We recently wrapped up a whirlwind family vacation to Walt Disney World for Christmas-time, which included two hotel horror stories. In all honesty, one of them was more amusing than it was awful and the other had a happy ending after a comedy of errors, but both started out pretty badly.
You might find both interesting or funny, and although we’ve logged hundreds of hotel stays over the years, we’ve never had anything like either of these experiences before at Walt Disney World–or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. However, we have heard from enough readers over the last ~5 years who have reported similar incidents to both that we felt this might be worth sharing.
Our trip started out at the Grand Floridian mere days before the Birdcage Bar was slated to officially open. We had booked a Royal Palm Club Level stay in the main building for the holiday season, hoping we’d luck into the perfect scenario: Christmas tree up, construction finished, Birdcage Bar open, and no gingerbread house. As it turned out, only the last of those things ended up happening.
Right when the opening date for the Birdcage Bar was announced, I knew we might be in trouble. Just in looking at the work remaining to complete in the lobby, it appeared to be a race against the clock, especially if the actual goal was a soft opening over a lucrative holiday weekend.
To our surprise, work on the Birdcage Bar over the course of mere hours between the time we arrived and the end of our first evening was pretty significant. Maybe it wouldn’t be a race against the clock, after all! After what felt like a glacially slow few months, the construction crew made tremendous strides in only a few hours before heading home for the evening. Or so we thought.
Wanting to take full advantage of the pricey Royal Palm Club, we enjoyed our arrival evening there. It was quiet and peaceful once the construction crew headed home, a real ‘not a creature was stirring’ scenario thanks to the lack of anything drawing guests to the lobby.
That ended as we were leaving the lounge, right as dessert service concluded and Royal Palm Club closed up shop for the night. Around then, we saw and heard hard hat-clad workers returning to the lobby with supplies, but didn’t give much thought about what that meant.
Twenty minutes or so later, within minutes of getting into bed (it was like they were synchronized to our sleep schedule), loud drilling started. No exaggeration, I thought it was in the hallway right outside our door.
Thankfully (I guess?), it was not. One of the ‘dirty little secrets’ about the Grand Floridian is that the walls are practically paper thin (see “Room Raves” in Our Most Embarrassing Experiences at Walt Disney World), so it just sounded like it was right outside our door.
Our daughter was already asleep, and she’s a theme park child through and through, meaning she can sleep through pretty much anything (except me quietly opening a door for a late night snack at home–that’s the one thing that awakens her at high alert). This drilling, loud as it was, did not wake her up.
It did, however, prevent both of us from falling asleep. So Sarah and I played a “game” that we often do in scenarios like this, which is playing best and worst-case scenario to suss out the most likely outcome of proactively talking to a Cast Member. This usually comes up more in the context of “will asking this question yield any real results or information we don’t already know?” Think Ron Swanson in Home Depot.
My perspective was that it was pointless to go to the front desk. That someone high-up, maybe a manager or possibly even a leader above that, had made the calculated decision to conduct construction overnight, long beyond the ‘promised’ hours on the resort page of DisneyWorld.com.
In all likelihood, Walt Disney World leadership had determined that it was more important to have the Birdcage Bar open for the holiday weekend than it was to keep the small number of rooms (which probably weren’t operating at even close to full occupancy) happy. It’s not like construction workers had gone rogue; management wanted this to happen.
Given that likely scenario, we gamed out what would actually happen if we were to the front desk. We’d likely receive an apology and explanation from a frontline Cast Member, an offer to relocate us to another resort, and who knows what other guest recovery.
Frankly, it annoys me that the people who bear the brunt of the backlash in situations like this are frontline Cast Members and construction workers, neither of whom are responsible for what’s happening. If management is comfortable making a dubious decision like this, they should be on hand to own it and deal with guests.
But our toddler was sleeping and it was going on 11 pm, so the last thing we wanted to do was switch resorts (which would have woken her up) and get to bed at 1 am. In the meantime, the construction might’ve wrapped up on its own.
After mulling it over a bit, we decided to just wait things out and hope for the best. Neither of us were confident in this “do nothing” strategy. However, we figured there’s no way work would continue until 1 am, which was the best-case scenario for getting to sleep if we tried to change resorts. So we sat there.
It turned out to be a brilliant strategy, so kudos to us on just lying in bed! No more than 5 minutes after we reached this decision, we heard yelling. A lot of yelling. Yelling from what sound like it was right outside our door in the hallway. In this case, I think it actually might’ve been.
There was also more distant yelling. Thanks to the paper thin walls of the $1,000+ per night flagship resort’s guest rooms, we could hear the details of this yell-fest pretty well. This is a family-friendly blog, so I’ll spare you the specifics of the not-so-friendly conversation.
As it turns out, a guest staying in the main building was shouting at construction workers about it being too late for this type of work. They, in turn, were sharing their perspective on acceptable timing and decibel levels of the project.
This conversation carried on for what felt like 5 minutes. I’m somewhat surprised security wasn’t involved, but it didn’t seem to escalate beyond loud words. And I guess what was security supposed to say, anyway? “Sir, please lower your voice, you’re interrupting the loud construction that’s interrupting your sleep.”
When the conversation finally ended, I did head out in the hallway…along with what seemed like half the guests in the main building, all of whom were looking over the rail trying to figure out what the heck just happened. One thing I can tell you with certainty did happen: the construction stopped!
This was not a coincidence. It’s not like the crew resumed drilling for a few more minutes and just naturally finished whatever they were assembling in the lobby. Once the yelling commenced, the construction concluded.
Sarah and I are aligned on most things, but admittedly, we had different opinions on this. Her immediate reaction was that yelling like that was uncalled for and inappropriate. I know that was her sincerely-held belief, and not just what she was saying for my benefit with a subtext of, “you better never do anything like that.” She really felt that the guest had crossed a line and was deeply in the wrong.
It has been suggested that I not share my actual opinion on this, which is (supposedly) bound to be an unpopular one. First of all, the guest was in the wrong and he did cross a line. Sarah is right about all of that. It’s something that I’d never even consider doing. As it stands, I already bite my tongue in far milder situations due to this blog.
At the same time, drilling at almost 11 pm was also uncalled for. Did the managers or leadership who gave that the green light not themselves game out how guests would react? Disney is the party best positioned to avoid a situation exactly like that, so from my perspective, the onus is on them to not do construction when guests are sleeping.
Moreover, as someone who has been in similar situations before and did game this out, I am pretty confident that the only way that construction was ending when it did was someone causing a scene. Again, Disney made the decision to cause a disruption; it’s not like it would’ve caught the Grand Floridian team by surprise that drilling is loud and guests may not want to hear it through their paper thin walls while sleeping! (Have I mentioned that the Grand Floridian has thin walls?)
The dude was technically in the wrong with how he went about handling the situation, but I’d be willing to bet that handling it any other way wouldn’t have achieved any actual results. Disney was also in the wrong with drilling at 11 pm. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all that, so officially, DTB condemns both.
This reminds me a bit of DAS abuse, eBay pirates, and a number of problems the proximate cause of which is Disney’s own policy decisions. I am a firm believer in personal accountability, so obviously each individual is to blame for their own bad choices.
At the same time, Disney does a lot of things in pursuit of the all-mighty revenue that have clearly foreseeable second-order consequences. Loud construction while guests are sleeping in their flagship hotel to finish a bar ahead of schedule is one of those things. What did they honestly expect to happen?!
After getting to sleep by 11:10 pm, I was back up bright and early and working on my laptop in the lounge. The most amusing part of this entire experience unfolded then, when I overheard the dude talking to Cast Members and other guests on multiple occasions.
He was basically explaining his position, kinda-sorta apologizing (but not completely) for the disturbance. Honestly, I think he just wanted other guests to hear his perspective and realize he wasn’t a madman, because he was speaking just loudly enough for everyone in his general vicinity to overhear the conversations. He was just a big, boisterous New Yorker trying to make clear that he was not the villain in this story.
And honestly, he didn’t sound crazy at all. It might’ve helped that he was a Carousel of Progress fan. (I’m not sure how that was relevant to making his plea, but he made a couple of comments about it, so I feel compelled to share with you in the event that helps you weigh his case before passing judgment.) Some might say he wasn’t the villain at all, but the hero that the Grand Floridian deserved that night.
The Birdcage Bar did not open during our stay at the Grand Floridian, but it did soft open the evening after we checked out. There was no late night construction on subsequent days of our stay.
WDW Hotel Horror Story #2: Yacht Club Evac
For the second leg of our trip, we stayed at the Yacht Club.
On the evening we attended Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, Sarah and Megatron had returned before me and were already asleep when I got back to the resort after 1 am. I’m always wound up after event nights, no matter what time it is, so I didn’t get to sleep until around 2 am.
Honestly, it felt like I was just shutting my eyes when the loudest fire alarm I’ve ever heard went off at 2:30 am. Sarah and I immediately shot up and frantically got dressed. Megatron, on the other hand, continued to sleep. This was a good thing at first, as it gave us an opportunity to locate her noise-muffling earmuffs that she wears during fireworks, parades, and everything else at Walt Disney World that triggers a “loud noise” warning on my Apple Watch.
Like I said, Megatron is a theme park kid through and through, and she was deep asleep. We were finally able to wake her up (not the alarm–us!) and walked out of our door to other confused and disheveled guests.
We were “fortunate” to be at the end of the hallway, but there was a backup of guests at that stairwell. We thought that, in the unlikely event of an actual emergency, we should probably just head the other direction to a different stairwell. So we did.
We got downstairs and outside fairly quickly. The mood was surprisingly light, with guests joking and laughing. There really wasn’t anyone behaving frantically, upset, or outraged. The vibe was basically: “This sucks, but stuff happens. Oh well, it is what it is.” Pretty much the best-case scenario, given the circumstances.
I mention this because one thing we’ve “discovered” is that kids’ reactions largely mirror those of adults around them. Any parent knows how this works, hence the air quotes around discovered. We had hoped that Megatron would see the upbeat and calm demeanor of the adults, and recognize there was no danger.
No such luck. She was terrified. The loud sound was enough to scare her, and by the time we got back up to the room she was literally trembling and wanted to hide under the covers. Neither of those things are normal or even occasional behavior for her. It took a while of comforting her, but she finally fell asleep.
The problem, and I’m not trying to be hyperbolic, is that Sarah and I sort of “absorbed” her fear and it took us a while to wind down after Megatron finally fell asleep. Again, I’d imagine fellow parents know what I mean here. I have no clue what time it finally was when the two of us finally fell asleep, but well after 3 am and probably pretty close to 4 am.
It felt like I had just closed my eyes when the fire alarm went off. Again.
Megatron shot right up this time, and was immediately trembling and terrified. The earmuffs were no match for the shrill sound of the fire alarm. We headed downstairs and outside yet again. The mood was different this time. No one seemed amused.
One thing that felt notable in both situations was zero communications from Walt Disney World. I assume there’s a manager on duty or something, but no one came out to convey to guests what was happening–or why it had occurred twice. Maybe this happened somewhere, but not out where we were standing right outside the main lobby.
After it was all over, we made the long walk back up the stairs and down our hallway and once again took a long time soothing Megatron to sleep. For both Sarah and I, it was one of those situations where we were utterly exhausted but the adrenaline was pumping.
I have absolutely no clue when we finally got to sleep, but I didn’t wake up until 8:30 am, and they were both up after me. Speaking of which, please disregard my previous promise to cover the extra Early Entry at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Due to, ahem, unforeseen circumstances, that did not happen.
When we finally did get out the door at almost 11 am, everything seemed fine. Megatron was excited to meet Olaf, see Woody in Toy Story Land, etc. And the day was mostly fine, although throwing off her sleep and nap schedule was definitely suboptimal. Nothing we haven’t dealt with before, though, and we just rolled with the punches.
Then we headed back to Yacht Club for dinner. As soon as we walked into the hotel, she was clearly upset, wanted to be held by Sarah, and buried her head in mom’s chest. She repeatedly said that she ‘wanted to go home.’ Do you know how heartbreaking it is to hear your kid say that at Walt Disney World?
Getting her to sleep that night wasn’t easy, to the point that we almost asked to switch resorts. In hindsight, that might’ve been the right decision. She was perfectly fine and excited about everything else we did, but every time we first walked into the Yacht Club, she got quiet and seemed scared.
I’m not trying to sensationalize this. To the contrary, this type of thing makes me a little uncomfortable to share; it just feels a bit too personal. But I’m not suggesting that our vacation was ruined or anything close to that. It wasn’t! We still had great days in the parks, and it was an incredible trip. It was just like flipping a switch when getting back to the hotel from the (and I don’t think this is a hyperbolic word choice) traumatic experience that first night.
There was a lot of confusion and supposition among guests and Cast Members about what caused the fire alarm to go off twice in one night. We also overheard a lot of chatter about this, and it seemed like the prevailing theory was an issue in one of the kitchens. But that’s far from certain–and was just what the dominant gossip suggested.
Not wanting to risk a repeat of that night, Sarah spoke with a Cast Member about what happened. She explained the situation, and why we didn’t want to potentially endure another night of that (not that there were other guests who did, but I assume the adults were only left tired, not traumatized).
The Cast Member proactively offered guest recovery without being asked or prompted. We also could’ve switched resorts if we wanted, but opted against it after receiving a reassurance that the issue had been addressed and it shouldn’t happen again on subsequent nights.
The guest recovery given was fairly modest (far less in value than the cost of even a single night), but that’s beside the point. It was the gesture that mattered to us. We also did not ask for anything more–or anything at all, in the first place. Perhaps we could’ve gotten a better offer by escalating to a manager, but that wasn’t our aim.
The only thing they could’ve offered that would’ve made me “happy” is the ability to time travel to before the fire alarms went off. Hearing our daughter repeatedly say she wanted to go home is one of those bells you can’t unring, and not having that happen would’ve been priceless!
Accordingly, there isn’t really anything that Walt Disney World could’ve offered to “undo” that. What they did offer seemed reasonable and like a good-faith effort to remedy an irremediable situation.
When I remove our emotional response from the equation, the reality is that stuff like this does happen, and it’s not anyone’s fault. Sure, communications could’ve been a bit better, but that was hardly make or break. It was just a bad situation, safety is paramount, yadda yadda yadda. I’m no more upset with Disney about this than I would’ve been if there was a hurricane scare.
In the end, it’s a bit ironic. My perspective is that the incident at the Grand Floridian was indirectly instigated by Walt Disney World and they could’ve (and should’ve) prevented it from escalating. But in the end, that was very amusing. I got a hilarious story out of it that I’ve already told a few times to friends. (If you didn’t think it was funny, that’s probably because I can’t do the voices via text. Maybe I should start a podcast just to tell this story with the voices.)
On the other hand, there was nothing amusing about the Yacht Club horror story and I cringe a bit even at sharing this. I loved writing up the first half of this, but hated the second. It just isn’t the type of thing I like to put out there, so hopefully it’s somehow of some value. Regardless, as unamusing and disheartening as this was, there’s really no one to blame. It’s just something unfortunate that happened–and we’ve never had an experience like this at Walt Disney World.
After that night, we were somewhat reticent to expose Megatron to any loud shows, parades, or fireworks for the duration of the trip after the fire alarm incident. But as luck would have it, we were passing through World Showcase right as Luminous started on our last night. Megatron was briefly amused by it…before falling asleep somewhere between the UK and International Gateway. Kids are resilient!
To end on an unequivocally positive note, the best “guest recovery” of all happened by happy accident as we were leaving the lobby on checkout morning. Megatron was wearing her Daisy Duck outfit, and had stopped at the kids area and started coloring or something. Had she not paused for this, or had we sped out of our room ~10 minutes earlier, we might’ve missed the experience entirely.
A few characters had just arrived via the Character Caravan (which we now love even more), and Daisy Duck made a beeline to Megatron, took her by the hand, and walked her around the lobby for a ‘fashion shoot’ with one of the best PhotoPass photographers we’ve ever encountered.
Our daughter’s face absolutely lit up, as she smiled from ear to ear. It was the highlight of our Walt Disney World trip, and it happened right in the lobby of the Yacht Club. She has repeatedly mentioned walking with Daisy Duck (and wanting to do it again) as her favorite thing about Walt Disney World in the days and weeks since. She has not mentioned the fire alarm since. And it’s this kind of magic that’ll keep us going back again and again.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Any Walt Disney World hotel horror stories of your own? Or have your stays at WDW resorts been entirely positive? Thoughts on our experiences, or anything else? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
