I Pit thee, Edison-Ford Winter Estates!!

The BBQ Pit
1

Da missus and I set off across the state of Florida this weekend for a getaway. We were getting a little tired of our life on our home island on the southeast coast of Florida, where primary activities include swimming and bicycling, so we decided to off to an island on the southwest coast of Florida, where primary activities include swimming and bicycling. But hey, southwest, right?

Anyhow, we had a lovely weekend. On the way back, we planned to stop at Eden Wineries, the southernmost vineyard in the continental US, but when we got there, we found it was closed (subject for another Pit thread). Having no other plans, we decided to head to the Edison-Ford Winter Estates in Ft. Myers. We had read a bit about them - as the name implies, they were the winter estates of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford - and they sounded interesting. The Edison house was the biggest attraction; Henry Ford’s home was essentially a Craftsman bungalow with some minor additions.

When we arrived at the estates, we first went to the ticket booth. There were two options available. First, the full tour, including the estate homes themselves, for $16.00. Second, the grounds tour, which excluded the homes, for $9.00. We went for the full tour.

When the tour group gathered, we were handed some literature and a “return coupon” each. The tour guide said he would explain the return coupons later. (I thought that they might be tickets to allow you back in if you left the estates). Anyway, the tour group started walking towards the Edison house.

On approaching the house, we noticed that it bore a distinct resemblence to a construction site. The guide gathered us together and told us that they were rebuilding the Edison house due to termite damage, and that the return coupons would allow us to re-visit the estate after the Edison house renovations were complete.

What a fucking slimy thing to do!! Had we known that the Edison house was under construction, we would have just taken the grounds tour, and saved seven bucks each. The Estate knew that’s what people would do, so they didn’t tell us about the construction until after we had paid and started the tour. It was deliberate deceit, and the “return coupon” was just horseshit. I doubt we will be back in Ft. Myers for a long time, and there were people on the tour from Germany and other European countries.

The Estates had a choice - be honest, and lose some ticket receipts during the slowest time of the year in South Florida, or be deceitful, and lose goodwill. Methinks they made a bad choice.

Sua

2

Maybe the local Ft. Myers newspaper would like to hear your story, and maybe see a copy of your “return tickets.”

3

Yup, that’s stinky. My husband and I would LOVE to pay $32 to see a construction site that we will never drive 6000 km to see again. Actually, Jim works in construction safety - he might have been interested in the construction site.

4

Did you at least get to see labs? I don’t even remember the house, I don’t think you missed much there (not that you aren’t 100 percent correct that what they did was unfair).

5

That sucks.

As far as i can tell, their website also makes no mention of this construction work.

Also, according to this page, as Florida residents you and your wife should have paid $14, not $16 for the Home and Gardens Tour.

6

Just out of interest, did you make any attempt to get your $7 back?

In cases like this, i have a tendency to get rather confrontational, and i would have been at the ticket window in five seconds flat accusing them of all sorts of dishonest business practices.

7

Does the Edison house have all kinds of crazy inventions? That would be sweet.

8

That seems somewhat illegal. You should ask for a refund.

This is probably an example of an accountant-driven decision (I am an accountant but I am not your accountant, etc. etc.), as lost revenues show up in the books and financial statements, but “goodwill” only appears when we’re trying to balance the price paid for the latest corporate takeover to the actual book value, so that the bosses can pretend they didn’t really pay twice what it was actually worth.

9

I’m sure they are trying to make as much money as possible off of unsuspecting tourists such as yourselves. The current construction work is the culmination of years of neglect that left the homes rotting - my understanding, from reading the articles in The News-Press, is that they were badly damaged during Hurricane Charley a year ago and are now being saved (barely).

Still, I hope you managed to have some fun in Lee County (and on Sanibel, if that’s where you went). I would recommend you send a letter to The News-Press, as well as a letter to the management of the estates.

And next time, you can pit something even more egregious, like the traffic.

10

Let’s try that again.

The News-Press

If that doesn’t work…

11

I hope this thread isn’t too dead. I work only a few blocks from the Winter estates and they have been a source of civic embarrassment for quite some time. Fort Myers is a poorly run city and the Winter Estates are a perfect example. If the city had done any kind of timely maintainence on the estates, there would be no need for the big construction zone of doom. Those houses were soundly and solidly built and would still be in good condition if there had been even minimal inspection and preservation efforts. But no. So now we have this awful work zone at the one real tourist attraction (Non beach-related, that is) that this town has. And now I find out about this “return coupon” thing. Great, just great.

12

I think they have an automatic hammer, and a chair that can’t tip over.

13

Actually, I don’t remember there being any specific inventions. Rather, it was a sort of ordinary house for its time and a workshop full of tubes, vials, and mill-like machinery. There were some interesting doo-dads like the microscopic swimming pool and the light switch that has never, ever failed since T.E. installed it himself. But the interesting thing about the grounds and buildings are what they reveal about Edison and his times, rahter than the things themselves. The single most interesting thing on the estates is the mother of all Banyan trees that T.E. planted there.

14

Edison’s house & labs in S. Orange, New Jersey are really cool. I remember them having a lot of neat stuff to look at.

15

My mother and father retired to Fort Myers many years ago. My father had no hobbies other than work, and after trying a few other things, went to work at the Edison estate as a tour guide. (This was before the Ford estate was combined; at the time, the Ford place was a private residence.) Because of my father’s job, I was allowed to tour the place FREE and used to visit fairly often. Back then, visitors were allowed to actually enter the lab, walk around and even handle the remaining artifacts. I specifically remember some large chunks of synthetic rubber and some light bulbs that had been “working” for an unbelievable number of years. I later learned that they were only turned on during the Festival of Light and that people held their breaths until the bulbs actually lit up. I enjoyed the museum on the grounds and the old Ford (Model T? or A?) that Edison drove. Every year, he had it shipped back to Detroit and his old buddy Henry Ford upgraded it; free, of course. Harvey Firestone also had an estate in Fort Myers; Edison was in the center, flanked by Ford and Firestone. At the time my father worked there, Edison was still a big deal in Fort Myers; the local newspaper featured a quote from Edison to the effect that there was only one Fort Myers and sooner or later, 90 million people would discover it. That quote no longer appears in the paper. Anyway, the grounds of the Edison place were fantastic–I probably enjoyed them more than anything else.

None of which excuses the shabby treatment accorded the OP.