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Just spent a wonderful week at a 3BR pool house at the Houses at Summer Bay in Orlando. However, there was one scary incident which I would like to share to warn others who may be traveling with young children.
Upon checking in to our unit, I was very concerned about the swimming pool located in the screened in porch. My children are 7, 4 and 2 so naturally, I wanted to make sure that they could not access the pool. Fortunately, they wisely had an alarm which could be set to go off if the sliding doors to the pool were opened. No problem there.
I was so concerned with the pool, though, that I failed to notice that the front door did NOT have a child safety lock. Well, my 7 year-old son and I went to bed in the twin beds in the front bedroom about 9:00. My wife and two other children were sleeping in the master bedroom. About 1:00 AM I heard some noise outside. It sounded like some drunks talking at first then maybe trying to get into their unit. I went back to sleep but was awakened again by them about a half hour later. This time I was pretty annoyed and went outside to see what the problem was. As I headed down the walkway, a man was walking towards me holding the hand of a crying boy...My crying boy!
The man explained to me that he was staying in a pool house a few units down and had just gotten in from Canada. He first saw my son cross the street as he pulled up. Then later as he was finishing unpacking his minivan, my son approached him crying and asked if he could help him because he could not get back into his house. Thank God this man was one of the "good guys". He told me that they had been trying to wake us up for quite a while and they were just about to go to the clubhouse a few units down to call our unit.
Of course I felt sick to my stomach thinking about what might have happened and my poor son lay in bed sobbing a good half hour before finally falling back to sleep. I was hoping he would forget about it in the morning, but he told my wife right away. He said that he thought he had heard her talking outside in the middle of the night and went outside to get her. That's when the door locked behind him. I had originally thought that he walked out the front door thinking it was another bedroom, which probably does happen, as well.
The next day, I called the front desk and asked to have a child lock installed. They initially refused saying something about fire codes, but when I told her what had happened she relented. Maintenance was there within 10minutes.
I met the man with his family the next day at the pool. He was so nice and really just glad that he was able to help. He had been driving all day and had gotten in much later than he had anticipated. He said that there was no one else around that late at night. Upon checking out, I ended up leaving a little thank you note on his door with a $30 gift card to Starbucks. I could tell that he was the type of guy that would not have accepted anything had I offerred it to him in person.
So that's my cautionary tale. It still really upsets me when I think about it, but hopefully this will help someone else out.
Upon checking in to our unit, I was very concerned about the swimming pool located in the screened in porch. My children are 7, 4 and 2 so naturally, I wanted to make sure that they could not access the pool. Fortunately, they wisely had an alarm which could be set to go off if the sliding doors to the pool were opened. No problem there.
I was so concerned with the pool, though, that I failed to notice that the front door did NOT have a child safety lock. Well, my 7 year-old son and I went to bed in the twin beds in the front bedroom about 9:00. My wife and two other children were sleeping in the master bedroom. About 1:00 AM I heard some noise outside. It sounded like some drunks talking at first then maybe trying to get into their unit. I went back to sleep but was awakened again by them about a half hour later. This time I was pretty annoyed and went outside to see what the problem was. As I headed down the walkway, a man was walking towards me holding the hand of a crying boy...My crying boy!
The man explained to me that he was staying in a pool house a few units down and had just gotten in from Canada. He first saw my son cross the street as he pulled up. Then later as he was finishing unpacking his minivan, my son approached him crying and asked if he could help him because he could not get back into his house. Thank God this man was one of the "good guys". He told me that they had been trying to wake us up for quite a while and they were just about to go to the clubhouse a few units down to call our unit.
Of course I felt sick to my stomach thinking about what might have happened and my poor son lay in bed sobbing a good half hour before finally falling back to sleep. I was hoping he would forget about it in the morning, but he told my wife right away. He said that he thought he had heard her talking outside in the middle of the night and went outside to get her. That's when the door locked behind him. I had originally thought that he walked out the front door thinking it was another bedroom, which probably does happen, as well.
The next day, I called the front desk and asked to have a child lock installed. They initially refused saying something about fire codes, but when I told her what had happened she relented. Maintenance was there within 10minutes.
I met the man with his family the next day at the pool. He was so nice and really just glad that he was able to help. He had been driving all day and had gotten in much later than he had anticipated. He said that there was no one else around that late at night. Upon checking out, I ended up leaving a little thank you note on his door with a $30 gift card to Starbucks. I could tell that he was the type of guy that would not have accepted anything had I offerred it to him in person.
So that's my cautionary tale. It still really upsets me when I think about it, but hopefully this will help someone else out.
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