Disney Digest: The Resort

I took a bit of a hiatus from blog posting, and therefore from working on my “Disney Digest” series. Planning a Disney World trip is somehow really intimidating unless you’ve done it before, so although I am not at all an expert, I figured I would share tidbits of information from our experience that may help others with theirs. As part of this effort, I’ve already shared some of our thinking behind our Disney World planning, as well as our experience with the travel.

Now? Let’s tackle a review of the resort. We stayed at Coronado Springs.

I mentioned very briefly in my planning post that we decided pretty early on to book our stay at one of the moderate level resorts. We’re pretty low maintenance people when it comes to hotels when we travel—we don’t need a ton of bells and whistles, just something clean and comfortable. I’ve heard pretty great things about the value level resorts, too, so I would consider it—although after perusing the resorts’ websites and Trip Advisor reviews, we did lean toward the moderate resorts. In choosing which resort within that category, I relied on experienced Disney friends. Coronado Springs and Port Orleans seemed to be the two recommended most often, and we somehow landed on Coronado Springs.

{Photo Credit: DisneyMeetings.com}

I will admit that when we were about two months out from our trip, I panicked a little bit about our Coronado Springs choice. After further reading reviews and experiences, I worried it was going to be too big, too annoying to get around, and I regretted not choosing Port Orleans instead. I actually called Disney Reservations to see if we could make a switch, but not surprisingly, there weren’t any rooms left with the Free Dining promo at either Port Orleans resort, so we stayed put at Coronado Springs. Looking back? I can’t say that we wouldn’t have liked Port Orleans better, since we’ve never been there and can’t compare, but Coronado Spring was FINE. More than fine. We had very few complaints.

My friend, Kim, recommended Coronado Springs because of its Mexican vibe, its great, HUGE pool (with a water slide!), and activities for the kids. She told me they do a “Waterfall Opening Ceremony” every morning with the kids, and that there are pool parties with games and activities. While we were there, we noticed that they had “campfires” in the evenings to make s’mores by the pool, and that they also hosted movie nights at the pool, too (Disney favorites, of course). Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my previous post(s), we did not have pool weather while we were there. And most nights, we were still at the parks during the s’mores and movies—but if our trip had gone according to plan, I’m sure we would’ve taken advantage. They also served breakfast by the pool every morning—complete with the famous Mickey waffles—but since we never ended up staying at the resort for a “rest day,” we didn’t experience that, either.

{Photo Credit: MickeysDreamVacations.com}

Our plan leading up to our trip had been to take a day or two to relax a bit and enjoy the pool and the resort, but given the weather, we chose to spend all six full days at the parks (with one evening in Downtown Disney) to keep ourselves occupied. Next time we go to Disney, I hope we do get to enjoy the resort a bit more!

We had a standard room, and within the resort, we were able to request certain preferences—close to transportation, close to lobby, close to pool, etc. We chose close to transportation so that we didn’t have to trek too far to catch a bus each morning when we headed out for the parks. We were in Ranchos 6A (here is a resort map, if you’re curious). As you can see, we had a bus stop right outside of our building so all we had to do each morning was roll out of our room with the stroller, take the elevator down, and cross a small parking lot to the bus stop. Very convenient for us.

Now, it WAS fairly far away from the lobby and the restaurants (labeled as areas A and C on that map I linked above). The restaurant thing was no problem—the times we ate on site at the resort (three times total, I think), we were fine to take the winding walk around the lake. The scenery is beautiful, it’s quiet… as long as you’re not in pouring rain, what’s not to like?

The only time our room location was a real disadvantage for us was on the morning we were leaving. It was disgustingly early (like 4:30 a.m.) and we had to drag all of our belongings—three suitcases, backpacks, stroller, still half-sleeping children, etc. what seemed like 5 miles. In the dark. And go figure, it was muggy and HOT that morning (after being in the 40s for most of the week we were there, ugh!). Still, even knowing this, I would’ve still made the same choice to be closest to transportation.

The room itself was nice and clean. Not tremendously outdated or anything, at least not in my opinion—except the tub/shower area could’ve used a little work. We had two double beds, one for Michael and myself and one for Nora to sleep in. We requested a crib for Vivienne and they brought a standard Graco Pack-n-Play (we always bring our own Pack-n-Play sheets from home since you never know what you’re going to get from the hotel).

We were worried leading up to the trip how we were going to handle all four of us sharing a room. We have done it numerous places—at my dad’s, in the Poconos, on our beach vacation last summer—but it was always in a house, where Michael and I had somewhere else to hang out in the evenings, after the girls were in bed. Here, we knew we would pretty much have to hang out super quietly, lights out, possibly in the complete dark, while the girls slept.

But, as it turned out, one nice “bonus” feature about our room was that there were two big wooden sliding doors that separated the “bedroom” from the bathroom vanity/closet (and then a regular door that separated the shower/tub/toilet from the bathroom vanity/closet). So naturally, we put Vivienne’s crib in the closet/vanity area so that we could put her to bed and shut the doors, keeping light and noise out from our conversation, TV, etc. It was really nice how that worked out! Plus, by the time we were back at the hotel and putting the girls to bed each night, they were so exhausted that it didn’t much matter. Nora generally didn’t have any problems passing out, even if we had the TV on (very quietly). The thing was, Michael and I were pretty beat from the full days as well, so we were falling asleep pretty early ourselves! We all got a lot of sleep on this trip.

{Not our photo, but this is exactly what our room looked like. Photo Credit: EasyWDW.com}

As far as amenities, the room had what you would probably expect. The mini fridge was definitely nice, for us to put our bottled water (as mentioned in a previous post, we ordered a case of bottled water with our stroller rental from Kingdom Strollers), as well as milk for Vivienne. Oh, and complimentary WiFi is always appreciated, of course.

Our room was always cleaned nicely while we were out for the day, and we always had fun towel shapes/animals to come back to, waiting for us on the beds. One day, the cleaning staff took some of Nora and Vivienne’s toys that had been lying around and incorporated them into the towel design. Nora got a huge kick out of it and left a “THANK YOU” note on the bed (that she wrote herself, so cute) the next day, but I don’t think we ever had that same cleaning person again because despite leaving the note every day, no one ever acknowledged it in any way (they probably had no idea what it was referring to!) and the toys were never involved or moved again.

Although we didn’t get to spend much time at it, the pool was really nice, and beautiful. The pool area is pretty enormous, and the pool itself is pretty huge, too. When we arrived on that Sunday afternoon, it was our one pool-worthy day—the temperature was in the 80s.

We tried to check into the hotel upon our arrival (which was maybe around 12:30-1:00?), but our room was not ready. We were told that we would get a phone call and/or text message on my cell phone when it was okay to head to our room. We dropped our suitcases at bell services, grabbing some shorts, bathing suits, and sandals out of our bags before handing them over. We first headed to lunch right at the resort, but then went and spent time at the pool.

Once I changed Nora into her bathing suit and put on one of the children’s life jackets (provided for free, a variety of sizes hanging right next to the pool! so nice!), she literally walked right into the giant pool and began swimming out into the middle of it. Michael didn’t even have his bathing suit on yet! Thankfully, there were lifeguards around to help if something had gone awry, but she managed to swim over to the other side and get back out until Michael was ready to take her swimming. Vivienne was not feeling well and we wanted her to nap, so I was sitting quietly with her and walking her around in circles in a calmer area of the pool to try to get her to doze off. During my travels with the stroller, I discovered a cute little toddler-sized pool area right nearby the main pool. Would’ve been great for Vivienne if we had ever had another chance to go back and use the pool again!

I think it was after 4:00 p.m. by the time I started saying “WTF?” about our room. I still had not received a phone call, nor text message that our room was ready, and it was getting kind of late. I posted something on Instagram and someone there mentioned that it definitely should’ve been ready by then. I called the front desk from my cell phone, still at the pool, to inquire about what was going on. Turns out our room was ready, we just did not get the call. :( So that was definitely disappointing. I had a sick baby (suspected ear infection) and it would’ve been great to get into our room earlier than that so I could’ve laid her down to nap instead of trying to make do with a stroller nap. Who knows how long it had been ready without us knowing. Although, I got to hang out in the sunshine by a pool for a few hours, so… hard to complain too much.

On that first day, we ate at Coronado Springs (specifically, Pepper Market, the quick-service restaurant on the property) for both lunch and dinner since we didn’t venture off resort property at all. I will go into more detail about our dining experiences in a post I am planning about dining, but for the sake of making this a complete review of Coronado Springs, I will say that we loved Pepper Market. It was one of our favorite quick-service restaurants of the whole trip, with a good variety of food to choose from. We ended up eating dinner there another day, so three times total and it was great every time.

{Pepper Market. Photo Credit: Walt Disney World}

There were a couple of nice little cabana bars on property, too. One right outside of the dining/lobby/front desk area—situated right on Lago Dorado (the resort’s lake)—and another (with a little quick-service dining, too) at the pool. We grabbed beers “to go” on our way back to our room a couple of times, but we didn’t get to enjoy them otherwise. First of all, we had tired kids at the end of each day, and secondly, it was always freezing once the sun went down so we did not partake. But if you’re going and you will have child care back at the room, or you’ll otherwise be able to occupy your children… the bars are nice! :)

Finally, transportation from Coronado Springs was great. If you look at a map of Disney World, you’ll find that Coronado Springs is closest to Animal Kingdom, but it’s also pretty close to Hollywood Studios and Epcot as well. Magic Kingdom is the furthest away, which may be a negative to some people, but I will say that the bus rides were not long, no matter where we were going. It may have taken 10-15 minutes to get to Magic Kingdom? I’m totally estimating, but it wasn’t bad at all. We rarely had to wait very long for buses to come to the stop outside of our building, either. One morning, we *just* missed an Animal Kingdom bus as we were walking out to the stop, and of course, we were heading to Animal Kingdom that morning AND we were already running a little late for a breakfast dining reservation. So, of course, that was the one time it took like 15-20 minutes for another Animal Kingdom bus to come. That’s just our luck, though!

{On the bus our first full day. Poor Vivi was still sick; look at her pathetic little face!}

I really enjoyed our stay on Disney property, which allowed us to take advantage of the dining plan (especially since it was FREE!), as well as the bus system that took us easily to and from the parks. I do recommend Coronado Springs to anyone looking for a moderate level resort. When we go back someday, we’ll probably opt for one of the Port Orleans resorts if we can, just to have a different experience and try something new, but I also wouldn’t hesitate to stay at Coronado Springs again.

Disney 2016? (Just kidding.)