V-Flyer

Time share:

One of the reasons we took our latest trip to Orlando was due to a timeshare promotion by Hilton. After booking a stay last year I was passed off to some timeshare sales person to listen to their offer, convinced I would hang up as soon as I bagged my points for listening. Surprisingly, mainly to myself, I actually liked the sound of the offer, in return to listening to a 2-hour timeshare pitch while away, they were offering us 6 nights in Parc Soleil in a penthouse studio with Disney firework views, 2 Universal/Islands of adventure 7 day theme park tickets and 15000 Hilton points for $700. Knowing I would have paid around $600 for a 2x 7 day Universal/IOA tickets, this deal worked well for me.

Parc Soleil was a nice Hotel; the staff were great but it was a little remote. The room was pretty good and the firework views were nice to watch. Sadly, studios don’t get a balcony but we got over that pretty quickly.

Now the dreaded bit, the timeshare presentation. I was really dreading it, hearing horror stories of people not being allowed to leave etc, although these weren’t stories about the Hilton one, I was still worried. The presentation was at 8am on the first morning, which was great as we were jetlagged and up early any way. We were greeted and offered coffees and Krispy Kremes and soon we were speaking to our sales person. She was nice enough but I felt a bit sorry for her as our tactic was to sit in more or less silence and not really give them much to go off. The more questions you ask the more they latch on. We also went to a group presentation which was fine but we knew we had zero interest. Once we delivered back to our sales person the ‘hard sell’ began but as we were almost silent she gave up pretty quickly. A second salesman joined our table and quickly told us he wasn’t going to try and sell to us as he could tell we had little interest. To get to leave we had to get our form signed by a manager who did a last ditched attempt to get us to look at some deal, by this point I was stood up with our form and just asked for a signature. We left spot on the 2-hour mark and were the first of our cohort to leave. We received our gifts on exit and I actually asked about the upgrade for Volcano bay access, which I had priced at $80 each for a day, they offered us tickets for $95 each which was 7 day access and also early park entry. We also got early park entry for universal and islands of adventure. This was a bargain so I was happily upsold.

I know this won’t be for everyone but for us that 2 hours was well worth the gifts we were offered. We went to Universal/IOA/Volcano bay almost every day and the early park access meant we never queued for the busier attractions (like the Hogwarts express and all of the big slides in Volcano bay). The sellers were never pushy and looking back we agreed it was easy enough to walk away.

Uber/Lyft:

One thing I asked on this forum before I went was using Uber/Lyft while over there. We had priced a car at £166 for the week but wanting to indulge in preflight champagne and on board G&Ts neither of us wanted to abstain in order to pick up a hire car. After a little research we decided to cancel the hire car and rely on Uber/Lyft for the week. It was the best decision we ever made. It gave us so much freedom around Orlando, we got them everywhere, even all the way into Orlando City one night for a trip to drag queen bingo, we decided we would just use it whenever and wherever we wanted not really considering the total cost until afterwards. The trips were cheap, $9 to Universal, $7 to international drive. This meant we could have a beer with dinner and not worry or have a cocktail after being in the parks all day. Most cars were pretty nice, we had the occasional; sketchy car but nothing to really worry us.

I know if you have children this might not work for you but for a couple it was great. In total we spent £185 on Lyft/Uber, if you fator in the hire car was supposed to be £166, plus petrol, plus parking in the parks ($22 a day is a rip off), we reckon we even saved money using Lyft/Uber.

Waldorf Astoria:

As our timeshare deal was only 6 nights we spent the last night in the Waldorf Astoria. We booked it using out Hilton credit card free stay voucher. This hotel is amazing, as Hilton Golds we were upgraded to a suite, given 4 complimentary drinks vouchers and free breakfast, they even removed the resort fee as it was a points booking. In the end I felt like they paid us to stay. It was such a nice stay; the pool service was amazing and sitting on the balcony in the evening watching the fireworks was pretty spectacular. I’d definitely consider staying there again if I somehow won the lottery.

Sorry it’s not flight or virgin related but thought some people would find it interesting.

Sounds like the sales pitch was worth the effort!

We actually did something similar 2 years ago, we were approached in the Superhero area of Islands of Adventure by a salesperson from Sheraton I think. They were quite open about it being a sales pitch in exchange for 90 mins of our morning one day.

In return we got a $150 pre paid card to spend in Universal ON THE SPOT and a voucher to get a photo album made up online and posted to us (this was the last leg of our honeymoon so ideal for us). The $150 mostly paid for our in park food and alcohol for 7 days so was great.

We then had to go to the sales pitch (if we didn't turn up they'd charge the $150 to our credit card). Similar to you we got some pastries and coffee and sat through a pitch and tour from a salesman. We were upfront that we wouldn't be buying but he tried his best before calling his manager for the last ditch effort who then signed our form.

The meeting was at 8am and right next to Sea World so we just booked it for the day we were going to Sea World and were out by 9.45 for the park opening. Definitely worth it if you don't mind saying no!