So we arrived 3 days ago at Newport. We have the room from H*LL, between 2 villas with 4 kids each that run between their rooms from one side of us to the other, screaming and yelling all day long, where they keep the door safety lever enabled so it never locks, and the running just continues, nonstop, in and out of the rooms for hours it goes on. There's an entire lawn area on one side of the building, and a play area below, but it's our hallway that they seem to love. I'm really not one to complain, but it is so loud and distracting. Not sure where the parents are.
On the plus side, we've been here 3 days, and I've seen only 1 dog. That's a huge improvement from several months ago, when on the first day I stopped counting at 7 dogs. The parking situation is horrific, you get 1 blue parking card, good for the lot adjacent to your building, and a yellow parking card for any subsequent vehicles, valid only for street parking. At least half the time, we come into the parking lot by our villa, there are zero empty spaces, but plenty of yellow cards, and tickets. Security supposedly will do something after 24 hours, but then it all starts over again the next day.
And finally, the sales presentation. I have no idea why we keep subjecting ourselves to this, but we agreed to sit through another one. It was the usual, pay $67K for 4,000 points so that you can enroll your 2 post-2010 weeks. It is supposedly a "COVID special" that expires today, same as they always do, and of course the great deal will never be offered again, and then the price per point will go up, so we need to act right now. We got a $200 VISA gift card for our 90 minutes and an offer to buy a 4-night Encore return for $995, or $1,295 if you want Hawaii. They took our time but not our money.
What was interesting during the presentation is the salesperson brought out an Interval book that was maybe 1/4" think, much smaller than the one we've been receiving. She says that as a result of the Interval merger, most of the popular Marriott destinations have been removed from the standard Interval pool and moved into the exclusive Marriott points owner pool, which will going forward only be available to book with points. I've never seen that book before. Is anyone familiar with this change? I've always expected II trading to get tougher with more limited inventory. Wondering if they are finally putting that in place.
