Has anyone had a bad experience with being put in a room that didn't satisfy them, or wasn't what they had requested?
Our bad experience last year happened at POR-R. Since we're traveling from a small town on the west coast, it literally takes ALL day to arrive. Also factoring in a loss of 3 hours. We arrived on Magical Express after 11pm. I had checked us in via the Internet much earlier in the day. We had reserved a "water view" room. According to the Internet, this is a room with a river or pool view.
I had originally not booked any type of preferred room, because through my research, I knew the "view" was from a walkway outside the room. I had also booked the room with a food plan before I knew anything about free dining. I'm basically saying this, because, at no point was I ever trying to get an upgrade or not pay for something. We extended our trip by one night, and a water view room was the only one available for the entire time of our stay, now 6 nights. Since I had been waffling about a water view earlier, and since by then I had discovered free dining, I was ok with the price of the upgrade. I also requested queen beds, since I knew the resort rooms were being remodeled, and the remodeled rooms contained queen beds.
When we arrived, there was no bellhop at the entrance. My SO took off in search of one, or a luggage cart. After about 10 minutes, a bell hop (apologetic, solicitous, and surprised to see us) showed up and took our bags, and I booked into the lobby with my son. There stood my completely befuddled SO, saying "honey, are we at the right resort, they say they don't have our reservation; didn't you even check in already?". We were the only guests in the lobby, there were 2 CM's. After much confusion on the part of the CM, necessitating a conference with the other CM, they did find our reservation with no explanation why they weren't "expecting" us. The online check-in didn't take or something, I even had the confirmation. They yanked papers out of an arrival folder and stuffed our papers into it.
We wandered around the resort in a drizzle, looking for our room. The search took longer since I was under the impression we were facing the river. Our bell hop finally found us and helped us to our room. It was now around midnight. Well, when I saw where our room was, I was NOT happy. But, I had to pee in the worst way by that time, and while I was in the bathroom, my SO had sent the bell hop on his way. The water view room was, in fact facing a green construction fence surrounding a pool and also the huge metal pipe/pump system for the pool. The room was incredibly worn. Stained and threadbare carpet around the door, faded bed coverings, scratched bathtub finish, and really banged up and scratched furniture. The worst part, it was dirty. There was boy pee spray on the back of the toilet seat and gross mosquito blood squishy yuck on the walls in more than a couple spots. Fresh, it was not.
I called and got a general Disney operator, then had to wait for the front desk to call. My first instinct was to complain about the location of the room, and ended up with the CM arguing with me, that water view is a pool view, not a river view. First of all, is it really necessary for a CM to argue with a pretty nice guest at midnight? I pointed out that I didn't in fact have a pool view, I had a fence view and a dirty room. She said she would "upgrade" me, like it was a big favor, but the room would be in the same area 10 rooms down. Fine, whatever, I just wanted to get into bed, but not the dirty room.
It took the bell hop at least 40 minutes to get back to move us. (in all of this, he was the sweetheart). Our next room was infinitesimally better in location. (at least not in front of the pool pump). Still in view of the construction fence, with a peek at the river if you stepped ouside the door. The room was still just as worn, but the bathroom was clean. I was done fighting this battle for the evening. The room didn't feel like an upgrade, which wasn't what I wanted anyway.
The more I looked around the room, the more ticked off I got. I really could not believe how worn the furniture was. The fridge cabinet looked like it had been kicking around a fraternity for the past 10 years. Yucky spatter marks on wall near headboard (shudder), same worn carpet and coverings. At 5am, I was annoyed and frustrated with trying to get a good nights sleep in a full size bed. I wondered if I should suck it up and ignore the room and enjoy our vacation, or spend time trying to fix this....I couldn't ignore it, (really, the room was laughably, appallingly bad) so I trekked to the lobby at 6am, in person to request a nicer room.
I ultimately got what I was looking for. A clean room with queen beds that didn't look like a shabby interstate motel room. As an added bonus, it did have a very nice view and was newly remodeled. Not once did a CM apologize, or seem to show any interest in the problems with our first 2 rooms. When I tried my in-person approach the CM originally told me they didn't have a room for me to move to at that time, and I had to tell her that's ok, we will be at AK all day, and you can store our luggage for the day. I got the impression we were "problem" guests, from the demeanor of the lobby CM. She also told me they would text me our new room number when the room was available (she gave me new room keys, but for security reasons couldn't give me the room number). I never got a text and had to stand in line that evening to find out what our room number was.
This whole fiasco still annoys me to this day. I can't believe Disney allowed those rooms to get so run down before remodeling. I can't believe no one ever apologized. I also felt very taken advantage of by our late arrival. I don't know how they assign rooms to guests, but I really did get the impression that the CM who assigned that first room to us thought we wouldn't complain since we arrived so late. I also can't believe it is such a surprise/inconvenience when a guest requests a new/nicer/clean room in a resort of that size.
That's my bad experience.
I'm not familiar with Disney policy and what not but maybe in the future ask for a manager. Most managers want to accommodate you and make your stay as magical as possible so I'm so sorry for the inconvenience 
hopefully next time will be better!
