TRAV - A smart trip to Disney World

On Sunday, I got back from the Mensa World Gathering. From what I've heard, this is the first time the World Gathering was held someplace other than London--in this case, at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. As an event, there were plenty fun and interesting events. (There was press covereage of the event, and I intend to write in the coming days about at least one part of one of the discussions.)

However, I did want to share some thoughts about the resort.

First, the service was a mixed bag. Some people, like the check-in clerk, were very polite and helpful. There were many other employees, though, who just didn't seem to care: when I told one housekeeper out of the room in a few minutes, she responded that she was leaving at three--with a definite implication that I wasn't going to get the bed made if I didn't clear out before then; one server in the Pepper Market told me it would they were out of chicken for the pasta primavera and it would take 10 minutes to cook some more--even though I asked her to start a batch and told her I'd return, I had a 10+ minute wait when I returned because she didn't bother to actually start cooking it; two of the glasses in my room were dirty when I arrived, and the ones I used were not replaced with clean glasses. The service problems were all little things like that--but at the rate of $120 a night, that level of service is, in my book, totally inadequate.

I mentioned the Pepper Market above--that was one of the two food options. The other was the Maya Grill--a sit down restaurant that priced itself out of my budget. The Pepper Market was a food court--offering several types of cuisine. However, even with the food court, the choices felt very limited because each station at the food court had only three or four choices. The prices were high--charging sit-down prices for fast-food service. The limited in-hotel food options were particularly annoying since the WG's food service was considerably less than was offered in New Orleans last year. (The story was that Disney insisted that Mensa not provide its own free food so as not to compete with their food offerings; I haven't confirmed this story.)

Another issue was the size of the property. It took 15 minutes to walk from my room to the convention center; to be fair, we're talking about locations on the opposite side of the property--but it somewhat irked me, despite having booked at the event hotel this year instead of--as I did last year--the overflow hotel, I was staying further from the Mensa activities than I was last year. (To give you a good idea of the size of the property, I saw five meteors on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It may have been the right time for the Persieds, but if you can see five over the course of three nights on a well lit property without making a special effort, then you know you've been out walking a lot.)

I don't mean to imply that the resort was all bad. The main pool was very pleasant. The grounds were very well landscaped, featuring an unusually large number of rabbits (I don't think I ever had a walk to or from my room where I didn't see one--and sometimes I saw several).

Still, the resort did not impress me--unless an event of comparable importance to me is hosted on another Disney property, I don't think I'll ever stay in a Disney Resort on my dime again--not unless they cut their prices dramatically.


(Editor's note: I'd originally titled this blog entry "TRAV - A smart trip to Dizzy World." On reflection, while I tend to think "Dizzy World" is a good label for Disney, I'm not sure it was the best choice for the title of this piece.)