Disney -- Your Safety is Not Our Concern

When you're worried about the safety of a loved one who is staying at a hotel, you better hope they aren't staying at The Dolphin in Orlando.

During a recent stay at The Dolphin, Smails' wife went MIA. Typically she would call first thing in the morning or on her way to her morning meetings, if for nothing else, to check in on her child. When that call did not come through and calls to her cell phone and hotel room were not answered, I became worried.

So, what did I do? I called hotel security at The Dolphin and told them the situation. All I wanted them to do was to check her room door records to see if she had left the room that morning. They told me they couldn't give that information—duh—and I told them I didn't want it, but I just wanted them to check. They said they would call the room and would call me back.

I waited 30 minutes... Nothing. So I called the Dolphin Keystone Cops again and got the same runaround. "We called her room, but there was no answer," officer Doofus said. I told him I know that, and that was the reason I called them. I had requested on my first call for someone to just go to her room, knock on her door, see if she is there. The response? "I have to wait for someone else to come to check the room."

This charade went on for more than two hours! In that time span, the crack security team at The Dolphin never called me back, acted completely nonchalant about the entire thing and, in my summation, proved that guest security is not a high priority.

On my final call, which was more than two hours since the first call, the guy told me, "Oh, I forgot to call you. We checked her room and there was no one there."

That took two hours? What if she had fallen in the shower and was in need of help? What if she was injured and couldn't get to the phone? What if she was a diabetic and had gone into a coma?

The Dolphin, you have failed. I understand there are privacy issues with giving out room information. I wasn't looking for that. All I wanted was for someone to check her room to see if she was OK—a process which should have taken 10 to 20 minutes tops. But it took you two hours. I hope plenty of people get the word about this and choose to not stay at your property on their Disney vacation.

The Dolphin—Not Jumping Through Hoops for Guests Since 2008

Judge Elihu Smails