Typhoon Lagoon wasn't really a tiring day, but nevertheless we decided that a day off was in order. We started by attending the owners breakfast at the main building on the resort. We'd be bribed into doing so when we checked in: we were promised a $75 Visa gift card if we spent just an hour at the breakfast speaking to one of their consultants about the planned upgrades to the resort.
Now, this isn't our first rodeo, and every other experience of these things has been terrible. The children remember them with horror too, as Gwen reminded me. They can go on for hours, and it's a pretty hard sell for more timeshare. But lured by the promise of $75 and free food, we decided to go for it.
It was actually not as bad as in the past. I think it helped that as Roderic and I were climbing the grand marble staircase with our VIP Owner Advisor, Johanna, she asked whether we had children. He replied, "We've left them back at the apartment because the little one isn't feeling too well so we really can only spare an hour." All true (Ceri had a bit of an upset stomach after our Typhoon Lagoon day - she's fully recovered now) but he didn't mention that the "little one" is 15 and the sister looking after her is almost 19.
The room where they do the breakfast/hard sell was also a lot quieter and emptier than I've seen it before, with maybe only a quarter of the tables filled with people being talked into timeshare. Johanna's English wasn't good and she struggled when she went off script. She asked if we had any questions, and I asked whether there were any plans to update or redecorate the apartments, since they were looking so outdated now, and she didn't understand my question and moved on to something back on her script instead.
We had the usual golf-buggy tour where she showed us where the new waterpark is being built (it'll be small but with two flumes and a lazy river) and the latest block of huge five-bedroom apartments, which is what she was trying to sell us. We said no, because we love our timeshare but we really don't need a bigger one, and that was that. One hour, and yes, we got our $75 Visa gift card.
I did learn, from the tour, that there are no plans to update the apartments because the newly built apartments are exactly the same. To my mind they look very outdated. The walls and ceilings are textured. The furniture is dark and heavy. The kitchen cupboards are brown wood. The overall look is from the late 1980s or early 1990s. As evidence I present the cutlery. Yes, it's a fish fork (who still has those?) in the Kings design which was very popular in 1988. I know this because in 1988 I was selling cutlery at Keddies in Southend.
We all discussed this, and wondered whether maybe American fashion in interior design is very different from UK fashion. Possibly because their homes are bigger they can get away with large and dark items of furniture, rather than the sleek, light, minimalist look preferred in the UK where houses tend to be necessarily small. (Having said that, I have just been looking up pictures of Westgate Lakes bedrooms rather than take a photo of our messy one and it looks as though some of them have already been updated with fresh white paint and new furniture.)
I've not really sold our timeshare very well I realise, but actually I do love it. It is big and spacious, well-designed, the beds are comfortable, and I have completely fallen in love with ceiling fans, balconies and open-plan layouts.
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| A bedroom like ours at Westgate Lakes. |
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| The floor plan of our apartment. A two-bedroom apartment, plus a studio lockoff. |
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