Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 11 years and 3 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Yesterday evening, before leaving for LEGOLAND Florida, we  made “hotel” reservations at Holiday Villas in Kissimmee, a place we’ve stayed at before when travelling with a large group to the Orlando area. We got a 4-bedroom/3-bathroom villa for the 8 of us for a very good price. We got a confirmation e-mail and our credit card was charged accordingly for the reservation. Can you guess where this is going?

The plan was to do LEGOLAND today, and then spend the next two days at Disney World, driving back to Tampa on New Year’s Day. With everything packed and settled, this morning we got up early, took the dogs to the kennel for the long weekend, and left for Orlando.

Mid-afternoon, while at the theme park, my wife happened to check her e-mail and found this message:

Folks,

We just noticed that somehow you were able to make a reservation for today. However, we have been sold out for some time. We do have a room available for tomorrow if that helps.

We will refund you immediately with apologies for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
<name removed>
Vacation Planner
www.HolidayVillas.com
www.LucayaVillageResort.com
800 344 3959
407 217 2978

Needless to say, we were surprised and angry. Granted we were only 90 minutes away from home and could have gone back to Tampa for the night, driven back to Orlando on Sunday morning and checked into the villa for the rest of our trip, but the message wasn’t clear on if they had availability all the way until Tuesday or just “tomorrow night.” On principle, we weren’t going to stay there at all now.

Disney to the rescue: after a quick phone call, we managed to get two rooms at the All-Star Music resort on-property (even the phone rep was surprised she was able to get us in). It was more expensive, but in the long run it worked out for the better.

So somehow the online reservation system for Holiday Villas confirmed our stay, gave us a confirmation number, and charged our credit card for a room that didn’t exist and hadn’t existed “for some time.” And instead of a phone call, we get an e-mail addressed to “Folks” letting us know we don’t have a place to stay and apologies for the “inconvenience”? To be fair we did get a full refund on the amount charged to our credit card,but I don’t see us using Holiday Villas again based on this experience (compared to Disney).