Walt Disney World Resort Distinctions: Moderates

By Dave Shute

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Caribbean Beach      Coronado Springs      Port Orleans Riverside

Port Orleans French Quarter        The Cabins at Fort Wilderness

OVERVIEW

This page highlights differences among moderate resorts. See this for features all moderates share, and differences among resort price categories. For more details, click on the names of the moderate resorts.

DISTINCTIONS AMONG MODERATES
Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort. Only moderate with no elevators at all. Only moderate with no indoor bar/lounge. Only moderate with kid-aimed room decor. After recent renovations, best pool of any moderate. (See thumbnail for the baby pool’s theming.) Most kid-appealing of moderates.

Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort. Only moderate with queens rather than full sized beds in most two-bed rooms. Only moderate with a spa. Only moderate with a health club. Only moderate with substantial room service. Only moderate with wireless Internet. Only moderate with only one sink per room, rather than two. Only moderate that hosts conventions. $5 (pre-tax) per night more than other moderates.

Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside. Only moderate that can sleep 5 (only in Alligator Bayou section, with fifth on a 67″ trundle bed). No elevators in Alligator Bayou section. (Magnolia Bend section has elevators.) With Port Orleans French Quarter, only moderate not on a lake.

Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter. Only moderate with no sit-down restaurant. With Port Orleans Riverside, only moderate with no lake. Only moderate with no quiet pool. Only moderate with no marina. Most compact of moderates. Most romantic of moderates.

The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort. Only moderate that can sleep six. Only moderate with a full kitchen. Only moderate with 2 rooms. Only moderate that takes two transport acts to get to a theme park. Only moderate with a porch, and a barbecue grill. Only moderate materially more expensive than the others.

Updated October 09.

*Three, four, or five moderates? Unnecessary confusion has been caused in the past by websites, guidebooks—and Wikipedia—as to whether there are three or four moderates. Many group the two Port Orleans resorts as one, leave out the Cabins at Fort Wilderness, and hence have counted 3 moderate resorts.

However, the two Port Orleans resorts are listed separately in Disney’s list of resorts by type that comes at the bottom of every resort’s home page, and have separate listings in Disney’s online “I know the Resort I want” list; neither list provides an entry for “Port Orleans Resort.” Moreover, they have entirely separate check-in processes, and have reasonable physical distance between them.

For these reasons, the two are treated as distinct resorts in this discussion.

Recently, Disney has complicated this issue by adding the Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort to the group of resorts it labels as “moderates.” Disney’s intent in doing so was to make clearer the level of amenities one gets in one of these Cabins—higher than that at a value, not as nice as in a deluxe, comparable to the other four moderates.

So five moderates…

LINKS FOR WHERE TO STAY

• 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 what you get in each resort price category, see this
• For where not to stay, see this
• For differences among deluxe resorts, see this
• For differences among moderate resorts, see this
• For differences among value resorts, see this
• For a (geeky) overview of comparative room size, see this
• Large families should look at this
• Military/DOD families should look at this

RELATED STUFF

• d. Where to Stay at Walt Disney World