afterthought

If ya'all are wondering yes Disney really came through for me. I then regaled them with this following email

Dear Disney World,
Simply put,  I cant thank you enough.
The ease in which this was handled has really just put me over the moon. I have been extolling the praises of Disney World for many years.
We were the 12 years ago and ever since then I have always exclaimed how wonderful the whole Disney experience is. I have always said how awesome it is that you can go up to any cast member and ask them the most inane question and they will react as if you are the first person to talk to them that day.
Then, 12 years later, having this experience has got me sold.
Barbie was ever so friendly and then to get a call from the merchandising group to tell me they were processing the request was unexpected and it actually made my day.
I'm sorry I do not mean to gush all over your inbox here but I am truly a fan. As someone who has worked in customer service in one aspect or another I know how difficult a job it can be.
I spent 45 minutes last Friday in my bosses office describing to him my experiences with Disney and how we should be sending people to Disney world just to see how customer service is supposed to be done right. I love how Disney doesn't go above and beyond for a guest. What anyone else would consider as above and beyond Disney calls it "just another day"
Once again thank you.
I know it will be quite some time before I will be able to afford to come back but someday, God willing,  I surely will.

The turtles were shipped and arrived on Tuesday.

I brought the kids together and had then open the box.

“Yeah I knew. I read your text messages.” said GIRL

“Yeah. I read your email. You should close your email folder.” said BOY

well that went over like gangbusters.

Not quite the shiny hero moment I was hoping for but ah well.

I tried.

Why I drink the Disney Kool-Aid.

As you may remember the whole Zombee clan went to the big WDW for a week.

One of the reasons I like Disney is each employee is there to make your experience the best it can be and boy when they get it right it is awesome.

For instance: Hotel Arcade: my niece lost her card to play the games and it had over 2000 points on it. She told the people that work there and boom an hour later they had located it and gotten it back to her.

That’s nothing.

We were at Epcot on Tuesday and we watched this neat lil show where Crush (the turtle from Finding Nemo) interacts and talks to the kids and teaches them a bit.

Cool tech and cool interaction.

Afterwards my kids decided they needed stuffed critters of Crush and his kid Squirt.

They were purchased, bagged and set in my mother’s lil cart for transport around the various countries in Epcot.

We made it through and as we were on the bus heading to the room it was discovered that that bag was missing.

Just plain gone.

This caused emotional distress to my Girl, who really wanted a memento of each experience and in a cascade effect, emotional distress to me as well.

My Boy was saddened but not as much. It’s a guy thing, I guess.

Anyway,

We left back for home on Friday I left a note and a tip in our room asking for help but nothing happened from that. Really didn’t expect it to but I had to try something.

I contacted Lost and Found a couple days later and struck out there as well.

Finally I contacted Disneyworld and explained the situation to them.

I Told them “hey we were just there and we dropped some serious coin. I explained that I understood they had no obligation at all to do anything but if they could just send me a couple of replacements that would be really nice.”

They called last night.

Talked to one of their reps there Barbara, she was ever so nice.

She just needed the SKU numbers so they knew exactly which ones to send.

No Muss.

No Fuss.

    Nothing more needed from me.

Just taking care of the customer even after the fact.

Now, everything cant be pancakes and peanut butter all the time but what we would consider as “the extra mile” or “added effort” Disney has already added that into their everyday functions.

And that is why I continue to drink the Disney Kool-Aid.

 

Overthinking the thinking

You know, it is really quite amazing with how much "WE" know how much we really dont.
First you have all the odd out there stuff UFOs, Big Foot, Atlantis.
Some are hoaxes some are..something else but no one really knows.
No matter what we do though we will always be in battle with our brain over what is real and what is imagined.
For instance:
I know how this little bit of movie magic is done and you can see it right there which part is a live person and which of it is a prop.

But no matter how many times I look at it and try to force my perspective I still just cant fully wrap my brain around the illusion.
My brain says "Yes I see that and there is the actress foot. Furthermore, its movie magic and therefore not real but nope I'm not buying it, the neck goes right to the head so it must be real."

Stupid brain

Thats just funny

Disney

Ah 7 days of drinking the Disney koolaid.

It just didn’t last long enough but, alas, all good things must come to an end.

I think that is a major flaw in the really real world.

Anyway here are some tips I picked up along the way.

1. Do not try to vacation with any group over 4 people, 5 tops. There were 12 of us and it was just too much stress trying to get and keep everyone in one pile. Like raking leaves in a tornado.
2. No matter how you plan or what you purchase your feet are going to hurt and hurt a lot. I don’t care if you have purchased shows made from the wings of angels with the soles made of pure full blood demon hide. The average person hikes 9 miles a day at Mousekowitz and that wears on you pretty quick. By day 3 I had to rely on my cane and I NEVER rely on my cane.
3. The benefit of staying on Disney property is you can escape back to your room and then come back later after a swim or a nap. Yeah, that’s a pile of goofy-dung there. Yes, it is feasible that this will happen and we did manage to pull it off once. The truth is that when you get back to the room you don’t wanna go back into the crowds and the heat and the walking.
4. Speaking of Mouse property, the average 4 person meal cost is roughly 50 bucks. That comes out to be a bare minimum of $150 bucks a day (see how I mathed right there?!) Plan accordingly. If you are staying 5 days or more their dining plan might be a good option to use.
5. You are on vacation and have a set amount of time to invest into this place so unless you plan on moving next door to the magic kingdom and hitting it every weekend you are not going to see it all. Pick out some favorites and make sure you hit those.
6. STOP! Take a breath. Sit down and appreciate where you are and what you see. Enjoy the details. I noticed that before I went when I would mention where I was going even perfect strangers would get this glazed look and huge smile. This is the Mecca of vacation spots! People from around the world and I mean literally AROUND the WORLD, travel to this Magic Kingdom. I was surprised to hear British accents and Australian accents and someone over here speaking Italian and someone over there with a New York accent.

So stop.

Take a breath.

Look around.

7. If you are planning on going to Universal Studios too on your trip then just go ahead and move to a hotel nearby the park for that. It is expensive to shuttle back and forth and really eats your time up too.

Now get out of the way

the line for Splash mountain is only 60 minutes long and I gotta get my brer rabbit on.

 

down the rabbit hole

I don’t envy others too much.

I believe you have what you have and you got what you got. Pretty simple.

I do however envy those rose colored glasses folk.

Those people who have convinced themselves that the glass is indeed half-full and that the sun truly will come out tomorrow.

Lucky bastards.

Lucky bubbly, happy, deluded bastards.

I was thinking the other day as to where this sudden huge outbreak of depression across the world really came from. Doesn’t it seem to you that everywhere you turn nowadays someone is being beat over the head with depression.

Plus depression is a emotional herpes, it never truly just goes away but keeps resurfacing over and over again always lurking in the background.

One theory I readily suspect is it is partially because of technology or more to the point the shrinking of the known world. Now that everyone and everything is fully connected we can more fully see the blandness of the world around us. This is basically causing what is called Depressive Realism. I’m not going to bore you with studies and facts and stuff. What this means is a condition where a person has a more accurate perception of reality and sees it for the dull battleship grey it is. It is the middle ground between the horribly depressed and the manically deluded.

Basically we are the dumbasses who swallowed the red pill and followed Morpheus down the rabbit hole only to wake up naked and scared, swimming in our own crap soup.

Why oh Why didn’t I swallow the blue pill.

Put me back in Agent Smith, I wanna go home.

Help me help you.

When you are having an issue, any issue really where you need to call a helpdesk there are some things you need to know.

1. Don’t eat while on the phone. The sounds is magnified by the phone and it is really rather rude. Also, unless you are trapped under a burning ceiling rafter don’t use the speaker phone and even then think twice.
2. A conversation works like this; you speak, then I speak, then you speak, then I speak. Speaking at the same time I am will cause you to miss vital information and really piss me off. If there is a pause don’t feel the need to interject with a “hello” or “are you there?” I am on a land line so if you are on a land line too then the connection can be relied upon to stay connected. I am more than likely thinking of the best fix for you and can’t be constantly making noise to mollify your fears of a dropped call.
3. Try to help yourself before calling. It can really save a lot of time if you discover your computer is not plugged in before calling me.
4. Remember that I am not in the same room as you so you have to be my senses. If you can’t be bothered to see where a cable goes then we are done because I can’t see where it goes either.
5. When you call about a specific object please have that item in front of you. More than likely I am actually going to have you interact with the item in question and having it across the room does neither of us any good.
6. Technology is neat but it is not magic. If it seems like magic to you please stop using it.
7. You would not call a garage mechanic for instructions on how to do a U-turn so do not call me to ask me how to do your job. It is not my fault you are not trained. If it’s broke I can fix it the rest is up to you.
8. If you are not going to listen and do what I say to try and resolve the issue then why did you call? Listen to me. If I say “unplug the power cable” that doesn’t mean start yanking cables at random. If I say “start yanking cables at random” don’t just pull the power cable.
9. I only know what you tell me so starting with a brief statement of “It don’t work.” is not going to get us very far. Also “It said something about something” is equally just as worthless.
10. Do not call the help desk to have us teach you how to use Windows, Excel, Word, navigate a website, operate a browser or code in HTML. If you are using a computer you should already know this. If you don’t know how to do something involved with an application, just do what I do. GOOGLE IT!
11. Your station in life means more to you then it does me. Telling me how important you are is as pointless as me telling you what I had for lunch. You are a voice on the phone to me and even if you dropped dead in mid sentence it wouldn’t even be a blip in my day. Therefore getting snarky at me for something I have no control over is just gonna piss me off and you will be moved to the back of every line I can find. I understand you are frustrated and exasperated I am too.
12. I am not expecting you to be a technical dictionary but when you call saying your modem isn’t working when you mean your computer monitor is off is going to send us in a whole different direction and waste valuable time.

These might read as petty little inconveniences but when you have to deal with these on a daily, hourly basis it gets old quick. Remember that common courtesy goes a long way and we have already made a decision and judgment on what kind of caller you are within the first 20 seconds.

At the most, these tips will help the person who is trying to help you and at the very least, they will keep them from crawling through the phone line and strangling you.

*sigh* if only…..