Three Ladies at WDW-Day 6 Final Thoughts
Day 6: Check out Day :(
Well, we woke up this morning rather early so that we could pack up and get some breakfast before heading to the airport. We all had 1:20pm flights home and our DME pick up time was 10:35.
I was done packing first and decided to head down to Roaring Forks for a CS breakfast. According to our calculations, we had one CS credit left, since Andrea and Cynthia had used their remaining credits the night before in Mexico. I got my pancake platter and the receipt said we had 2 CS credits remaining. :confused: While I ate my food, I ran through our CS meals in my head and twice came up with the fact that we had used up all 15 of our CS credits and we should NOT have had 2 left. Somewhere along the way, we were not charged properly for 2 credits. But, I could not figure out how (or where) this happened, as I did not save the receipts. I have a feeling it went wrong at either Wolfgang Puck's Express or the Mexico pavilion, because prior to that, all the tallies were correct. I finished up and went back up to the room and informed the girls that we had 2 CS credits remaining and that they should go down and have some breakfast. They did and, sure enough, we still had two credits. I chalked it up to an error in the system somehow, but considered it to be a nice bonus. :thumbsup:
We left our room around 10:15 to do some very last minute shopping downstairs and to settle our room bill. We had not put a credit card on file so we knew we had to pay $9.95 for the time we connected to the internet for 24 hours. I went up to the desk and was told that we owed a total of $10...for valet parking. I told the CM that that was wrong...we did not have a car; we used DME to get here. I even showed her my DME voucher. She laughed and just shook her head, so I said "does that happen often?" and she said "yes...I always think it's funny." Well, to be quite honest, I did NOT think it was too funny. I wonder how many times they actually get away with that. Can you imagine, they stick a $10 charge on the room bill for "valet" and I bet half the time, people don't look at the bill carefully enough and end up paying it. This makes me mad, and it's NOT the first time this has happened to me at a Disney resort. :mad: I have NEVER had a car on property, but I have had this happen no less than 3 times in the past. She removed the charge and said "that's it, your account is cleared out." I told her, "well, we used the internet one day and I thought that was $10." She looked and said "I'm not seeing that charge to your room...don't worry about it." With that, she waved me off with a wink. I was a bit perplexed, but I didn't push it. When I told Cynthia and Andrea about it, they reminded me that we did not actually connect the right way...we had gotten an error message when we tried to do it the standard way (through the Disney web portal) so we had to call tech support and they had us enter some code to get in, so maybe we bypassed the system somehow. In any event, again, that was Disney's error, so I overlooked it.
We made our way out to the bus waiting area and sat, and sat, and sat. 10:40 came and went and still, we sat....and sat, and sat. The bus finally pulled up at 11:05! We made two more stops after that, at the Poly and GF. At the Poly, we had to load an electric scooter/wheelchair, which took a LONG time, then that also caused 3 rows of seats to be un-usable, which, it turns out, we needed for the guests we had to pick up at the GF. SO, we sat at the GF for about 10 minutes while the driver tried to figure out what to do. He loaded those guests bags before he realized there was nowhere for them to sit, and they were 2 families, both with VERY young infants, so standing was not an option. He radioed for another bus and we finally pulled out of the GF close to 11:45! I was getting a bit nervous at this point, as we had not done the flight check in at the hotel (I had wanted to, but Cynthia refused to do it, and we were on the same flight home, so I didn't make an issue of it...she has this thing about leaving her bags and just trusting that it will get to the airport, plus Andrea was on Southwest, so she could not check her bags anyway).
Well, we finally arrived at the airport and then had to wait FOREVER for the driver to unload the bags before we could get off. This part, I don't understand. Why should we have to wait on the bus rather than getting off and picking up our bags as they are removed from the bus??? It was just an unnecessarily LONG wait; close to 10 minutes. I felt like a prisoner at this point. Then, we had some trouble checking in (well, not us, but the family in front of us, who decided to pack a bag that weighed close to 150 pounds! Then, they did not speak English to understand that they would have to either pay extra or shift the bag contents around to make the bags weigh less).
So, needless to say, once we did finally check in, we went straight through security, onto the monorail, and arrived at the gate at 1:05pm...right as our flight was boarding. To say we just made it would be an understatement. I was a bit miffed at the DME process at this point, and to be honest, next time we go to WDW, I think we will spring for a towncar. You would think that the 3 hour pickup window would be enough time, but with the bus being late and then all the extra waits along the way, it was just barely enough time. I shudder to think what would have happened if the bus had been just 15 minutes more delayed.
Anyway, the flight home was long (5.5 hours, to be exact) and not that comfortable. I arrived home to my boys and DH, who were VERY happy to see me. :)
