Well, it worked well for us!! We had a 2 bedroom Lake View at Bay Lake Tower. I requested a small set of rooms that actually have a theme park view but are listed “lake view.” I explained in the text that we were celebrating our 15 anniversary and would love to have a partial view of the park. We got exactly that. An awesome partial view of Magic Kingdom. 11th floor, which was requested. The view of the fireworks at night was incredible! Thank you!!
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The faxed “room request” was a major fail. First of all, Art of Animation seemed confused by it. Did Touring Plans even send it? I’ll never know. Secondly, they put us in a room that was THE OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY from what we requested.
I had requested a pool-facing Little Mermaid room (Art of Animation) on the ground floor east side (shortest walk to Landscape of Flavors). We had little kids and much luggage.
Instead, Disney put us on the TOP floor (4 flights of stairs)… furthest room from the elevator. Western-most END of the AoA buildings… absolutely the FURTHEST walk from the Landscape of Flavors! The view: gondola construction. Every afternoon ALL we could hear was the beep-beep-beep of construction machinery. We had the FURTHEST room from the pool.
We occupied the absolute WORST room AofA offers. I’m astounded at how badly the Touring Plans “room request” backfired on us.
If your party has mobile people then maybe this worst-location room would work for you. For us, with kids who weren’t mobile and who required a lot of extra supplies, this was the worst room ever. I bought into the Tourings Plans hype. In the future, I would never count on Touring Plans again for a specific room. Extreme disappointment.
How did you come to know this?
Requests are just that - there are many things that factor into whether that REQUEST can be fulfilled or not. You sound angry, as if you expected this were a guarantee.
Did you ask to be moved when you realized how much this room was not suited to your needs? What was the response?
Please also know that a great many families have multiple small children and much luggage when visiting WDW.
If you’re reporting back now I’m betting you were there in the last two weeks. Easter time is the busiest of all seasons – and this would make requests more difficult than at other times. Just thinking this through.
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Sorry you had a bad room, and it does sound like for you it was not ideal. The front desk people are not the room assigners though, so they probably don’t know about the fax. That is done days before you get there. Did you ask to change rooms? We recently stayed at AKL and were given a room with 2 queens, but really wanted bunk beds for the kids. They moved us rooms the next day. Just know you can ask to change rooms, we found they were eager to please and make our request. Sorry it did not work out for you, we have requested probably 8 rooms with the fax, and have rarely not gotten what we wanted. Only time we didn’t was at BCV and figure that is because it was a DVC room.
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“OBNurseNH” asked "How did you come to know this?
Answer: Because I was standing at the checkin desk of Art of Animation, waiting for my requested room 9562, and the checkin clerk said “Hmmm, I’m confused. We don’t have any available rooms like that.” And more “Hmmmm” and again “hmmmmm”.
OBNurseNH, you can’t tell from a post whether a person “sounds angry” or not, so you shouldn’t judge like that.
Upon given a room in the top floor of the furthest building, at the furthest end, of course I requested differently. The response was “we don’t have anything else available”.
I can’t judge Disney’s situation at that moment. All I know is I booked more than 6 months in advance, and upon mid-day check-in they had “nothing else available”. The Touring Plans room request failed us. We struggled to get occupied strollers up to the 4th floor. It was a birthday trip. We listened to construction equipment beeping outside our room during nap-time. Given the health situation of our child, I suspect we should have contacted Disney directly, rather than rely on a fax from a TouringPlans website. TouringPlans room request failed us miserably.
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Well okay then.
Have a nice day!
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I’m sorry you were disappointed. However, as pointed out to you, the room request is never guaranteed - asking doesn’t mean you’ll get it. If that room isn’t available, then you’ll get a room that is. You were there at a very busy time.
We’re 2 for 2 on requests, so we’ve been lucky, but if next time we end up with the opposite of our request, that’s the way the cookie crumbles and we’ll make the best of it.
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What do you think they meant by that? They did not have any rooms available or the Cam did not think the room existed?
I’ve read somewhere that if you were to do the early check in via MDE that your room request fax will be overridden. I’m sure this is not what happened to @wrig8 but if someone who knows the process well could comment for me and the rest of the newbies it might save someone from a similar disappointment.
There’s no issue with doing online check in. The issue would arise if your fax asked for example for a room on the ground floor, and you put upper floor in your room preferences during online check in. Then they don’t know which you actually want.
I personally don’t make requests when checking in, I rely on the fax. But as long as you don’t contradict yourself, there’s no problem.
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Wow, that is indeed a bad room. I’m sorry to hear about this. What room number did you end up with?
AoA definitely received your fax - I checked that we got a confirmation code.
I have a question about the preferences you’ve mentioned. The text in the fax we sent consists of one sentence:
Room 9562, please, if possible.
(Here’s the view from that room.) That’s definitely a first-floor, southeast-facing room among the closest to LoF in Building 9.
Was there any additional text in the fax beyond this that we were supposed to send? If yes, then I need to have a developer take a look at that. Let me know, please.
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PrincipalTinker,
The check-in clerk seemed surprised when I mentioned the fax request, but didn’t answer my specific questions about receiving it. She appeared to have no information about it, and it was my impression she’d never heard of anyone faxing a room request. She said there were no rooms available at all in buildings 7 & 9, and only 1 room available in building 8. The whole thing didn’t make sense to me. What about everyone else who was to check in that day?
Dberry,
I thought about doing online check-in, but didn’t do it because I, too, was concerned about it conflicting w/ the fax. So we checked in at the front desk and paid the remaining balance at check-in.
Len,
I believe that’s all I wrote in the comments box. I selected all the other preferences in the options that appear ABOVE the Comments box. Should a person reiterate the already-selected preferences in the Comments too? If so, could you please ask the Developers to write that on the form?
Also, it would help if the hotel maps were always displayed with North up. Currently they switch directions between the whole-hotel view vs the whole-building view. And neither were North Up. It didn’t impact this situation, but i can see how it would be confusing for people trying to choose.
In the future, I will be making the room request myself in person or via phone, in advance. The fax idea sounds great, but although Touring Plans confirmed that it was sent, it wasn’t received by anyone with power to implement such a request, or even acknowledge they knew of the request.
This is a good idea. Let me see what we can do there.
ETA: We do send the preferences string that appear above the comments box, too.
Len, the room we ended up with was 8936.
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Oh wow. That’s not actually too far from where you requested since it looks like you requested a room in building 9. I was imagining that you had ended up in building 2. Now THAT would have been the total opposite of what you asked for. While the room you landed in is not exactly what you asked for, it was at least in a nearby building to your request.
I saw on a different thread that you were checking in over Easter Weekend. That is definitely the busiest of times for WDW and it makes it really hard for requests to be honored. I always imagine a giant Tetris game in a huge command center and the thought of stitching everyone’s dates together to make them work gives me a headache to even think about.
In any case, while it’s unfortunate that you did not get a room that you found satisfactory, I hope you will come to realize that isn’t TouringPlans fault, since room assignments are multifactorial in nature.
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I am going to caution you against ever depending on a phone request. Most calls go into a “call center” and the phones are answered by people with very little training.
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It goes to the room assigners, who are not the same staff as at the front desk - which is why the front desk staff probably seemed unaware.
MY experience was that the fax wasn’t received by anyone with power to implement such a request. And my experience was that the room was chosen and assigned by the person at the check-in desk, upon us going up to the counter, and not before. After she couldn’t find any request noted, she took some time and looked through each building, and gave us the only open room. (She said)
Your mileage may vary.
If calling won’t work and faxing didn’t work (but sometimes works for others?), then maybe it’s just not possible to pick.
OBNurse,
??? We paid for Little Mermaid. Of course they’re going to put us in Little Mermaid instead of a suite. Everything about the room’s location was opposite of the preferences we put on the Touring Plans request form.
I’m sorry you think that I think it’s Touring Plans fault. Not sure I blamed them in any of my posts, and if I did i shouldn’t have, but I’m guessing you assumed it. It doesn’t seem like fault can be determined. I’m posting my story because at the time I initiated the fax, i read that we’re supposed to come back and post our success or failure with the room request. In our experience it was a failure.
Perhaps the room furthest from the ground, furthest from the pool, furthest from the main building & busstops, furthest from the elevator, and facing construction WAS the only room available that day. Because we had booked so far ahead, I’m suspicious of that, but whatever. All I know for sure is that faxing the request didn’t give the intended result. We ended up with a very opposite result.
They don’t assign the rooms when you book though. Which is why touring plans don’t send the fax earlier. So it doesn’t matter when you booked the holiday
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