Category — q. Reviews

OVERVIEW: DISNEY’S BEACH CLUB RESORT

Our most recent stay confirms that Disney’s Beach Club Resort, one of the Epcot resorts, is the sixth best deluxe resort at Walt Disney World for first time family visitors.

You can have a wonderful visit at any Walt Disney World resort hotel.

However, this site recommends that first time visitors to Walt Disney World who can afford it should stay at Disney’s Polynesian Resort, a deluxe resort, and that those who can’t should stay at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort, a value resort.

(It also suggests that first time visitors should avoid the moderate resorts, while noting that these resorts are wonderful for visits after the first. See this for why.)

Compared to other Walt Disney World owned and operated resorts, the deluxe resorts are distinguished by having (on average) the most amenities, nicest views, best dining options, best transport options, largest rooms, best service, and highest prices.

Among the deluxe resorts, Disney’s Beach Club Resort has a lot of positives.

It stands out for sharing with the Yacht Club Resort the best pool on property, sharing with the Yacht Club and the BoardWalk Inn convenient access to Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and also sharing with these resorts a short walk to dozens of interesting table service dining options located in these resorts, at the Swan and Dolphin, on the BoardWalk, and in Epcot.

(For Disney’s Beach Club Villas, which share services and location with the Beach Club, see this.)

(See this for much more on resort distinctions by price class–value, moderate, deluxe, etc.) [Read more →]

This is the second page of this review.  For the first page, click here.

CONTINUED: THE 2012 EDITION OF THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD: REVIEW

Known errors and things that just change because Disney changes them are tracked here (most of the below have been incorporated into this errata list since I first published this page).

However, there’s still a few more errors and typos in The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 than I believe reasonable (and frequent readers of this site understand that I am an expert on creating an unreasonable number of errors and typos).

POSSIBLE TYPOS AND ERRORS IN THE 2012 UNOFFICIAL GUIDE

My issues here include the following:

Typos

• Page 138, discussing the Polynesian, has two slightly different versions of the same paragraph (“Bathrooms are…”). The first was meant to replace the second, as the second’s reference to a moment in time (‘during refurbishment) is no longer needed.
• Page 146, on Bay Lake Tower, skips directly from studios (“Studios sleep…”) to two-bedroom villas. The third sentence of the two-bedroom para refers to one-bedrooms (“As with the one-bedrooms…) which suggests a para on one-bedrooms was inadvertently dropped.
• In the discussion of Coronado Springs Club Rooms on p. 183, the words “more than regular rooms” were dropped between “night” and “depending” in the phrase “These rooms cost around $100-$130 per night depending on the season.”

Minor Errors

• There are several errors on pp. 116-117 in the layouts of the DVC resorts. The Wilderness Lodge does not have Grand Villas (117) and the occupancy limits of the room types noted at the bottom of 116 are out of date given the multiple locations with occupancies of 5 in one-bedrooms and 9 in two bedrooms.
• The Art of Animation Family Suite floor plan on 118 is wrong. The correct floor plan can only be guessed at, but Disney had given enough details well before the publication date to know that Art of Animation would not be a copy of All-Star Music’s Family Suites. For the same reason, the room description of Art of Animation on 193 is wrong.
• On 147, while Grand Villas at Bay Lake Tower do have sleeping spots for 14 (as do many Grand Villas), the maximum occupancy is 12, as it is for other Grand Villas (and as 116 correctly notes.)
• On 169, the occupancy of 9 at the Treehouses is no longer “one more than ….at the other DVC resorts,” since Kidani Village, Jambo House, Bay Lake Tower, and Old Key West two-bedroom villas now sleep nine as well.
• On 170, the beds description of Old Key West one and two-bedroom villas is out of date, as it leaves out the convertible chair.
• Page 180 incorrectly claims that Kidani one and two bedroom units can hold “one more each than corresponding units at Jambo House,” since the Jambo Villas (other than the “value” villas) also have the sleeper chair.
• Re page 392—it’s been a while since buses at Old Key West and Saratoga Springs “often run every 45-50 minutes.” (388-389 get this right.)
• On 518, the “average wait in line per 100 people ahead of you” on It’s a Small World is a good bit less than 11 minutes.
• In the discussion of the Wishes Fireworks Cruise on 534, either the 180 days should be 90 or the 95 days should be 185, or I am very confused.
• In the discussion of Epcot operating hours on 547, Future World no longer “usually closes before World Showcase.”
• Hollywood Studios either takes 10 hours to tour (616) or three quarters of a day (619), but not both.

Perhaps errors, or perhaps just points of different judgment

• The Magic Kingdom hardly ever closes at 6p anymore (31)—this happened maybe 3 or 4 times last year.
• As the TouringPlans.com crowd calendar indicates, mid-August is not as good as it used to be (33) as Florida kids’ school return dates have shifted to later in the month over the past few years, and they thus no longer “go back to school pretty early.” This year, eleven of the state’s largest 14 districts returned during the last full week of August, and the three that didn’t were among the smallest of these districts. This last full week of August was the most common week for kids to go back to school in 2011 throughout the US…and thus not “early.”
• On 103, while you can indeed save “$15 to $50 per night or more …by visiting during the slower times of year,” that “more” is bearing too much of a burden, as the spreads between high and low nightly costs ranges from more than $80 a night at the values and moderates to more than $200 at the deluxes (plus tax!).
• Though an Animal Kingdom Area Resort, Coronado Springs, rather than being “not centrally located,” is actually very centrally located (112).  It’s the most centrally located of all the Walt Disney World resorts. A little work with a map, a calculator, attendance figures, and a ruler will tell you that the attendance-weighted center-point of Walt Disney World is just to the north of Coronado Springs. (Here again I geek.)
• On 198, it seems worth mentioning that the Campsites have a capacity of ten.
• On 368, the material on toll roads seems important enough to me to deserve more emphasis, and perhaps be brought to the beginning of this whole section on “Getting There”–that is, to page 363.

But these are easily fixable nits, and The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 remains a masterwork of its genre, and is the single most comprehensive, detailed, and consistently useful guidebook to Walt Disney World available.

Disclosure: As noted here, since summer 2011 I’ve had a business relationship with TouringPlans.com.

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THE 2012 EDITION OF THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

The crew behind many landmark resources for Walt Disney World–including TouringPlans.com, Lines, the famous crowd calendar, and The Color Companion to Walt Disney World–released in late August the 2012 edition of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.

Details follow below, but here’s the short version: first time family visitors tempted to buy a guidebook should choose The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012.

(Disclosure: As noted here, since summer 2011 I’ve had a business relationship with TouringPlans.com.)
[Read more →]

(This material first appeared as a guest post on
MilitaryDisneyTips.com‘s Patriotic Disney series. Thanks, Steve, for letting me republish it here.)

This is the second page of this review; for the first page, click here.

FRONTIERLAND BEGINS IN LIBERTY SQUARE

The structures of Frontierland–rides, shops, and dining establishments–are all on your left as you walk from Liberty Square to Big Thunder Mountain.

The water–representing the great rivers that tied together the frontier, and especially the Mississippi and the Ohio–are on your right.

If you focus on the left, Frontierland begins at the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon, as the boundary between east and west.

However, if you focus on the right…Frontierland begins in Liberty Square. [Read more →]

(This post first appeared as a guest post on
MilitaryDisneyTips.com‘s Patriotic Disney series.  Thanks, Steve, for letting me republish it here in celebration of Walt Disney World’s 40th Anniversary.)

FRONTIERLAND: A MUSEUM OF DREAMS

First, consider birth and death years of three great Americans:

• 1734-1820: Daniel Boone
• 1835-1910: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (that is, Mark Twain)
• 1901-1966: Walt Disney

With just one 15-year gap, these three lives stretch from before the French and Indian wars to the Space Age.

Daniel Boone and Mark Twain both lived and mythologized the American frontier experience; Walt Disney then re-mythologized the frontier into Frontierland, combining the myths of his boyhood with the pioneer and western imagery created by Hollywood.

As Margaret J. King noted, the result is a kind of “museum” for “the most nostalgic images and dreams of a nation.”

The introduction to Frontierland in The Imagineering Field Guide to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World is worth quoting in detail:

“Frontierland celebrates the American pioneer spirit. It is the perfect embodiment of the wonder of the unknown and the quest to discover it…Frontierland is often referred to as the most distinctively American statement in all the Magic Kingdom. It lives as a tribute to the pioneer spirit that drove Americans westward…a subject that was as near and dear to Walt as Main Street, U.S.A. and equally connected to the fondest memories from his childhood.” (51-52)

THE GENESIS OF FRONTIERLAND

[Read more →]

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This is the fourth page of this review.  See the links above for prior pages.

MORE ON THE JAMBO HOUSE VILLAS AT DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM LODGE

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge is described on Walt Disney World’s website as an

“African lodge-style resort amidst a 43-acre wildlife preserve. The Resort offers authentic African-inspired architecture and the kraal African-village landscape design—a semi-circle design popular in Africa which offers expansive views of the surrounding savanna and its many animal inhabitants. Thatched ceilings, large beams, hand-carved golden-tone furnishings, real African artifacts and a vast mud fireplace in the main lobby surround you in the inimitable spirit of Africa.”

“Just outside the main lobby, an elevated rock platform—Arusha Rock—offers up-close glimpses of the animals and a panoramic view of the sprawling grounds. In addition to animals, thousands of indigenous African shrubs and grasses—including the most recognized canopy tree of Africa, the copperpod—paint a picture reminiscent of the unspoiled African grasslands.”

[Read more →]