A VERY UnDisney Experience an open letter to Ell...

A VERY UnDisney Experience an open letter to Elliot Mills, Vice President of Hotel Operations

Oh, Disney. It saddens me to write this this review. We ve been Disney Vacation Club owners for 10 years and have never written a negative review of any property we ve stayed at, including the six times we ve stayed at our home resort, the Aulani. We love the Aulani and until this trip have never regretted buying into the DVC family and calling the Aulani our home. This trip, however, made us rethink the future value of keeping our timeshare at Aulani.

We arrived on Thursday morning and the desk agent who checked us in apologized and told us that the machine that coded the key cards was not working and could we please come back again in a few hours when it should be working. No problem.

We came back at 2 PM, our cards were coded and we were told that we would receive a text message with our room number when our room was ready. No problem, as I know Disney is fairly strict about not letting guests, even DVC members, check in before 4 PM.

We had lunch and since we were operating on three hours of sleep, our family of five found a quiet, shaded spot by the pool and fell asleep. I set my phone to vibrate so that I would hear when the text with our room number came through. I woke at 7:30 PM to find that the front desk still had not texted us our room number.

I went to the front desk and spoke to Ashlyn, who apologized for the error and asked if I would like to speak to a manager.

When I explained to the manager, Kaleimakamae, that not only did we have to check in twice due to a check-in malfunction but it was now 7:30 PM and we still had not received a text from the front desk providing us with our room number. The following is the exact exchange verbatim:

Kaleimakame: Did it never occur to you to come to the front desk and get your room number?
Me: I m sorry, what did you just say?
Kaleimakame: Did it never occur to you to come to the front desk and get your room number?
Me: Stunned into silence by the implication that a) it was somehow my fault that I never received my room number and b) that I was a dimwit for not coming to the front desk sooner to ask why they hadn t done the job they were supposed to do unless I returned a third time to ensure it got done.
Me: That is incredibly insulting. I can t believe you are suggesting that this is somehow my fault and that I lack the intelligence to rectify an error made by your front desk staff.
Kaleimakame: I m sorry you feel that way. Which we all know is the invalidating statement people make when they don t care enough about you to address the matter respectfully.

Well, Kaleimakame, I am sorry that starting our family vacation this way didn t matter more to you, and that you single handedly shifted the joy that we felt coming back home to Aulani this year. And that this feeling was still lingering the next morning when our daughter, who has multiple health issues, turned on the jacuzzi jets in our bathtub (Room 176) and black mildew came spewing out all over her. Or that it has now been 48 hours since we called to have it sanitized and the black mildew is still sitting in our bathtub.

Yes, I am sorry indeed as up until now, we ve never questioned our decision to buy our timeshare at Aulani. Right up until now.