Thursday, March 24, 2016

Disney World Review February/March 2016 Part 1


With a new Disney trip comes new reviews! With a week long trip comes lots of new things! For this blog I will be reviewing the two different resorts that we stayed at; Caribbean Beach Resort and Coronado Springs.

We started our vacation at Caribbean Beach Resort and stayed for four nights, then moved to Coronado Springs for two nights.

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an expert, but I do feel like I have gone enough times to give adequate reviews. Also, these are just my personal opinions from my experiences, so please keep that in mind when reading my reviews. I would always suggest you experience these things for yourself!

We arrived a little bit before 8am and had already done online check in. (We drive through the night so our kids sleep) Since check in was not until 3pm, my husband went to see if we could get into our room early. Unfortunately, they didn't have any clean rooms available that early, but they put us on the priority list. We would receive a text message when our room was ready and room number. We then left to go get some breakfast off property and headed to the grocery store to get some things we knew we would need throughout the week while we waited for our room.

After getting back to the resort we still haven't received a text so we decided to walk around the resort and explore it a bit. The resort is seriously breathtaking. Pictures do not do it justice at all. We let our kids play on the playground for a while and then walked back to our car. (We only saw half the resort as it is so large)

We already had some fastpasses planned for Animal Kingdom as we knew we would be getting there early. So we decided to freshen up a little in the car and headed over to Animal Kingdom for our fastpasses. We received a text sometime between 10 and 10:30am saying our room was ready, so we finished out our fastpasses and headed back to the resort.

When we got to the room, it was on the ground floor (which we requested) it was very clean and the theming was pretty cute too. Two queen size bed, and two sinks (a must for us). We noticed it did not have the pull down bed like the website had advertised and we promised our oldest he would get to sleep there. We also did not have any cell phone signal while in the room or anywhere near the building. So my husband called the front desk to see if we could get switched to a room with the pull down bed at the very least (we know they can't do anything about cell phone signal) Come to find out, not all the rooms came with the pull down bed, so if you are wanting it, make sure to request it. They told us they would call us when a new room was ready, so we decided to take a nap while we waited (we did drive through the night after all).

About an hour later (could have been longer, we were asleep so concept of time wasn't really there) we got the call that our new room was ready. It was on the second story and in a different building, which was ok as long as we got that pull down bed. This room was even nicer than the one were were just in and seemed bigger, and we even had cell phone service as well. The beds were comfy too!

Even though we had to wait a little bit before getting into our room after we arrived, we were still many hours ahead of the check in time and even though we had to change rooms, they did everything for us without question.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the inside of the room, but here are some from around the resort

Here are some pictures of the lobby area where you check in.



This is the food court, gift shop, guest services, and arcade. Our room was about a 5-7 minute walk away.







 The pool area. I didn't get the chance to take a picture of the kids splash pad, but my kids loved it and didn't want to leave.



You can rent bicycles. They also had beaches through out the resort with chairs and hammocks.



On our check out date for Caribbean Beach Resort, we packed up our stuff early and headed to the parks. We did online check in again for this resort so we just had to wait for a text when our room was ready.

Tip: Disney will move your luggage for you when doing a split stay like this. We decided not to do this as we didn't have enough cash to give a tip, we just kept our luggage in our car. (Not mandatory but appreciated) 

I can't remember the time we got a text saying our room was ready, but it was before 3pm, I believe. When we got to our room, we noticed that it was a lot quieter than Caribbean Beach Resort, which was a nice change. It had just two queen beds (which didn't seem as comfy) and seemed smaller than the room we were just in. There was only one sink in the bathroom, which made getting ready in the morning a little difficult, but we managed. Since Coronado Springs is the Resort that has the convention center, it was more business attire than family oriented. Instead of a table to sit at, there was a desk.

Here are some pictures from around the resort. The lobby, food, stores, and convention center were all in one building, but spread out enough that it wasn't all on top of each other. Our room was a bit of a walk from the food, so we always drove.









The property itself was very beautiful to walk around.



He had to walk a bit to get to "The Dig Site" which is where the pool, kids playground, and arcade was located.




Overall, both resorts were very nice and had the Disney high quality you would expect. The resort that best suited our family was the Caribbean Beach though and we will definitely stay there in the future.

Thank you for reading my review on these two Disney resorts from our February/March 2016 stay. If there is something specific you would like me to review, please let me know!

~Alison Shane~

If you need help planning one of these magical vacations for yourself, I'd love to help you. Just click here.


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