Inside John's Locker

I got a VERY pleasant surprize at last night's Owner's Locker EPCOT Wine Evening when Lou Mongello stopped by.  Brian and I have been lucky to meet lots of really nice folks in the Disney fan community and Lou is one of the best.  He's been a great supporter of Owner's Locker and Lou and I have become good friends in the process.  Lou was in town doing what Disney experts do and it was great to catch up with him at EPCOT.

As it turns out, Lou had lots of good news to share.  He has just won the best travel podcast award for the third year in an row.  What an honor.  And if you haven't listened to his podcast, you can give it a try by following this link to his site at WDW Radio.

 

Lou also shared a copy of his latest project, Celebrations Magazine.  For all of you fans who miss the Disney Magazine that ceased publication in 2005, you might like Celebrations even better.  I don't think Lou will mind if I share the table of contents alonmg with the cover.

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He's also recently released the second in his WDW audio guides.  This one is Adventureland and I've got to tell you, it's fantastic and even better than the first which covered Main Street USA. 

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I joined a walking tour with Lou last year at Mousefest in Frontierland and was really impressed at how good Lou is in describing the parks.  I don't care how many times you've been to the Magic Kingdom and how much you might think you know about the park, Lou's audio guides are a treat eyes and ears!

 

Congratulations, Lou....and keep up the super work!

 

jdvm

Posted by JDVM at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

      This is oldest daughter, Katie. She's studying photography and fibers at Savannah College of Art and Design where she is a junior.

 

There are lots of pictures you can find of the resorts around Walt Disney World. You know, shots of the rooms and post card type views. But I thought it would be neat to turn a photographer loose with the assignment to capture the essence of a resort rather than simply providing a guided tour for folks trying to decide whether it's a nice place to stay.

So here are Katie's impressions of Disney's Old Key West Resort, the first Disney Vacation Club Resort. If you've never been there, it might seem a bit random. But if you have, I hope these photos bring back pleasant memories.

Here's a sample of Katie's work at Old Key West. Following these three photos is a link to a slide show of all of the photos. And here's a link to Katie's Flickr page where you can see more of her work.
 

Click here to see the rest of Katie's photos of Old Key West.

Posted by JDVM at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, here it is. What you've all been waiting for....just what's inside those Lockers?

Well, we never look but many of our our Members tell us what they store in their Lockers.

So here's a master list of items we've heard about. Where possible, we've added links so you can see more detail about the items to answer questions like,  "what's that?" or "where do I get one of those?"

Hopefully, this will give you some packing ideas......and we LOVE adding new items so if you don't see something you store, please let us know by leaving a comment and I'll add it to the list.

Here goes:

Posted by JDVM at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I learned in my years with a big multinational company that every company has a distinct personality.  After a while, I could tell you how Chevron would respond to an issue and it would be different than the way Shell or BP might handle the same set of facts.  The decision by United Airlines to charge for second pieces of luggage and by American Airlines to charge for the first piece has created quite a stir

Here's a glimpse of Owner's Locker's personality.  This is an e-mail I received today:

"Hi......thanks for responding, personally, to my post on INTERCOT.
I think the fact that even though there are recent economic problems, 
you are holding true to your word and not raising prices. Living, 
much less vacationing, has become harder due to the monetary problems 
of this country. And it's nice to know that there is a business that 
isn't 'taking advantage' of the customer.
I look forward to using your business. I've only been to your website 
once or twice,....and I didn't 'investigate in depth'...but I plan on 
doing that this week.
Thanks so much for writing. It meant a lot ----

Carolee"

INTERCOT is an unofficial Disney fan site with discussion forums.  I responded to a question about whether we'd be raising prices like this:

"There are no plans to raise prices. We've been operating a little over a year and while we didn't quite anticipate that diesel would be the price that it is, we built our plan around leaving our prices at the current level for several years.

We're in this business for the long term and while we want to earn an adequate return, we want to have long term happy Members and we always want to treat people the way we would like to be treated.
John"

And here's my response to Carolee's e-mail:

"Thanks for asking your question on the INTERCOT forums and thanks so much for your very kind e-mail!!  You're right...there is so much hassle out there these days, we just want to help cut back on it.  It seems that so few people are as interested in keeping your business as they are in getting your business.  And, to be honest, that's one of the reasons we started Owner's Locker.  I spent most of my career working for a company that constantly looked for ways to raise prices. We certainly want to make a living, but we'd rather use the airline turmoil as a selling point for our service instead of an excuse to raise prices."

This bit of back and forth traffic is not really earth-shattering but it does give you an idea of what makes us tick at Owner's Locker.

JDVM

ww.ownerslocker.com

Posted by JDVM at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Savvy visitors to Orlando have been enjoying the convenience of a service called Owner's Locker that allows them to store their personal items on site between visits rather than hauling them back and forth.

Recent moves by the airlines, including the announcement by American Airlines that it will begin charging for all checked bags, means that using the Owner's Locker service is not just a convenient way to have personal items on hand when visiting Orlando. 

Owner's Locker has become an extremely effective way to avoid the hassle and cost of dealing with luggage on airplanes.

Owner's Locker Members purchase a Locker for their vacation items; it's picked up from their resort when they leave and stored in a climate controlled warehouse until their next trip when it is waiting at the front desk when the Member checks back in to any one of over 200 resorts in Orlando.  There's a one-time fee of $75 for the Locker and the initial delivery and pickup and then it's $99 per year for storage and one free delivery/pickup per year.  And, best of all, there's no weight limit on what you can store in your Locker.

Owner's Locker-the purple place for storing your vacation stuff.

www.ownerslocker.com

Judy Wiley, Fort Worth Texas Star-Telegram Travel Editor wrote an article about what people could do avoid luggage charges and had this to say about Owner's Locker:

- Owner's Locker would probably save money in the long run for frequent travelers to Orlando. The service lets you fill a locker with the items you need on every trip, delivers it to any of more than 200 hotels in Orlando, then picks it up after you leave. While it's wildly convenient, it won't save you money if you don't travel often to Orlando. The initial set-up fee is $75 for the locker and the first delivery and pickup. Then, the basic service starts at $99 a year -- that's for climate-controlled storage and one delivery/pickup a year.
See www.ownerslocker.com for details.

you can read the entire article here.

Posted by JDVM at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)