Towel Animals Extinct?

I love Disney's towel animals.  When my dad & I stayed at All Star Music in 2012, we had 2 towel ghosts with pipe cleaners and sticky eyes hanging in our window.  It was the cutest thing!  I have always appreciated this unnecessary gesture from "Mousekeeping."  I told Jim about the towel animals we'd get on his first trip with me last year, and all we got was the Mickey head on the bed (I think I posted a picture and wrote about the lack of towel animals in a previous post).  When we returned to Pop Century a couple weeks ago, we didn't even get the Mickey head!  Nary a towel animal was seen in our room the entire 7 days of our trip.  I was pretty upset.  I was thinking of leaving a note asking for one, but part of the magic was getting one out of nowhere, not having to ask for it.

Then I read this:   http://disboards.com/threads/no-more-towel-characters.3422508/

It's a discussion board about how towel animals are apparently no longer allowed to be made and left for guests because of a recent survey where people said they'd rather have cleaner rooms than towel animals.  Can't someone clean a room and then leave a towel animal?  I thought it was part of the Mousekeeper training, in addition to cleaning a room!  I'm very upset if this is how it continues.  We want our towel animals.  Maybe we can start a secret code to let Mousekeeping know it's okay to leave us towel animals, like those pins people wear that say "It's OK to wish me a Merry Christmas!"  If I knew how to make pins, I'd probably try that.  And we can leave them on our night stands.  But if the towel-makers are getting reprimanded for doing that, we still might not get our towels.

FastPass+ Planning, and That Elusive Be Our Guest FastPass!

It's so fun to plan a Disney vacation.  You get stuff like this:

It's a magnet, and it has all my personalized "important dates" to help me plan!  One of the dates was June 24.  On that date, I would be able to begin selecting my "FastPass+" experiences!  I spent some time talking to my boyfriend (who's never been!) asking what he wants to do while we're there, and together we selected a few "experiences" we'd like to book.  I received a second reminder a week before that date:

So I stayed up till midnight the night before to make my selections (since this is so new, I didn't know if they "ran out" or "got booked").  But when I signed into "My Disney Experience," they said I couldn't start booking my FastPass+ selections until August 23, the date of our arrival in Disney!!  I shot off a polite-but-honest-about-my-feelings e-mail (since their online chat services run from 7AM-11PM).  I tried again in the morning at 7 before leaving for work and was able to use it!  I wonder if everything on their site operates within those hours, too, 7-11?  (They did reply to my e-mail very politely and saying they could see I was able to book, yadda yadda, did I have any further questions.)

After snagging FP+s for everything I wanted (I didn't even plan all 5 days yet--I just wanted to make sure we had FP+s for Toy Story Mania!), I remembered hearing about Be Our Guest quick-service lunch FastPasses.  I googled it and found some weird, secretive-looking sign-in to a website that gives you the FP!  You need to enter your first & last names and an ID number.  Hmmmm.  I tried my booking confirmation number, but it had a mix of letters and numbers, and the letters just didn't show up!  

I read a Disney blog that said if you are staying at a Disney resort, you receive this FastPass to Be Our Guest, and they said that after you "check-in" you will get an e-mail invitation to it.  I checked in online (which you can do starting 60 days before your vacation begins) and waited.  No e-mail.  

I used the online chat service for probably the 3rd or 4th time since beginning planning this trip, and asked a very helpful cast member about it!  She said that we will indeed be receiving this FP, and that we will get it when we "finish" checking in, when we're physically at the hotel.  

So there you have it, folks, if you will be staying at a Disney resort hotel, you are given a FP to quick-service lunch at Be Our Guest Restaurant!!  You even get to pick your meal before you go!  How wonderful!  I was worried we wouldn't be able to see the restaurant (I want to take pictures even though I've pretty much seen them all on blogs already)--I didn't want to waste any time waiting in line especially since we already have a Character Breakfast booked at Magic Kingdom (Crystal Palace).  But now we're going, and I can't wait!!  Hope you can enjoy this perk, too!