The Dark Side of Disney - Leonard Kinsey [12]
Just as I’m about to fucking karate chop George in the throat and steal his car, we actually do pull up to a “resort”. The first thing we see is this really nice St.Augustine sort of old-Spanish building with a bunch of balconies overlooking a big lake with a boat dock. It’s pretty impressive. Except then it becomes plainly obvious that there’s this one nice building in the center and then a bunch of dilapidated husks of identical buildings around the rest of the lake, all abandoned and overgrown and looking like they’re covered with mildew or something. It’s creepy.
George walks us into the main building and into a big conference room, where there are a few other couples who have obviously been here a while. He offers us some sodas and cookies, and tells us that now we’re going to “get down to business”. So he goes through this whole spiel that sounds like an awesome deal, and I’m almost convinced, but then I remember that a) we have no money, and b) this place is in the middle of nowhere and most of the buildings are in ruins, and there’s no fucking way I’d ever want to vacation here. Which I pretty much tell George, in so many words.
Well, he’s not fazed a bit. He cuts the price by 50% and starts going on about how we can trade into other resorts all around the world, blah blah blah. We hear a champagne cork pop a few tables over as a beaten-down couple celebrates their new major investment. George looks agitated, and it goes downhill from there. Long story short he keeps talking, I keep saying “no”, he drops the price like eight more times, I still say, “no”, and he gets increasingly angry and starts going on about how he has to feed his kids, and how I’m making them starve or some such nonsense.
That’s when I look at my watch and notice three hours have gone by since we left our resort. Now I’m pissed. I tell George flat out that we’re not buying a timeshare at this dump, and that if I wanted to buy a timeshare to begin with I’d do it on eBay where I can literally get it for a penny, and that we just want our Disney tickets and want to go back to our resort.
Now he’s really fuming but I can tell he doesn’t want to freak out in front of the other couples, so he says “Fine, come with me to get your tickets,” and brings us into a small office where another guy is sitting behind a desk.
This office looks like it’s from the 50s with dirty wood paneling and a rusted metal desk, and the guy behind the desk has a bad toupee that also looks like it’s from the 50s. My wife and I sit in equally rusty chairs as George looms behind us, arms crossed. So then toupee guy proceeds to basically yell at us for ten minutes about how we’re shitty people because we’ve wasted George’s time and now he might get fired and he’s yelling at me about how I’m a cheapskate, and it’s really pretty awful and my wife is crying but I don’t want to hit the guy because I want to get out of there with our Disney tickets and if I knock him out we probably won’t get them! So I just sit there and smile and finally he stops yelling and I calmly say, “I want my goddamned tickets, and I want to go back to our resort now or I’m calling the police and telling them you kidnapped us.”
Well, this shuts toupee guy up, and he slams down two vouchers (not even tickets) on the metal table and rust flies up everywhere. “Here’s your goddamned tickets you motherfuckers!” he’s yelling, beet red. “But we’re not driving you back! Read the contract, it says nothing about return transportation! Hahaha! Now get the hell out of my face!” he screams as his toupee flops around, and he points to a door.