Disney Trip - Part 2 --The Voucher Fiasco

We try to register at the hotel and give them the papers we have from AAA who helped us with a "Disney package" that may have been worth a little discount on Disney tickets but little else. The hotel said they give no discounts to AAA. Anyway, they said, these were not the "vouchers" they needed. I didn't know anything about "vouchers." So after much running around by front desk folks, they sent us up to our rooms. They said if they didn't get the vouchers, showing we had already paid through AAA, we would be charged again and have to have AAA reimburse us. I would later learn that the AAA travel agent believed she had called both me and my daughter to tell us we needed to stop by for our Disney packages. And I suppose she did, but it sure fell off my radar and out of my memory--and my daughter said she didn't think she was told either --and she has a 'steel trap' mind, compared to me. I noted to AAA that I did remember that the airport ticket gal called me to tell me my plane reservations were confirmed --and to remind me to pick up the tickets --and again to try to sell me extra insurance --and to remind me of what time the plane left. And another gal called to have me pay for my AAA membership which expired in March.

Finally in our rooms, we look out the windows and note that we have a balcony but are looking on to a flat roof and the roof of a round restaurant, part of the hotel. Not a good view. I said to Antonio, the Bell Captain who took us to our room, "You know we asked for rooms with a view and had reservations." He said, "Call the front desk; I'll wait." (IN fact, we chose this hotel because they said they could get rooms with a view --whereas the Wild Animal Kingdom Lodge, where our daughter first wanted to stay, only had rooms looking on a parking lot --so we felt we had made a hotel choice on the basis of getting a view and therefore should get one.)

So I did, and they took a while to offer us something else. We had 2 rooms, adjoining and she said the adjoining room request was honored before our request for a view and she didn't know if she could find both together --but she managed. Meanwhile, we learned Antonio was Italian, did not admit to being Mafia, played guitar and bass in a band that performed around Orlando, was single still in his early 40's, had gone with a girl for 6 years but they broke up, etc. etc. He was very friendly, gregarious, and pleasant --waiting to move us again. We only had 4 bags since we sent many things in the van with our son-in-law and daughter and grandsons. But they were heavy bags on a cart so we hung on to our bell captain until settled.

As for me, I scheduled a "scooter" as I could never keep up or walk the distances of a Disney day. So I had a scooter delivered to the hotel by a company called "Walker Medical" --or "Mobility" or something. Which was actually a dollar cheaper than getting the scooters at Disney--and those could only be used at the park, whereas my rental was useful for me in the hotel, on the boardwalk which went to the swim area, the Hollywood Disney/MGm and Epcot.

We eventually got to the new rooms with a view of the Disney Dolphin Hotel and the lagoons around it --the board walk --all in the Disney Epcot Resort Area. We were in he Swan Hotel that faces the Dolphin. There were huge dolphins and swans on the top of the respective hotels --both were a green stucco with a peach stucco wave pattern and a pattern made of different style windows, some with balconies and some without. These new rooms for us didn't have balconies or the full length windows, but we settled. The view was great though the windows were dirty on the outside.

Next installment: the Gecko

"God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life."--the Bible