Multiple WDW Resort - Bad Reviews

It's just that it's impossible to know which reviews to belive. They have shown some on there are not true reviews. That reviews are plants both by the properties to help ratings and by competitors to hurt ratings. So yeah, some reviews are real but how do you know which ones? Since you can't is ruined the credibility of the site in my eyes. Heck, disgruntled employees have trashed businesses to hurt ratings.

It's not so much that I worry the reviews aren't genuine, it's just the stupidity of some of them. The people who deduct point because "Animal Kingdom Lodge isn't near Magic kingdom", or the 3000 room family orientated value resort they stayed in is "too busy and noisy", or my "my room at Wilderness Lodge was too rustic looking". I once saw somebody deduct points because the "mini bar" wasn't stocked... it's a damn fridge!
 
It's not so much that I worry the reviews aren't genuine, it's just the stupidity of some of them. The people who deduct point because "Animal Kingdom Lodge isn't near Magic kingdom", or the 3000 room family orientated value resort they stayed in is "too busy and noisy", or my "my room at Wilderness Lodge was too rustic looking". I once somebody deduct points because the "mini bar" wasn't stocked... it's a damn fridge!
That's exactly why I go to the bad reviews first of just about everything (restaurant, hotel, place of interest, product). You can really get an idea if this is a defect (for a product for example), user error, personal preference, etc.

If someone deducts a point for AKL because it isn't near MK well I know they probably didn't care to look up where their resort was in relation to where they really wanted to be. I don't even have to know anything about WDW to understand that if you have a specific park you really want to be close to you do have the choice to choose a resort close to said park.

If someone deducts a point for a Value resort being too noisy well that's probably good information to give. Even if one might expect the decor of the Values (especially the All-Stars) to probably be more kid-oriented and thus a good guess would be more families with children are more apt to stay there and thus one might be able to think it is reasonable for it to have more noise than other resorts it isn't a given.

But in all fairness that's how reviews work though. It's a subjective thing. You as the consumer can decide by actually reading the person's review (assuming they left one versus a rating only) if you agree with their rating/rationale for rating. The only that that would remove the rating issue is to completely remove that part and not have things like "recommends or wouldn't recommends" and just have people leave their written review only.
 
Trip Advisor is part of the start of my search for a new experience but not the be all, end all. I also use Yelp, Zagat's, various travel magazines and newspapers. Friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and business clients round out my other sources of info.

With sites like yelp and TA (anddd Amazon), I put to the side posters w/ few reviews and fewer friends as well as those w/ obvious axes to grind. Excessive hyperbole, whether in praise or not, makes me leery especially if it's not borne out by anyone's experience in the same time frame. Conversely, I ignore reviews that don't give much information that answers the 5 questions we were advised to include in elementary school essays.
Might not be a foolproof filtering system but it's the best I've come up with so far.

I knew when I stayed at the Poly it was not my definition of a deluxe hotel (more like a Marriott or perhaps a convention stay @ an Inter Continental) but that of a Disney marketing team's. I accepted my stay with eyes wide open and plunked the bucks down.
 
Couldn't that honestly be said of just about any review site out there? Word of mouth isn't much better. Neighbors went to WDW 1 1/2 years ago. We were talking about their trip and they def. misspoke about stuff. Person a few months ago on our neighborhood social networking site mentioned they were a travel agent and someone piped in with a question then another person (not the travel agent) gave incorrect information about discounts available for Disney resorts,

FWIW, whether you believe TripAdvisor adheres to its own rules, here is what they say about reviews:
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I actually don't read many review sites for just that reason. I don't trust many of them. However, I don't agree that word of mouth is not a good way to get reviews. I think it's the only way if you are talking about someone's opinion of their experiences at a hotel or restaurant. Especially if it's someone you know and can determine that you have similar tastes in other things.

I think Trip Advisor published all those rules when they got busted all those years ago for knowingly allowing fake reviews. It's been quite some time but I have vague recollection of the story. And I'm sure they do try hard to control their reviews. I just am not sure it works
 


I actually don't read many review sites for just that reason. I don't trust many of them. However, I don't agree that word of mouth is not a good way to get reviews. I think it's the only way if you are talking about someone's opinion of their experiences at a hotel or restaurant. Especially if it's someone you know and can determine that you have similar tastes in other things.

I think Trip Advisor published all those rules when they got busted all those years ago for knowingly allowing fake reviews. It's been quite some time but I have vague recollection of the story. And I'm sure they do try hard to control their reviews. I just am not sure it works
It's not that word of mouth is not a good place to get reviews. That's not what I was going for. I was saying it can be the same as review sites in false information or whatnot and can also act like the telephone game at times.

A disgruntled employee can just as easily spread the word through their friends "hey don't go to this place it has x,y,z" or they can put that up on social media. I've seen plenty of "sittin' in my car wanna hear my story" videos on FB. Pretty sure some of those are made up, contain at least some false information, etc.

It's just as easy for someone to say something negative about their competitor by word of mouth.

Our neighborhood social networking site has where people can ask for recommendations which of course is all word of mouth as it doesn't contain a way to rate a business. Some of people's praises and warnings are comical for how over the top they are. And it's pretty easy to say "don't use X because of what they did for me" as well as someone else saying "oh no we didn't have any problems are you sure you're talking about the right company"

And then there's the whole disaster with my mother-in-law who can't decide what car manufacturer you really should and shouldn't go with for all the various arbitrary reasons (currently the most important reason is you should buy a GM because her daughter currently works for GM)

More or less all things have their pros and cons. Sometimes it's more about taking a look at what is being said and asking "does that sound real or over the top or embellished or that sounds way out there or that actually sounds like a legit thing, etc"

I only posted the TripAdvisor rule part because I think you had mentioned it had been a few years since you last used them so I didn't know if you even knew about their 'official' way of handling reviews.
 

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