Every time my wife and I come to Walt Disney World, we always say it will always be a few years before we go back; but all we have to do is watch our trip video, or watch the DIS Unplugged, and we have a trip booked for the following year. 2016 was no different.
I have worked in retail for most of my career, and as a benefit of my profession, I can travel to different states for conventions. Every February one of the distributors that I work very closely with has a trade show in the Orlando area. 2016, the convention was based at the Contemporary, and the company I worked for allowed me to attend the convention, and spend a few days in Disney with my wife. The blocks of rooms (at a discount rate, to be transparent), were at the Polynesian and the Contemporary. My wife and I have always wanted to stay at both, but knew that this may be a once-in-a-lifetime event. We chose to stay at the Contemporary because of the proximity to Magic Kingdom, and we love the overall theming of the resort.
When I booked the room, I had to go through the Group Booking line through Disney, and I will admit, they were very accommodating for our stay. For this particular convention, the maximum stay for guests (at the discounted rate) was 6 or 7 days, but my wife and I were interested in staying longer. The Group Booking line was very helpful, and they were able to get us the discounted rate for the extended stay. Included with the convention rate was a Garden Wing or Tower- Bay Lake View room. When I spoke with the booking agent, he mentioned that it wasn’t guaranteed what view we would get, but they would do their best to accommodate the reservation. I didn’t expect much to happen, considering we were going the same weekend as the Disney Princess Half Marathon, and we knew the resorts would be slammed full of people.
Fast Forward to the day before our arrival in central Florida….I check My Disney Experience to make sure everything was still good to go for our arrival, and saw our confirmed reservation for the next day.
Our normal first day tradition is when we get to our resort, we check in, unpack, then head over to Magic Kingdom. I always like to check the wait times, and see how busy the park is a few hours before we get there to see exactly what we are in for. I checked My Disney Experience when we were about two hours out (we drove), and noticed something different. When I saw our confirmed reservation, it said that we were booked in a Tower Room with a Magic Kingdom View! Both of us didn’t believe it, but when we got to the resort, we were told that Tinkerbell sprinkled a little Pixie Dust on their computer, and we had a special view for our stay! It was a dream come true. We have stayed at a number of resorts on WDW property, and being able to watch Wishes from our bed was beyond anything we both could comprehend. To this day, we still don’t know how or why we got the upgrade, but we are forever grateful to Disney for the magic they passed along to us.
We stayed on the ninth floor, and you can see a tour of the room here. No matter when we go, or for what reason, we give only top marks for the Disney Resorts and staff. There have been a few things that weren’t 100% right on our stay, and the staff at the resorts made sure they were corrected and we were taken care of. That is a level of service that we love; we don’t expect, but we do appreciate, the extra step that is taken. A Disney vacation is not a cheap vacation, and we believe it is worth every penny.
