worked perfectly for us.

Anyway, that's all the bad stuff (as well as a couple good things) that happened to us on our trip. I'll start posting new threads for the days here in a little while.

Oh, and, I do have to apologize for the weirdness that occurred on Thursday. What happened was that, when we finally got to unpack, we realized that we had left the phone charger at home. So, I called Ana (our babysitter whom I have to have a talk with--I'll explain that in a minute), and walked her through sending a private message on the board to someone who lives in the Orlando area. Unfortunately, she posted it inside a thread, so it was very, very confusing for pretty much everyone who ran across that post. I have never been more embarrassed whenever Erin called me. We were at DTD, and she called.... Well, I'll explain all that in Day 1. Suffice it to say, I apologize profusely for any stress I caused anyone. I have learned my lesson: not everyone knows what a board is, nor do they understand simple instructions (click here, then here, then here, etc. etc. etc.).

I do have to have a talk with Ana, too. Carol and I told her specifically that she could NOT allow her fiance to spend the night at our house, nor could he smoke anywhere around our house or in our minivan. Jonathan has SEVERE (to put it mildly) asthma, and the doctors have told us he cannot be anywhere around cigarette smoke--even the smell will set him off.

The whole house smells like smoke, as well as the van.

[jedijson]

Oh, one more thing: Whenever they finished fixing the charges, that extra $106 they were trying to refund us? It's because they had charged our card $109, and they were only going to refund us the difference ($109 - $3 for the calls = $106). Took another screaming fit, but they credited our account that $106.

And when did they charge us that $109? Why, on Sunday when we paid in cash, of course!

After it was all "settled" (And I'm not totally sure it still is), we were told that they could do nothing more for us, and that if we had any questions, to please call their credit line--long distance.

If it's not correct, and I have to balance the checkbook tonight, so I know I'll be able to tell, they will not be hearing from me. They will be hearing from my lawyer.

[PhilliesFan]

What an ordeal; I would have a screaming fit too. I've never stayed at the AKL, but a few of my friends have, and their complaints were about the buses, and that the hotel was too far away from everything. It sounds like you still managed to enjoy your trip, especially the food plan!

[DisneyTeacher]

I am so sorry to hear about all the things that went wrong during your trip. Wow! I hope your charges are correct and you can put all the bad stuff behind you.

[EmpressJenny]

Poor Jason! I never do room charges, and now I never will!

[jedijson]

Originally Posted by EmpressJenny

Poor Jason! I never do room charges, and now I never will!

After the problems we encountered, but thought we fixed on Sunday night, we refused to do room charges again.

It's better to carry the cash than deal with all that.

Glad to know I'm helping to serve as a warning to others... ;c)

[Erin]

Whoa...Jason, I'm so glad you're home

I can't believe they did that to you :c(

I'm off to read the good stuff.

You are no stress at all, btw.

Welcome home.

[roxie]

Sorry Jason....

[SplashMtnMan]

WOW...sorry to hear about the bad, looking forward to the good stuff. I thank you for the warning though, we were actually considering switching from WL to AKL for all or part of our trip in August...HECK NO now. We will also not charge anything to the hotel...thanks for the info.

[JulieBilly]

Quick question... Was the Star Wars stuff pretty awesome? I have two 8yr old boys who love Star Wars, and I grew up with Star Wars.....

[tigger]

Servers you right for switching rooms *duck*

I hate it when CS people screw things up or can't follow simple instructions. I hope that you get it all worked out...what a way to end up a trip.

[jedijson]

Originally Posted by JulieBilly

Quick question... Was the Star Wars stuff pretty awesome? I have two 8yr old boys who love Star Wars, and I grew up with Star Wars.....

YES YES YES YES YES!!!!! The Star Wars stuff is WAAAAY COOL! While I didn't get to get Darth Tater's picture, I did get to pose in front of a giant feaux box that he comes in. The ride is AWESOME. The characters are just too cool, and too nice. It's totally exhilarating, and I will gladly, emphatically suggest you go! You'll have a BLAST!!!!!

[jedijson]

Originally Posted by tigger

Servers you right for switching rooms *duck*

I hate it when CS people screw things up or can't follow simple instructions. I hope that you get it all worked out...what a way to end up a trip.

DC Nice defender my big toe... LOL!

It will get all worked out, I'm sure.

We did get three of our four bags today, by the way. The fourth one they found in Portland. It's on its way back here via Salt Lake City, and should be here tonight. I don't understand how a bag can get that far away. I mean, they put tags on there for a reason, don't they? And the tags DO say the final destination on there. I'm sure they have to go through some kind of computer, because there are bar codes all over those tags. Which makes me wonder why the heck a bag can get that far...

[lovemysons]

OUCH JASON!!!!!!!!!!!!
Soo sorry about all that. I am going to go read the rest of your report now, before I throw up! What am I getting into staying at the AKL?????

[Dana]

Jason -
OM! What a mess. I am so sorry for the issues you had at AKL. I'm embarrassed for them. I have stayed there twice and never had a problem. I hope this horrible incident is not a new trend for them. As for the buses, I'm shocked by what the driver told you. We never shared buses with anyone or waited any serious amount of time for a ride. We shared kinda once and that was after the AK park closed and the driver dropped people off there from Epcot. AK wasn't running buses and these people had to get to their cars in the AK parking lot. I am so sorry for the aggrevation they caused you. Your experience with room charges is scary. I am paranoid to use it as is and will now definately NOT do it at all.