Disney's Club Level (CL) Information & Questions

[lambdabeta]

Yes, we weren’t bothered by the non-working MagicBands (we were prepared to go back to the main front desk to get the reset or whatever), but the door guard was extremely rude. I understand they want to make sure other guests aren’t trying to sneak in, but honestly, did he really think a non-guest would try repeatedly to enter the building?! There has to be a more polite way to inquire if a guest is staying in the building and/or a guest of that building experiencing MagicBand difficulties. He didn’t even seem interested in why our bands weren’t working (not even suggesting a battery issue). I assumed when we sat down, “resolving the situation” would involve doing something to reset our bands, but it was entirely for him to confirm for himself that we were supposed to be there. He didn’t even apologize for the inconvenience. My daughter asked me if I thought the door guard felt sorry for interrupting us from going to our room. I told her I thought not.

You are right. He should have definitely apologized to you once he found out you were actually current guests of the resort. There was no excuse for that.

Now playing devils advocate. I actually am glad to see a "door guard". I have heard reports of people sneaking in or others having CL access and then bringing in Non-CL guests to use the lounges. To answer your question I personally would think that non-CL guests might try and enter CL multiple times because they had success in the past. Also maybe there were a lot of non-CL guests sneaking in to the Hawaii building and that is why he was there in the first place. As far as making you wait, he had no way of knowing if you were real current guests until he found it on the computer. It was just your word. I don't know how it was said but making you wait makes sense to me. Even when the other girl confirmed you were guests he still had no way of knowing if you were current guests. The computer was the only way of knowing. He may not have been the one to fix the magicband but maybe that wasn't his job. I still think he should have apologized when he was made aware of the mistake. Up until that point I think he was just doing his job. You did follow someone in using their magicband.

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

@lambdabeta
I actually disagree with you on this one. She tried at first you get his attention, where he could obviously see her, and ignored her. I understand the checking on the computer. I also don't want freeloaders in the lounge. But there is a HUGE difference in customer service. He could have (should have) stated,
"Ma'am, I absolutely must check your guest status on the computer before I can allow you to continue to the lounge. If you would kindly have a seat, I will do this as expeditiously as possible, thank you so much."
She now understands why and how, and that it will take a moment or two. No reason to treat her rudely. That just shows contempt prior to investigation.
There is a world of difference in customer service in those 2 scenarios. One creates poor customer relations, anger, and annoyance. The latter shows great customer service, class, and good will!
Guess how I'd rather be treated?!?

 

[lambdabeta]

@lambdabeta
I actually disagree with you on this one. She tried at first you get his attention, where he could obviously see her, and ignored her. I understand the checking on the computer. I also don't want freeloaders in the lounge. But there is a HUGE difference in customer service. He could have (should have) stated,
"Ma'am, I absolutely must check your guest status on the computer before I can allow you to continue to the lounge. If you would kindly have a seat, I will do this as expeditiously as possible, thank you so much."
She now understands why and how, and that it will take a moment or two. No reason to treat her rudely. That just shows contempt prior to investigation.
There is a world of difference in customer service in those 2 scenarios. One creates poor customer relations, anger, and annoyance. The latter shows great customer service, class, and good will!
Guess how I'd rather be treated?!?

I wasn't looking for anyone to agree with or disagree with me. I was just putting a different perspective out there. Rudeness is in the eye of the beholder. I have found what one person finds rude another does not. Do I think the way you phrased it would have been better? Of course I do. That doesn't negate what I said. I wasn't there so I don't know what really happened. I know I probably would not have responded the same way in the same situation. The only part of that story that would have angered me was not getting an apology when he found out I was an actual guest. Sounds like he needs more customer service training.

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

Absolutely agree with customer service training!
I truly expect more from Disney, and lately have not been on the receiving end of good customer service. Maybe that also colors my response. I'm pretty upset (still) with my BC CL stay. It was so NOT Disney like, let alone the level expected at concierge level.

 

[lambdabeta]

Absolutely agree with customer service training!
I truly expect more from Disney, and lately have not been on the receiving end of good customer service. Maybe that also colors my response. I'm pretty upset (still) with my BC CL stay. It was so NOT Disney like, let alone the level expected at concierge level.

I totally understand. When you pay for CL you expect excellent customer service. I'm sorry about your bad experience. I hope you let everyone at WDW know you were upset. Nothing changes if you don't complain. Although it seems that with Disney nothing changes even when you do complain. I had a bad experience the last time I was at WDW but I didn't get the response I expected from corporate. Good customer service has to start from the top.

Totally unrelated but I am from Connecticut too.

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

Home Sweet Home!

 

[lambdabeta]

View attachment 340180

Home Sweet Home!

Really! What a small world. We are neighbors. I live in Norwich. My DH just took me on a lighthouse cruise yesterday that went right past there.

 

[RachelTori]

This happened many years ago at the RPC in the GF as well. Imagine our surprise when we checked in to be told we would be able to " enjoy wine and cheese" during the 5 to 7 pm time period! This was our third stay at the GF and I was really shocked and upset about this. The price certainly hadn't been lowered at all. They weren't kidding either they basically set out a plate of cheese and a basket of crackers and that was it. There was a positive to this though. On our next trip we booked the BWI CL and fell in love. We have been staying there ever since.

There must have been enough of us who rebelled as, thankfully, that phase didn’t last too long!

 

[AngiTN]

We stayed in the Hawaii building at the Polynesian last Saturday through Wednesday. We have mixed feelings about it. The lounge was wonderful! We loved the different choices each evening, and the CMs we met there were very friendly. They had cereal available with the coffee starting at 6, which we appreciated as early risers. My daughter enjoyed the desserts and lemonade a lot!! We had a few issues, which were no turn down service, not even a knock letting us know they were outside (we gladly would have taken the chocolate!). This was a minor disappointment. I asked someone if it had been discontinued, and I was told the housekeeping was just very busy and they would try to get to our room. Finally they did on our last night, but the service was poor. A wrapper of some kind (not ours) was left in the bathroom by the sink. We tend to go to bed quite early (9-ish) and found Hawaii much noisier at night than our previous stay in Rarotonga. I'm not sure where the sound was coming from, it seemed possibly to be from the pool area.

The big issue we had was a very unfriendly CM when our MagicBands weren’t working to access the building. We had been in and out many times when suddenly, one afternoon after returning from Epcot, our bands turned red when we tried to enter from outside. My DD and I each tried several times to no avail. I tried waving to someone inside but was ignored. Just as we were leaving to go to the main desk, another guest turned up and opened the door. Immediately upon entering we were met by a very grumpy CM (the "door guard" my DD called him) who informed me that the Hawaii building is for guests with a concierge level stay, and we would have to leave. I was taken aback. I told him we were staying in that building and our bands had stopped working. He asked us what our room number was. I told him. He asked for our name. I told him this also. He told us we had to sit down so they could look us up and "take care of this situation". My DD was extremely worn out and wanted nothing more than to go to our room. I told him we were just going to head up to our room and could get our MagicBands fixed later. He said that before he could let us do that, we would have to take a seat and get the situation clarified. So he took us to a desk where a CM recognized us as she had checked us in two days prior. This still didn’t satisfy the door guard, and he made her enter some information to look us up. While she did so, he asked me if we had just been following other guests in. I felt like some kind of criminal at this point. I told him we had been entering with no issues, which the other CM at the desk said was true. I asked why our MagicBands would suddenly develop this problem, but he didn’t have an answer for me and didn’t seem interesting in providing one. As soon as the CM at the desk had our information on the screen, he told us we could go. It was absolutely ridiculous that we had to go through this. Even my DD picked up on something and later asked me, “what was that all about with the door guard?" I asked someone at the main front desk later about the MagicBands not working, and she suggested it might be a battery issue. Aside from the bands flashing green a few times trying to enter our room (does anyone know why that happens? Trying too fast to open the door maybe?), we had no problems with them.

This really put a sour taste in my mouth. As soon as we are home, I will email the manager, whose contact information was on a paper in our room upon arrival. I am not feeling good about returning to the Polynesian club level.

Sorry he was rude but I will say what ever was wrong was not a battery problem. When you touch Mickey to Mickey you don't use the battery in your band at all. You do use the one in the access point. However it was working for others so clearly it was not a problem in that access point.

 

[CogsworthTN]

We currently have a non-club level room booked at the Wilderness Lodge. I recall reading some posters mention being offered to add club level at check-in and it being $99. I have looked everywhere for clarification and just cannot find the answer.

Is the $99 per person or per day? Thanks

 

[RachelTori]

We currently have a non-club level room booked at the Wilderness Lodge. I recall reading some posters mention being offered to add club level at check-in and it being $99. I have looked everywhere for clarification and just cannot find the answer.

Is the $99 per person or per day? Thanks

Per day, but it is based on availability and you can’t reserve it till check-in.
I don’t know what their magic (maximum) number is, but I’ve not seen any posts where anyone was told “so sorry, we’re at the max.”

 

[WalkDisneyWorld]

Do you know how long the pool construction will be at AKL?

Saw that this was answered already while I was away on vacation. Sorry about not seeing it!

9/4-12/4

Thanks for following up on that question!

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

Really! What a small world. We are neighbors. I live in Norwich. My DH just took me on a lighthouse cruise yesterday that went right past there.

Small world!!!

 

[Lovinallthingsdisney]

I, too was a "bag lady". There are 12 step meetings for that, lol!!!

The Dooney’s get me every time!

 

[AngiTN]

We currently have a non-club level room booked at the Wilderness Lodge. I recall reading some posters mention being offered to add club level at check-in and it being $99. I have looked everywhere for clarification and just cannot find the answer.

Is the $99 per person or per day? Thanks

As far as I understand it this is only for DVC rooms, and it's not the WL CL, it's a separate CL on the DVC side, Reunion something is the name, or something like that. I'm not even sure if it's for Boulder Ridge, Copper Creek or both

 

[ninafeliz]

We currently have a non-club level room booked at the Wilderness Lodge. I recall reading some posters mention being offered to add club level at check-in and it being $99. I have looked everywhere for clarification and just cannot find the answer.

Is the $99 per person or per day? Thanks

As far as I understand it this is only for DVC rooms, and it's not the WL CL, it's a separate CL on the DVC side, Reunion something is the name, or something like that. I'm not even sure if it's for Boulder Ridge, Copper Creek or both

My understanding is Reunion Station is a new thing they are trying, sort of a club level that DVC members staying at the DVC portions of WL can pay to add on to their stay. But they are also giving the option for regular WL resort guests to add the Old Falthful Club to their room for $99 a night per room, and only available at check in based on availability. Probably because the club level floor lost half of its rooms when they changed an entire wing of the WL to DVC. It seems to me that this ability to add CL onto your stay is not highly advertised, and I have only read minimal info about it here and haven’t heard of it elsewhere. I also haven’t tried it myself, so I’m writing based on hearsay!

 

[cwis]

I have also read that regular, non-DVC guests, were given the option to pay for access to the Old Faithful Lounge for $99 per day (or is it per night?)

As usual when Disney is experimenting stuff, don't count on it too much, as pricing and/or conditions may change at any time, and offer may be terminated without prior notice. If you really need a CL room, the only guaranteed way is booking one of those. (I'm sure you knew that already, just wanted to be on the cautious side, to prevent you from being disappointed too much if things doesn't go as previously reported on this board!)

 

[RachelTori]

My understanding is Reunion Station is a new thing they are trying, sort of a club level that DVC members staying at the DVC portions of WL can pay to add on to their stay. But they are also giving the option for regular WL resort guests to add the Old Falthful Club to their room for $99 a night per room, and only available at check in based on availability. Probably because the club level floor lost half of its rooms when they changed an entire wing of the WL to DVC. It seems to me that this ability to add CL onto your stay is not highly advertised, and I have only read minimal info about it here and haven’t heard of it elsewhere. I also haven’t tried it myself, so I’m writing based on hearsay!

Well said! This is absolutely the correct information! (My DD works at WL)

 

[mickeynut1]

This happened many years ago at the RPC in the GF as well. Imagine our surprise when we checked in to be told we would be able to " enjoy wine and cheese" during the 5 to 7 pm time period! This was our third stay at the GF and I was really shocked and upset about this. The price certainly hadn't been lowered at all. They weren't kidding either they basically set out a plate of cheese and a basket of crackers and that was it. There was a positive to this though. On our next trip we booked the BWI CL and fell in love. We have been staying there ever since.

I found it's easy to fall in love with BWI CL. It's been quite a few years since I've stayed RPC, but just had my first BWI CL stay last month and it was amazing! I love the RPC lounge as it's so large and spread out which is very different from the smaller/quaint BWI lounge, but I have to say I was blown away at BWI. Everything about it was great, from the atmosphere to the food to the wonderful CL CMs. RPC has been on my list to return to, but now so is BWI CL .

We stayed in the Hawaii building at the Polynesian last Saturday through Wednesday. We have mixed feelings about it. The lounge was wonderful! We loved the different choices each evening, and the CMs we met there were very friendly. They had cereal available with the coffee starting at 6, which we appreciated as early risers. My daughter enjoyed the desserts and lemonade a lot!! We had a few issues, which were no turn down service, not even a knock letting us know they were outside (we gladly would have taken the chocolate!). This was a minor disappointment. I asked someone if it had been discontinued, and I was told the housekeeping was just very busy and they would try to get to our room. Finally they did on our last night, but the service was poor. A wrapper of some kind (not ours) was left in the bathroom by the sink. We tend to go to bed quite early (9-ish) and found Hawaii much noisier at night than our previous stay in Rarotonga. I'm not sure where the sound was coming from, it seemed possibly to be from the pool area.

The big issue we had was a very unfriendly CM when our MagicBands weren’t working to access the building. We had been in and out many times when suddenly, one afternoon after returning from Epcot, our bands turned red when we tried to enter from outside. My DD and I each tried several times to no avail. I tried waving to someone inside but was ignored. Just as we were leaving to go to the main desk, another guest turned up and opened the door. Immediately upon entering we were met by a very grumpy CM (the "door guard" my DD called him) who informed me that the Hawaii building is for guests with a concierge level stay, and we would have to leave. I was taken aback. I told him we were staying in that building and our bands had stopped working. He asked us what our room number was. I told him. He asked for our name. I told him this also. He told us we had to sit down so they could look us up and "take care of this situation". My DD was extremely worn out and wanted nothing more than to go to our room. I told him we were just going to head up to our room and could get our MagicBands fixed later. He said that before he could let us do that, we would have to take a seat and get the situation clarified. So he took us to a desk where a CM recognized us as she had checked us in two days prior. This still didn’t satisfy the door guard, and he made her enter some information to look us up. While she did so, he asked me if we had just been following other guests in. I felt like some kind of criminal at this point. I told him we had been entering with no issues, which the other CM at the desk said was true. I asked why our MagicBands would suddenly develop this problem, but he didn’t have an answer for me and didn’t seem interesting in providing one. As soon as the CM at the desk had our information on the screen, he told us we could go. It was absolutely ridiculous that we had to go through this. Even my DD picked up on something and later asked me, “what was that all about with the door guard?" I asked someone at the main front desk later about the MagicBands not working, and she suggested it might be a battery issue. Aside from the bands flashing green a few times trying to enter our room (does anyone know why that happens? Trying too fast to open the door maybe?), we had no problems with them.

This really put a sour taste in my mouth. As soon as we are home, I will email the manager, whose contact information was on a paper in our room upon arrival. I am not feeling good about returning to the Polynesian club level.

I'm sorry about the issues with your magic bands and the door guard. I'm glad the MB issue finally got resolved, but I agree with sending an email about the situation. Glad you enjoyed the lounge overall and I hope the rest of your trip was nice .

I’m sorry you had a negative experience, but just wanted you to know it happened to us multiple times over our 2 week stay too. Happened first time to my DH on our first day at BC - all our bands worked but his. He went down and had it fixed. A day later it didn’t work again. This happened 3 times during that week... then when they finally just switched out his band all together, mine stopped working!!! I’ve never spent so much time at a front desk before!! What a headache. I had to get a new band too. It happened again to him once at Poly, but was good after that. It’s defininitely a headache, but I guess they’re still working out the bugs. (That CM was totally unacceptable!)

With as long as MBs have been out, it's crazy how some guests are still having trouble with them .

So sorry you encountered that. The magic bands not working wouldn't bother me so much, but the treatment you received is totally out of line. So sorry it soured tour trip.

I agree!

The Dooney’s get me every time!

Those are the ones that get me too .

 

[HBGdancermom]

Hi everyone!! It looks like I might be heading back to WDW in January. It is about time!!!!

I am wondering if you might know typically if room only discounts will be offered on a Poly CL TPV room type in January or are they excluded? And also, when is this usually released? I have let my AP expire however, I can add it back if it is a better discount than visa holder because I believe I will be back next June too.

I know things change every year so I want hold you to any of your much appreciated info.