Hey everyone, it's Jacqueline --and Adam.
--We've been lucky enough to hit up the theme parks pretty regularly the past year or so.
Of course, we were down in Disney World for an extended period of time in September 2021, then we
had three days in the Disneyland parks in January of 2022, and then we went back to Disney World
just for one day--just for a little fun trip--in February. Across those three trips of course
there was a lot of magical moments and some, you know, not so magical moments. Today's video we'll
discuss some of the least magical moments across our vacations. Of course we still had a good time,
but I think it's fun to share our experiences. And also just set correct expectations--that it's
not going to be 100% perfect every single day. –Yeah, like life things are gonna happen, and it's
all about how you roll with it. --If you want to hear about our least magical moments stay tuned!
I think my list is probably longer than Adam’s; I spend a little bit more time reflecting on things
than he does, so it'll be a Jacqueline heavy video. But that's okay! --I'm sure this will bring
back some memories though, and I'm sure I'll have an opinion or two to share. –Yeah, so starting
off, and this really wasn't that big of a deal, but I think three times the wrong luggage was
brought to our room. So basically when we changed rooms we would move hotels, store our stuff at the
new hotel that we were checking into, go to the parks. Once we were told our room was ready,
we would come back. And then from our room we would call bell services and be like “hey, we're
here. We've got a room. Can we have our bags?” And they would bring up a luggage cart. And it just
absolutely was not our bags. --I remember that, you know, it happened on way too many occasions.
I think, yeah, they just could not find our luggage, even though it was tagged and
it was named and it was it's pretty… pretty eye-rolling. –Yeah, it's again not the worst
thing. It just takes, you know… you have to send them back down, they have to bring the right cart
up. So it's another 20 minutes of your day or whatever. And obviously like wasted effort on
their part. And I just… I guess I don't really understand why the system doesn't work better.
But, you know, it's--it was okay in the end. Next for me, there was one morning when our sink in the
kitchenette of our Bay Lake Tower room just like burped up a bunch of dirt for no apparent [reason]. Like we
hadn't even been using it. There was no apparent reason why this would have happened. So plumbing
wise… I don't know what's going on there. That was obviously inconvenient, but not the primary reason
I found it not the most magical. So we left for the theme parks that morning, we stopped by the
front desk and let them know like “there's a bunch of dirt in the sink for reasons we don't
understand, can you send maintenance?” They're like “oh yeah, of course, right away,” blah blah
blah. We went to a theme park; we came back like six hours later and it still hadn't been taken
care of. So we had to go back down to the front desk and re-complain, which is not my favorite
thing to do.-- It was fixed, however. --Eventually. –Yeah, but the fact is that it seems like,
you know, a sink that's burping up dirt seems like kind of a plumbing emergency where you should
get someone on that. –Yeah, I don't know about emergency, but I just couldn't believe like…
six hours, and nothing. And then when we went back down, it was a different Cast Member at this point, and they
acted like there wasn't even a note; like nothing happened when we had went in the morning to tell
them about it. So I think that may have been the case? Which is yeah not so magical. -Unlike
this dog. Yeah, no. That definitely was very frustrating experience in terms of hospitality
wise. And, you know, so for, you know, it just did not start our day off on the right foot.
Yeah. It wasn't… it wasn't great. And similarly on a hospitality note, when we were over in BoardWalk
we did do a little bit of laundry. And so since we stay in studios you have to use like the
laundry room, there's not laundry in your actual villa, which is fine. And we went over to use it.
And, you know, supposedly one washer was free; we only had one load to do, perfect. So we load
our stuff in, we put--I brought soap from home because I have really sensitive skin so there's,
like I can only use some kinds of detergent--so we put the detergent in, and it just doesn't work.
And there's nothing indicating it shouldn't work; like the lights are on. Someone else was in there
thankfully, so we asked them like “hey, when you did your load what happened?” She was like “yeah,
I just closed it and it let me pick a setting and then it worked.” And that was not not happening.
So again we went to the front desk--Adam went to the front desk—and, and, you know, complained.
And essentially all I wanted out of that was for the cast member to say “oh yeah, we'll make sure
maintenance knows and fixes it.” I obviously wouldn't expect them to come right away, but
like within the next day or so. And also in the interim I think they should have put a sign on the
freaking washer that said out of service, because otherwise people are going to continue to try to
use it and it doesn't work. And the cast member was very just like “oh, I'm sorry.” That was it!
--Again, not--not what you want. --Yeah. The next day I--there was an email form that I had received
and I ended up complaining to the manager. And they called and made sure everything was okay or
whatever. But like –They did call; I remember that, yeah. --I just feel like it's not that hard to say “oh yeah,
we'll make sure maintenance gets on it.” Like that's what… I don't know,
man. It was frustrating. –Yeah, it's not like Goofy was at the front desk or anything. –Right.
Additionally at our BoardWalk room we were facing the pool. So we booked a standard room,
so that may have been upgrade to like pool/garden view… I honestly don't know.
But the point is we were facing the pool, and there's a fence along the pool. And
every morning at like 7 A.M. they would do some light maintenance on the fence, including
hammering and other--it wasn't major construction, but, you know, it was loud. And it was 7 A.M. And
I understand that 7 A.M is like the least hot part of the day for a normal work day, and they
probably want to go do their outside difficult maintenance during that, but... so when we were there
EPCOT wasn't opening until like 10 or 11 [A.M.]. I don't remember the exact time, but late. And
then to have the fence be worked on at 7 A.M. when like maybe we could have slept in was not great.
--Yeah, I would just definitely be aware of any construction or updates and take that into
consideration when you're booking the hotel or stay just in general, right. Or, you know, even
if you're like a renter and looking at apartments and you're like okay… are they going to be tons of
construction happening over the next I don't know however long? It just really ruins the ambiance
and your ability to sleep in on vacation, which is definitely frustrating
--Yeah, well and when they're doing major construction there's
always are warnings on the booking pages, whether that's DVC or hotels. But because I think
these were just minor fixes to that fence, like there was... no we couldn't have known. --That's just bad
luck. --Yeah. And also I just really like sleeping, so this is a bummer for me. --Yeah.-- Alright,
moving away from hotels and hospitality and over to theme parks. Slinky Dog Dash was down
a lot. And some of this was weather related. We were there in September--September 2021, so it
is a rainy season. And I get that it's an outdoor ride. But there, at least half the time when it was
down it was not obviously related to weather. So even just being able to get in line to try to go
on Slinky Dog was very challenging. I'm glad we were there as long as we were, because honestly
if it had been a shorter trip I don't know that we would have had the opportunity to even try to get
on Slinky Dog. –Yeah, it was a very temperamental ride. The slightest, you know, hiccup would force
to close down. And sometimes they'd evacuate the line. And, you know, we're just kind of
going around our day in Hollywood Studios and just like “Oh Slinky Dog’s a short wait… oh no,
it's because it just went down.” –Yeah. And also on this trip we park hopped a lot. I think
literally every day, if not multiple times per day. And we did have a rental car. And I found it
really frustrating that when we would go to our second park later in the day, so,
you know, three, four, five P.M. sometimes, the cast members would force us to park like as far
away as possible in the very back lot. And there were no trams. So then we would have
to walk up to the front of the theme park, and on that walk without fail, every time,
there were just a ton of open spots from people who came in the morning and already left. And in
past trips when we've had a rental car we've always sort of been able to just like press our luck
and they'll let us try to go find a much closer spot, and it's not been a problem. And they were
really strict about it this time. And especially without the trams, like… oh man, it was just it
was such a like slap in the face almost to have to walk past all those empty spots at like 5 P.M.
It's so freaking hot in September, it was very unfortunate. –Yeah, I really don't understand.
I guess they just want to have, you know, a time associated with certain parking spaces. But geez,
I mean there's so many open spaces. And, you know, I'm trying to you know minimize
that time in the sun. I know Orlando, September, it's not going to happen. But,
you know, the the walk out to the parking lot is definitely the hottest part of your trip because
there's no kiosk or gift shop you can duck into for shade or air conditioning. It's just hot
asphalt. --Yeah. --So man, that that sucks. I would love to be able to park closer, especially during
park hopping times… give us some flexibility Disney. --I totally understand in the mornings
that like they're filling lots very precisely. Happy to listen. But then once it's you know four,
five, six P.M. like let it be my fault if I don't remember where my car is. Alright, moving over to
Disneyland. Easily the most frustrating part of that whole trip, and it was very not magical,
was our first park morning we went and we scanned into the park and then we bought Genie+. And
specifically Adam bought Genie+ for both of us and my best friend, so all three of us in
one transaction. Genie+ loaded to my profile and to Adam's profile, and it did not load to my best
friend's profile. We ended up having to speak to three different cast members, all Guest Relations
cast members by the way, before it got fixed. And then once it was fixed what had happened
was I had booked a Lightning Lane return time for Adam and I at Mission: Breakout, and that's
how I learned that my best friend wasn't synced up to us. So we already had a Lightning Lane. So
then once it was supposedly fixed at Guest Relations finally, I really wanted to just
like either cancel ours and rebook the three of us together, or there's a feature where you can
like add a guest to an existing Lightning Lane reservation, and I want to to do that. And the
cast member at Guest Relations was so terse, and so grumpy, and she clearly just wanted us gone,
and like had no understanding of why I may want to check that Lightning Lane was actually working on
my best friend's profile. So it did end up working out just fine, but the whole interaction was like
very sour I would say. She seemed really annoying with us the entire time, when like this obviously
wasn't our fault. And then on top of that, I mean all this took like 20 minutes and it was like
precious rope drop time. So we lost a huge amount of space and standing in rope drop to go do WEB
Slinger, so it also delayed the rest of our day. –Yeah, it definitely was the wrong foot to start
our day on, that's for sure. That definitely ranked as one of my least magical moments
because, you know, a bunch of our other least magical moments were kind of like
hospitality/hotel related stuff, but like when it comes to the parks you have a very high standard
of what to expect in terms of the Disney magical experience… like that's where they put all their
energies, especially with Guest Relations I think. I don't know… it was really frustrating, because I
feel like that normally they get a lot of folks who aren't very tech savvy, asking really dumb
questions. And we had an actual bug that required an actual fix. And they're literally saying “have
you tried plug--unplugging it, plugging back in?” Like the real basic crap, which was kind of.. and
then us like dismissing like, "no it's not that." You know, it was just very poor communication on
on their end, and it's poor effort I'd say. –Yeah, and like Adam said I think most of the rest of the
least magical moments are just like annoyances but whatever. Like this was not only the start of our
day, it was the start of our entire Disneyland in park experience. It was our first day
in the parks, and it was like such a bad note. And I've never ever interacted with a Guest Relations
cast member who was that uninterested in speaking to me. --Maybe they just hate Genie+ as much as we do.
--They probably do. I'm sure they come up to these bugs and it's like really annoying
for them too, but I don't… it was not good. It was really like, I was really upset about the
way that went down. It was like the antithesis of Disney. --Not magical, huh? --Not magical.
And the last one I had considered was our last day at Disneyland. The last thing we
did related to Disney was we went and got a late dinner at GCH Craftsman Bar and Grill,
and everything like started out fine. And we ordered, and we got our food and drinks,
and it was good. But then like our waiter just disappeared, and he didn't assign our table to
anybody else, and it was this big dramatic thing. He came back eventually like, gosh maybe an hour
and a half later. --Yeah. --It was so hard to get our check because no one was taking care of us.
But so when he finally came back and explained, I guess what had happened was a family had left and
but they left a backpack. So, I don't know, Disney security acted like it was a TSA threat and they
came and searched the backpack with gloves and everything. And then our waiter said he had to
go give like witness statement to security or police or something… I don't know, it was all
just such a kerfuffle. And we're just sitting here like trying to pay for like 30 minutes. --Yeah, that
was not a fun time at all. --No. --Kind of ridiculous though, like yeah… that's all I'm gonna say. --Yeah.
I totally understand that things come up, but then it seems pretty easy that the waiter should either
expressly pass their tables on to someone else working, or like the other people working should
notice that person's gone or, you know not--more than like their 10 minute break. And like... and we
were literally like wait trying to wave people down. They'd be like “oh we'll go see where
your waiter is.” I'm like “can you just get me my check?” --I'm going like this like check please.
--So yeah, it was just like… I mean Disneyland as a whole was pretty great, but it was a bummer
that it was just book ended by like pretty lame experiences to start and to end. But overall,
like I said we definitely still had still like a really great time going to the theme parks.
And overall customer service is still super high compared to most other experiences, particularly
in the United States of America. --I mean we still love our Disney vacations, and the big reason
why we go is because it delivers a lot of magical moments. But like with anything there's going to
be times where things don't go according to plan, and it's just kind of fun to kind of reflect on,
you know, what--what those are. And, you know, hopefully it's all funny in retrospect. And,
you know, let us know what some of your not as magical moments are in the comments, and we'll
be sure to have some fun and maybe exchange even some more stories. --Yeah, definitely. And for sure
like 95% plus of the cast members do absolutely make the magic. There are very very few where
you're probably just catching them at bad times who maybe aren't doing the most magical job,
but, you know, like Adam said you roll the punches. There's some bumps along the way,
but overall we still had a really great time. And I am looking forward to hearing some of your
least magical moment. It's always fun to share stories. --Yeah, I would love to hear if you've
ever had a sink burp up dirt at a Disney Resort. --I still fundamentally don't understand what was
even happening with that… but... --It's not like we were on a low floor. --I know, but what... it
got taken care of eventually. --How did the dirt get up so many... it doesn't even matter… --What is with the dirt in the plumbing?
That's a great question. It's probably another guest's fault, honestly. Someone probably put dirt down their
sink and got burped up in ours. --Yeah. Maybe the person staying before, I don't know. --Maybe. --Yeah.
--Anyway, we hope you enjoyed this reflection. I hope it didn't come off too complain-y;
we're just being realistic about, you know, not--any trip is never going to be 100% perfect.
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We hope the rest of your day is magical, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD! –Bye!