Orlando timeshare: no lifeguard on duty

My friend David and I are sharing a timeshare “villa” in Orlando at the Marriott Cypress Harbour. We have three televisions for the two of us. Every day we go over to FlightSafety to take jet-flying classes designed by guys who were inspired by the American public school system of instruction. I.e., we sit passively in lectures, bored out of our skulls, rather than being actively challenged to solve problems and think through scenarios (the teachers are experienced and dedicated, but they are constrained and crippled by the PowerPoints). If I were training myself, I would ask questions such as “What if you rotate at your calculated Vr of 94 knots and the aircraft settles back into ground effect? Assuming that there is nothing mechanically wrong with the aircraft, what are some likely causes for its reluctance to fly?” (a couple of possible answers: flaps set to UP and Vr calculated for flaps T/O; estimated weights of passengers and baggage were wrong and you’re heavier than you thought). Then I would ask “Given that you’re beyond V1, what would you do?” (a much tougher question to answer than the typical engine failure at V1 that you get in the sim; there will be no red EICAS message saying “engine failure R”; you have to make a decision almost instantly but you don’t have obvious information with which to make that decision.) Instead we get taught that trend vectors on the primary flight display for airspeed, altitude, and heading show where the airplane will be after 6 seconds. A few minutes later, a quiz slide pops up in the PowerPoint deck. “How many seconds forward do the trend vectors look?” Four choices, including “6”, are below. (Eighty percent of this material could have been taught by giving students materials and online exams prior to them showing up in person.)

After dealing with the hazards of falling asleep in the classroom or falling off the hydraulics in the sim, we come back to our timeshare. The management leaves nothing to chance. The “Vacation Experience Guide” notebook is thicker than the books that come with a twin-engine turbojet-powered airplane. The notebook cautions walkers to “stay on the sidewalk or the outer edge of the road” and, within this gated community, “please keep the doors and windows locked when you are sleeping or away from your villa”. You would not want a child to be consumed by the 4-inch-long lizards that run around the sidewalks, so there is a caution about approaching or feeding “wildlife” in this 100-percent concretized complex.

After the publication of the big notebook, a serious problem developed that required a laminated supplement to be issued to all rooms. Titled “Pizza Alert!!”, the supplement says that “the team here at Cypress Harbour are working closely with local and state law enforcement against the distribution of pizza flyers”.

What is the one hazard so small and unlikely that it need not be dealt with by the resort management? Drowning in one of the three swimming pools or an adjacent hot tub, all of which are deeper than a young child’s height. Despite the fact that the target audience for this resort is families with small children, there are no lifeguards. Instead of lifeguards, the management has helpfully put up signs that say “no lifeguard on duty.” The resort has literally hundreds of staff members for perhaps 1000 rooms (with an occupancy rate of 30 percent(?), the younger staff members are often seen congregating around televisions in the activity center). Would it have cost too much to employ a few teenagers to fish the toddlers out of the deep end? A little bit of Web surfing reveals that there are substantial liability protections under state law for hotels that post “no lifeguard on duty” signs. But if a hotel hires a lifeguard, they assume some liability for that lifeguard’s performance. As no sane parent would consider staying here without a substantial supply of the alcohol that is sold at the resort’s various bars and shops, that leaves Darwin in charge of whether the kids survive their week in Orlando.

One might ask where we would be without government regulation to protect us? Imagine a lawyer questioning a Marriott executive in front of a jury after a child drowned: “Let me get this straight… you built a 1000-room hotel, built three moderately deep swimming pools, asked families with young children to stay for a week at a time, and did not hire any lifeguards?”

[I suggested to David that we buy a week and come back here ever year for recurrent training. A quick Google search revealed that the annual maintenance fees are more than $800 per year, i.e., even if you got the timeshare for free it would cost almost as much as renting just for maintenance. Then the question came up of what happens when owners abandon their timeshares and stop paying fees. If the complex reverts to swamp, can the share owners get their money back from Marriott?]