Saturday, December 8, 2012

Bluegreen Getaways - The Initial Contact

We actually had a really nice encounter with time share people.  I know, I know...  It sounds too good to be true.*  We were shopping at the Tanger Outlets and got pulled in by a very nice gentleman.  Usually, we're very good about just saying no and walking on.  For whatever reason, we were feeling nice and didn't want to just be rude.  We talked to the Bluegreen Getaways people, and they actually had some good stuff to say!

Let me explain their hook to you.  On this particular night, they were giving out scratch off cards.  If you got a certain symbol or what-not, you won something.  No strings attached.  In our case, we won two free string backpack things.**  Of course, they just do that to try and get you to talk to them.  It worked...

As with so many conversations down here, they opened by asking us if we were from around Myrtle Beach. We told them that we live here now, so their time-shares offered nothing of interest to us.  At that point, they decided to dangle a Charleston trip in front of us.  He compared it to Savannah, at which point I told him I hated.

Maybe I wanted to throw him a bone or maybe I was genuinely curious, but I pointed out that their kiosk had an ad for Orlando.  His eyes literally lit up.  He passed us over to a woman who had stayed at the Fountains, their time-share in Orlando.  She proceeded to tell us all about the hotel and the really neat swimming pool.***

Now that she had out interest, she asked us what we would pay for two nights there.  After telling her we didn't know, she told us we could stay for only $99.  What's more, she told us she could make it 100 times better.  I told her it sounded too good to be true, but she assured me it was true.****  She told us that if we signed up on the spot, in exchange for our $99, we would get two nights at the Fountains, a $25 Visa gift card before we even walked away, and another $75 in Visa gift cards upon check-in at the hotel.  She told us that we had up to a year to visit, with no black out dates.  If we booked our trip within 30 days, we would get another $25 Visa gift card.  On top of that, if we actually traveled before the end of February, they would gift us an additional $50 in Visa gift cards.

Amazing.

So, we did it.  They were all very nice and a lot of fun.  They gave us a great offer, and since we have annual passes to Disney right now, it was like buying an unplanned weekend trip.  Heck, they were essentially going to pay us to go.  The only catch was that we would have to listen to a two hour pitch.  No biggie.  In addition, if we wanted to stay for four nights instead of just two, we would only pay an additional $100.  That's a pretty sweet deal.

Now, I'm a hardcore Disney property person.  I don't like staying at any hotel in the Orlando area that doesn't belong to Disney.  I have an addiction; I know that.  I just couldn't pass up such a good deal.  We'll see how it goes....

*We'll get to that in another review.

**I'm sure they have a special name, but I'm too lazy to beg google for the answer.

***You can swim from inside to outside.  Having not seen it or been there, I don't know if it is as cool as she made it sound.

****This will come into play in a future review.  Stay tuned!

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