5 Star review my foot . . .
I love my husband. My
husband loves promotions. I do not, but
we’ve come to an agreement over the years – I’ll go along with him once every 5
years or so to one of those hard-sell timeshare presentations. So, he gets a call a couple of months ago from Consolidated Resorts,
Inc. inviting us to spend 4 days in Orlando.
Since we live 2 hours from Orlando and since my brother-in-law works for
Disney so we get into the parks for free, I agreed. Consolidated claimed they’d be putting us up
in a 5 star resort/spa. It was going to cost
me 2 hours of my life on a promotional tour, so, okay.
So, we arrive at The Regal Palms and are assigned our
‘luxury townhome.’ You get what you pay
for. The place was filthy. I could overlook the hideous décor (I don’t
think there was a stick of real wood in the place – a tribute to veneer and
laminates). I could overlook the balcony
and patio that didn’t have any furniture so the best you could do was stand
outside. I could overlook the 4
towels. But I’d paid a cleaning fee of
$54.00. I can only assume that the
person who stayed before me failed to pay the fee because the pots and pans
were crusted with food and there was dried, caked food in the carpet. The carpet that was once beige but is now so
stained it isn’t really any color known in nature. The same carpet that was installed improperly
because the carpet tacks shredded your feet at the entrances to all the
bathrooms.
But hey, it’s Disney, so we weren’t going to be in the room
for long. On the next to last day we had
to attend the sales pitch. We were
greeted by a person and then sent in a room for coffee and doughnuts. Only problem?
No chairs – obviously a theme with this place. Then we were called into a room with tables
and chairs and a big Las Vegas styled wheel in the front. The salesman seated us and then told us all
about his family, his past, his record promotion business, his MBA dreams and
his extended family back in Ethiopia.
The guest speaker circulated – shaking hands and pretending
sincerity. He repeated everyone’s name 3
times during conversations – a trick right out of the Rotarian handbook. Almost all his jokes were old and referenced
how men are whipped by marriage – you know – “I lost 125 pounds last year . . .
I got a divorce.”
We told the sales guy that we weren’t the least bit
interested and that even if we had been interested, seeing the dirty room and
the unkempt property would have turned us off from the get go. He didn’t listen and just pressed on with his
prepared speech. We explained our
vacation habits and again he didn’t listen – asking us inane things like
“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have more than 2 weeks of vacation a year?” – This was asked after we’d told him we
average 5 weeks a year and that my husband is retired and I’m a writer so we
have all the flexibility in the world.
He blamed the poor state of the property on the fact that it had been
built by an English company and Brits didn’t know how to maintain a property. Bad idea – my father was from Bermuda. But his crowning insult came when my husband
ventured a guess about the prices they were charging. My husband’s guess was 10K to low and when my
husband said he thought that was an inflated price the guy said, “Well, you
probably can’t afford it anyway.”
Hummmmmmmmm, never a good idea to see how many times you can insult a
person when you’re trying to sell them a 39K condo share with an almost $700.00
annual maintenance fee.
We said no thanks but hard sell being hard sell, over comes
his ‘manager’. She actually said, ‘If
you aren’t interested, why are you here?”
Um, because it was required? But
that wasn’t the funny part for me – I was highly amused by her British accent –
I guess she’s the one who made sure the grass was brown and covered with fire
ant hills.
So, if you’re ever invited to visit a property managed by
Consolidated Resorts, Inc. don’t believe
Alan Thicke (He’s their headliner celebrity endorsement). Or Tanya Roberts. Or David Faustino. Or George Wallace. Or whoever those other D-list celebrities
were posted up on their walls. Unless,
of course, you want to stay in a dirty resort, poorly appointed resort to be
harassed by rude, aggressive sales people who have the listening skills of a
toddler.
We just got another invitation from them in the mail. Seriously? I'd rather remove my own spleen with a fork than revisit that horrid resort hell.
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