My wife and I recently went on the trip (3 nights in Orlando, Bahama mini-cruise, 3 nights in Ft. Lauderdale) and had a ball. While on the mini-cruise, we heard horror story after horror story, so I feel that we were very lucky.
Our vacation started in Orlando on a Sunday, and on Monday we had our timeshare sales pitch. Started out okay with a trip to Celebration for breakfast with our salesperson talking family stuff. He told us it would all be low pressure as the resorts sell themselves. It also would take a maximum of two hours.
They drove us around to different sites and concluded with, after 2 1/2 hours, I very loudly said "You bastards could give me that property and I wouldn't take it because I don't trust you." They kept passing us off to different people, each as obnoxious as the other. Finally we got up and walked out, only to realize that we had no idea where we were. We had to call a cab to take us back to our car.
We drove to Ft. Lauderdale and went on the cruise. I had never been on a cruise before, so I had nothing to compare it to. I thought it was great (although my wife was seasick the whole time). When we pulled int Nassau, we parked next to a ship that was easily 5 times bigger than ours.
Unknown to me, we had to go to the Florida Welcome Center to receive our voucher to stay in Ft. LAuderdale. I am normally a calm and rather quiet person, but decided to be a bigger asshole than the assholes I was dealing with. It worked as they couldn't get me out of there and into a different hotel fast enough.
Our biggest complaint was at Alamo where the company that arranged everything, take me on vacation, had failed to arrange for our "free" rental car. Alamo wanted us to do it in our name and run down take me on vacation to get reimbursed, but no way. This whole thing took at least two hours.
If my long message sounds pretty positive, it is because it wasn't bad. After all of the horror stories we heard, though, I would never take the risk of trying one of these deals again.
Interestingly, I continue to get emails at home and work from companies offering this identical trip, each time with a different company name.
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