Category — d. Where to Stay at Walt Disney World

OVERVIEW: DISNEY’S OLD KEY WEST RESORT FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS

Disney’s Old Key West Resort (a Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) Resort) is a wonderful place for returning visitors to Walt Disney World to stay.

It’s the most spacious, most livable, and least expensive of the DVC resorts, and is my personal favorite among them.

For typical first-time visitors, I don’t recommend the Disney Vacation Club resorts.

That said, these “DVC” resorts can be a great choice for first time visitors with large families, needing extra sleeping spaces, or looking for a more comfortable place to stay.

Among the Disney Vacation Club Resorts, Disney’s Old Key West Resort ranks seventh overall for first time visitors, with its particular strengths being livability and value for money.

OLD KEY WEST AND THE DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORTS

[Read more →]

LOEWS PORTOFINO BAY HOTEL AT UNIVERSAL ORLANDO

Loews Portofino Bay Hotel is one of three deluxe hotels in the Universal Orlando resort. (The other two are the Royal Pacific, reviewed here, and the Hard Rock Hotel.)

This site’s Instructions for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter suggest that families wishing to visit Harry Potter that can afford it book a room at at one of the Universal hotels.

This is because the Universal hotels give terrific perks at Universal Orlando to hotel guests.

Most relevant to Harry Potter is that the Wizarding World opens to guests of these hotels one hour before it opens to the general public.

(If you are staying just one night, this is true both your day of check-in and your day of check-out.)

This makes it particularly easy to fit in both Ollivanders and Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey without hours of waiting.

Another great perk is that Universal hotel guests can use their room key as the equivalent of a FASTPASS for many rides at any time.  This does not apply to the Forbidden Journey or Ollivanders--the only perk that applies to them is the early entry.

All three hotels are nice, convenient to both parks at Universal Orlando, and expensive. Loews Portofino Bay is the most gorgeous (and expensive) of them, but its village theme will go over the head of most kids.

We had the chance to stay at Portofino Bay in early March. Our stay wasn’t long enough for a full review of the hotel and all its services, so this is really just a review of our room (though as you’ll note there’s photos of the rest of the place above). [Read more →]

THE NEXT DISNEY WORLD DVC VENUE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED

April 1, 2013—In an announcement that caught the fan community off guard—Josh was so shocked that he immediately ran off to take more photos of merchandise—Walt Disney World, RunDisney, and Adventures by Disney today jointly announced that the next Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) venue at Walt Disney World will be high adventure backpacking campsites.

The campsites, to be known as Disney’s Villaderness Campsites, will be located in the stinking mangrove swamps pristine wetlands area northeast of Bay Lake, near where several years ago Disney announced it would build a high-speed rail line.

The idea behind the new DVC resort is fastpacking—the combination of backpacking and trail running.  It will be themed around “pain.”

Guests at Disney’s Villaderness Campsites will check in at the Contemporary Resort, and then “fastpack”: run from there along wilderness trails to the campsites, while carrying personal backpacks filled with all their gear—tents, sleeping bags, stoves, food, clothes, etc.

Transportation to and from the parks will also be via running, but guests will not be required to carry their loaded backpacks for day trips, except to the Animal Kingdom. (“Because we say so,” a Disney spokesperson explained.)

Adventures by Disney guides will accompany, goad and belittle the runners, and shout out the highlights of what is being passed—pythons, sink-holes, and the like.  (DVC guests staying on points will be able to use the Adventures by Disney guides only every fourth day.)

Sell-side analysts are quite excited.  “In the traditional DVC model, Disney convinces future guests to pay Disney to build a hotel for them, and then to pay Disney for its upkeep, but they do get a sticker,” says Bertie Wooster of UBS. “At the Villaderness Campsites,” he continues, “guests will be paying Disney for 50 years for the privilege of running their own gear to unimproved swampland!  Not even a community room or second-rate restaurant! Brilliant!”

THE STORY BEHIND THIS JUST-ANNOUNCED DVC RESORT

Disney’s Villaderness Campsites were inspired, insiders say, by the stunning growth of Disney World’s various running events.

The current RunDisney events, including the full, half, half-full, 3.1415k, sideways, silly walk, and Hoop Dee Doo marathons, were originally inspired by management’s observations of guests in the parks during peak-crowd weeks.

One insider told me “we realized that people would pay good money to stand in hot lines for two or three hours per ride.  So the question we asked ourselves was, ‘how could we take people’s willingness to be just miserable for hours and make even more money off of it?’”

And thus the marathons and other running events at Disney World were born, as there seems an almost insatiable demand to combine the best of Walt Disney World with hours of pain and misery—and pay extra for it.

Disney’s Villaderness Campsites (pronounce it like a movie-Nazi: “Veeeeelderunessss”) are the natural outgrowth of the need of many to pay for pain and Disney’s wish to grow income while limiting capital spend after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Tangled bathrooms.

(Helping a bit on the capex front is that the plans to add Minnesota as Epcot’s next World Showcase nation were recently quietly canceled, pouring some capital back into the cash till).

Fastpacking to the pain-themed campsites creates the combined misery/Disney experience so deeply craved, while the unimproved sites, and the requirement for guests to bring their own backpacks and gear, makes the capital investment negligible.

Negligible, that is, for Disney.  Guests will still need to pay an arm, a leg—and a couple of feet. The minimum buy-in points and point calendar are still being developed, and may be related to best marathon times.  But the expectation is that pricing will be similar to One-Bedroom Villas at Saratoga Springs, since an un-developed wasteland is comparable to those tiny rooms.

But at least at Saratoga Springs you won’t have to pack in toilet paper and a trowel!

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ARGUING WITH MYSELF ABOUT THE DISNEY WORLD MODERATE RESORTS

For years now I’ve been advising first time visitors who may never return to avoid the moderates because, compared to alternatives like the Wilderness Lodge or Art of Animation, they are short on kid appeal.  They also have some real convenience issues…

This advice necessary follows the underlying logic of this site.  The site is meant to make the key Walt Disney World planning decisions fast and easy for first time visitors who may never return:

• By bringing all the key points to just one page
• By giving very specific instructions where multiple options are possible, and
• For families who can’t or won’t follow those instructions, to show the next best choices, ranked in order

So to provide the specific instructions and the rankings, I had to develop ranking criteria.  It took me a couple of years before I went live with this site almost five years ago to establish for all the topics on the home page the ranking criteria, and then to get the data to use in the populating the rankings.

For where to stay, the ranking criteria came out as first kid appeal, and then, within kid appeal groups, breaking ties with convenience.  I also did rankings by price class, as I can’t think of any helpful way to set a priori the price tradeoffs among the price classes.

Kid appeal, as I define it, is principally visual, and it means whether the look of a resort has public space features that speak to kids of whimsy, playfulness, and/or adventure, signaling that that this resort was designed for them! (And not necessarily for their parents…)

I don’t mean that your kids won’t have a great time at the lower-kid appeal resorts.  The ranking is comparative, not absolute, and your kids can—and will!—have a ball at any of the Disney hotels. But there’s three deluxes and five value resorts with really distinctive kid appeal…

…yet there are no moderates with really distinctive kid appeal at that same high level.

So that’s the fundamental reason I don’t recommend moderates for first time family visitors who may never return.  My core criterion is kid appeal, and none of them really rises to the high level you can find in the other price classes that I can recommend it on the basis of kid appeal.

The moderates also have major transportation convenience problems, and all but Port Orleans French Quarter have a sprawling and sometimes painful layout.

But I do rank the moderates in order anyway for those who ignore my advice, or are not “first time family visitors who may never return.”  And here I do rank them by visual kid appeal—finding a slight edge to Caribbean Beach on this measure, because of its beaches, color and theming, a bit of an edge to Coronado Springs for similar reasons, and the Cabins at Fort Wilderness bringing up the rear on this criterion.

The complete ranking based on these criteria is as follows

1. Caribbean Beach
2. Coronado Springs
3. Port Orleans Riverside
4. Port Orleans French Quarter
5. The Cabins at Fort Wilderness

NOW HERE’S WHERE I DISAGREE WITH MYSELF

But here’s the problem…if my sister called me and said “Dave, I’m gonna stay in a moderate—don’t try to talk me out of it—which one would you recommend to me, your sister?”  my answer would not be Caribbean Beach—it’d be Port Orleans French Quarter.

And not because of POFQ’s kid appeal, which is slim, and not because of transportation convenience, which, while better than the other moderates, is still weak.

Rather I’d recommend POFQ because of something not even in my criteria—it would be the compactness of POFQ compared to the other moderates, how much easier it is to get around there than at any other moderate, that would lead me to recommend it.

And for exactly the same reason I’d keep The Cabins last, but move Caribbean Beach to next to last—both these resorts are profoundly painful to get around.  (Putting these two last also happens to put the only remaining moderates without queen beds last as well—since they are them.)

I’m not quite sure where to slot Coronado Springs and Riverside on this “pain to get around” criterion.  Coronado Springs has a few more really awkward rooms (in the Ranchos section) than Riverside, but the very worst rooms in the Alligator Bayou section of Riverside are a fair hike away as well. So I’d put Riverside ahead of Coronado Springs, but not by much.

(Other points come into play with Coronado Springs.  It has many more amenities, and better and more varied dining and bars than any other moderate—for $5 more per night–but less fun room décor, and it sometimes can be overwhelmed by conventioneers.  So its extra positives get balanced out by its extra negatives.)

The main negative of French Quarter is the absence of a table service restaurant.  Frankly, the other moderate table service restaurants aren’t worth much anyway…I’d certainly never put dining at one on any of my itineraries…but this may be an issue to some.

THE MODERATES REMIXED

Another way to think about this: the moderates are almost tied on kid appeal, and almost tied on transportation convenience.

So my basic criteria don’t much distinguish them. What if you throw those criteria out, and look at all other factors that contribute to a pleasant stay?  What’s the ranking then?  Well, based on the above, it’s

1. Port Orleans French Quarter
2. Port Orleans Riverside
3. Coronado Springs
4. Caribbean Beach
5. The Cabins at Fort Wilderness

–with #1 a clear leader, 2 and 3 very close to one another, and 4 and 5 pretty distant from the top three.

So if I was gonna remix the moderates ranking, that’s what it would be.  Compare it to my basic list earlier on the page, where only one resort–the Cabins–has the same ranking, and #1 and #4 have flipped… and tell me what you think!

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THE MODERATE RESORTS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

You can have a wonderful visit at any Walt Disney World resort. However, this site recommends that first time visitors to Walt Disney World avoid the moderate resorts, while noting that these resorts are wonderful for visits after the first. (See this for why.)

That said, the moderates do represent almost 30% of the room capacity of Walt Disney World, and will be sought by some you regardless of this site’s advice, or because this site’s recommended resorts are sold out. (For what the moderates provide, and how they compare to the other Disney World resort classes, click here)

Because of this, I’ve stayed in each of the moderate resorts multiple times, and have just completed a set of re-visits over the last 12 months that included nine multi-night stays for a total of 25 nights, and covered every single one of the 8 major room types among the 5* moderate resorts.

(Since I began working on this site, I’ve stayed in the moderates almost 20 times, for more than 60 nights.)

Based on my most recent 2012 and 2013 stays, all the reviews have been re-written, and those reviews are summarized in this post.
[Read more →]

For the first page of this review of Disney’s Coronado Springs, see this.

MORE STUFF ON DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort is one of 5 moderate resorts at Walt Disney World:

• Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, the first Disney World hotel to be designated a moderate, which opened in 1988
• Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter Resort (opened in 1991 as Disney’s Port Orleans Resort)
• Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside Resort (opened in 1992 as Disney’s Dixie Landing Resort)
• Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort (opened 1997) and
• The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort, officially classed as moderate in 2008, but opened (as the Wilderness Homes) in 1986. (Fort Wilderness Campground opened much earlier, but precursors to the Cabins did not arrive until 1986.)

The moderates have much more room than the value resorts, more amenities, and (except for Fort Wilderness) much better landscaping. See this for what you get by Disney World price class.

Although the typical moderate rooms, at 314 square feet (the cabins have 508 square feet), look much smaller than the rooms available at the deluxe resorts, differences in hall/entry layout make the living space of the typical moderates much more comparable to many Walt Disney World deluxes than raw square footage would imply. See this for more on square footage and livability.

Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort is officially “an American Southwest-themed…hotel set on Lago Dorado—a glimmering 22-acre lake—that invokes the spirit and romance of Spanish-colonial Mexico.”

Its 140 acres include an area where you check in, buy tickets, and find shops, dining, bars, etc., called El Centro. The Convention Center and business services space also is accessed here.

EL CENTRO AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

The main entry illustrates the graceful architecture you’ll find in most of the resort.

The check-in lobby has a graceful, Mexican-influenced look.

Near it is a large gift shop…

…with mostly standard stuff, but a bit of selection similar to what you can find in Epcot’s Mexico Pavilion.

Also in this main building you’ll find the very fun Rix Lounge…

…a grab and go food shop…

….and Pepper Market, the “quick service” meal offering.

Pepper Market, for those who have been to Coronado Springs before, has changed a bit.

Offerings are more pre-prepared and less varied than they had been, and you now settle with your waitress, rather than when you leave.

Pepper Market used to be clearly the best, and most intriguing, of the Disney World resort quick-service offerings; however, the quick service offering at the new Art of Animation Resort eclipsed it, but even with the recent changes, Pepper Market is still is the best quick service among the moderates.

Rounding out the offerings inside the main building is a table service restaurant, the Maya Grill. OK, but not worth a special trip.

Just outside the main building you’ll find a nice waterside bar, often filled with convention-goers…

…and a marina, which was empty during my last visit–in January 2013.

THE MAIN POOL AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

Unlike the other traditional moderates, the main pool is a hike from the central services. (See the top of the page for another view, and below for a map.)

It has the largest hot tub I’ve seen at any Disney resort–for the conventioneers?…

…a pool for little ones…

…and a kids play area.

Uniquely among the traditional moderates, the pool bar also cooks and serves hot food.

This is likely largely because of the hike from the other dining options, and perhaps also an additional service aimed at convention visitors.

Here’s the pool menu. (As with all this site’s images, click it to enlarge it.)

THE THEMED ROOM AREAS AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

The 1917 rooms at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort are divided among three differently themed areas:

• The Casitas, resembling a graceful cityscape
• The Ranchos, based on Southwestern desert habitats and architecture; and
• The Cabanas, intended to give the sense of “a quaint beachfront retreat complete with cozy hammocks.”

THE CASITAS AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

The Casitas, closest to the main building and Convention Center, have the loveliest architecture among these.

The Casitas also have the highest appeal to conventioneers, being both closest to the convention center, and the location of the Coronado Springs suites.

(Yes, Coronado Springs is the only moderate with suites; these are required to compete for convention business, as they are often given away or heavily discounted to meeting planners in return for reserving a block of rooms, and are also required as sales and meeting settings by some exhibitors.)

The quiet pool at the Casitas is the only pool at Disney World laid out for swimming laps.

THE CABANAS AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

The Cabanas, the opposite direction from the Casitas, have undistinguished architecture…

…but look lovely from across the lake…

…and alone among the three room areas of Coronado Springs, are fronted by beaches.

Here’s a view of the beaches in the evening.

The kid appeal of these beaches and overall convenience to both El Centro and the main pool makes the Cabanas the best area for families, and is why I rate Coronado Springs as the second-best moderate for first-time family visitors.

You can’t swim in the lake from these beaches, but there is a quiet pool at the Cabanas where you can swim.

THE RANCHOS AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

The third area, the Ranchos, has a wilder Southwestern theme, which may be a little too realistically arid and barren for some kids to enjoy,

The Ranchos are also a hike from the resort central services, though some of these rooms are near the main pool.

There’s a quiet pool in the Ranchos area as well.

SUMMARY: DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

Among the moderates, Coronado Springs’s strengths for first time visitors are its visual kid appeal, especially in the Cabanas section (not as much as at Caribbean Beach, but more than the other moderates), its food court (the best among the Walt Disney World moderates), and its very high level of amenities compared to the other moderates—e.g. the only “real” room service menu among the moderates.

The principal negatives are that it can be choked by conventioneers, and costs slightly more than the other moderates—i.e. $5 (plus tax) per night.

Returning visitors often find Coronado Springs to be a favorite—because of its amenities approaching the level of a deluxe for the little more than the cost of a typical moderate.

See this for more on distinctions among the moderates.

EXTERNAL LINKS FOR CORONADO SPRINGS

• Official Disney Coronado Springs site
• Buzz2001′s unofficial fan site

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MORE ON WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD

• For where to stay, see this
  • For your next best choices, in order, see this
  • For picking your resort based on appeal to kids, see this
  • For picking your resort based on convenience, see this
  • For where not to stay, see this

• For what you get in each resort price category, see this
  • For Walt Disney World resort price seasons, see this
  • For resort reviews, see this
  • For the value resorts, see this
  • For the moderate resorts, see this
  • For the deluxe resorts, see this
  • For suites at the deluxe resorts, see this
  • For the Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) Resorts, see this

• For a (geeky) overview of comparative room size, see this

• Large families should look at this, and also at
  • Large Families Looking for Value Pricing at Walt Disney World
  • Large Families Looking for Deluxe Accommodations at Disney World
  • Beds and Sleeping Spaces at the Walt Disney World Resorts
  • Renting Disney Vacation Club Points
  • Suites at Walt Disney World

• Military/DOD families should look at this

• Tightwads should look at this

• Families seeking the most comfortable place to stay should see this

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