Amenities at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort

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

AMENITIES AT 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 smaller 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. Almost all amenities except for the pools and health club are in this central area.

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. You check in here, buy tickets, make dining reservations, and such.

The far wall of the lobby has one of my favorite Hidden Mickeys, in the interacting shapes of three lights, much more visible to the camera than your eyes.

You’ll also find some charming toy displays in the lobby.

Nearby are shops, dining, and the Convention Center.

The gift shop is large, and while it has mostly standard Disney hotel gift shop stuff, there’s a bit of a Mexican selection similar to what you can find in Epcot’s Mexico Pavilion.

Also in this main building you’ll find the sometimes 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 quite a bit.

The food stations used to be overly complicated, but fresh and interesting, making Pepper Market the best food court among the moderates, though admittedly convoluted.  Now it is much more like any other Disney World food court, with a bit of an added garnish of southwestern offerings and flavors.

Checkout and payment used to have a mystifying multi-step approach that garnered the envy of former Warsaw Pact customer service staff, but now is utterly simple. Pepper Market is now comparable to other moderate quick service offerings, a loss on the food front but a gain on the service and simplicity dimension.

There are two table service offerings at Coronado Springs.  Best known is the Maya Grill.

The Maya Grill Menu. (As always on this site, click the image to enlarge it.)

The review from our book.

Added in early 2014 was a small breakfast/lunch table service offering, Las Ventanas.  In a small room between Rix and the Convention Center, it offers some needed capacity and variety to daytime dining at Coronado Springs.

Las Ventanas breakfast menu.

Las Ventanas lunch menu.

(Also new in 2014 is breakfast service at the main pool bar, Siestas, making that meal a little easier on guests staying in the distant Ranchos.)

Coronado Springs is a convention resort, with a medium-sized convention center in El Centro, a circumstance which has led to much fussing, most of it silly.

All the deluxe resorts except the Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge, and Animal Kingdom Lodge are also convention resorts, and these get little fuss.

Conventions yield fewer people overall because there are fewer people per room, and most of the time they are spending their time in meetings, in catered meals, and on the exhibit floor, rather than clotting the buses or food courts.

Demands for business services means that Coronado Springs also has more amenities than any other moderate–real room service, a real pool grill, a health club–none of which you’ll find at the other moderates.

But when a thousand people leave a meeting and head to the pool, you’ll notice.

There’s a bus stop outside of El Centro, and three more scattered around the accommodations areas.

On the lake side of El Centro, you’ll find the Laguna Bar–because of its setting, the best bar among the moderates.

Also here is lots of other outdoor seating.

There’s only a few amenities that aren’t in El Centro.  One is the pools, to which I’ll return in a minute.  The other is the health club, which you’ll find near the Casitas quiet pool.

THE DIG SITE AND LOST CITY OF CIBOLA POOL AT DISNEY’S CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT

This review continues here!

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