I'm writing this review because I booked our 3 - 17 November honeymoon on NYE last year, and worried about the decision until we checked in. Unfortunately, the review responses from the hotel are blatantly written by ChatGPT, so it's hard to get a sense of the place. I wanted to put other people's minds at ease because the horror stories I've read just don't reflect our experience. I've shared some thoughts below to hopefully give people a better sense of the place.
ROOM QUALITY & CLEANLINESS 🧼
No complaints. We were in Room 2321 as requested, as this is the recently-renovated block. It's very basic, but our room was scrupulously clean. The one day they forgot to clean, I called the front desk and it was done within the hour. The telly was rubbish; no streaming services, but couldn't connect my phone and the TV guide didn't work so we had to guess, but we weren't there to watch telly anyway.
NOISE 🙉
We were right outside the pool maintenance area with whirring machines and in spitting distance of of I-4 traffic, and we didn't hear it in our room (minus the rare car horn). Yes, the air conditioning was louder than expected, but I can't sleep in silence anyway, and it was just a consistent whirring rather than clanging and bangs. If you have to have a totally noiseless environment to sleep, you won't sleep well here.
LOCATION 📌
In my opinion, this is the best place you could stay if you're visiting Disney and Universal, and want the freedom to explore a bit of Orlando on your own. As we know, Orlando is not built for pedestrians. The hotel is in a convenient location for rideshare services to both theme park resorts, and you can walk to 50+ bars, restaurant and shops within perhaps 10 minutes. This was vital for us. I'd have happily stayed at Disney, but my husband would have felt trapped in the bubble (something many of us would gladly accept!).
We definitely smelled weed on a few occasions around the hotel, but not from lurking gangs around the hotel. It's legal in Florida and we smelled it plenty of places.
SHUTTLE 🚌
This was genuinely appalling. They changed the schedule 8 weeks before our trip, removing the early morning services to the Disney parks, rendering it useless for us for much of our stay. the ONE time we chose to use it, it arrives 20 minutes late to take us to EPCOT, but the return journey took NINETY minutes. The drivers went to hotels where no-one was staying at, he drove dangerously, it was uncomfortably cold etc. We blew around £300 extra on Uber and Lyft. That stings, considering our resort fee was to cover the transport service and was money we hadn't budgeted for. This would be the deciding factor in future over whether we'd stay again.
POOL & BAR 🏊♀️🍹
The pool area was nice. People have complained about sand in the pool but the pool deck is beach; that's going to happen. The pool is saltwater but isn't like the sea like I expected and didn't sting my eyes or dry my hair out. The bar was crap; rubbish selection and overpriced drinks, but we enjoyed the hot tub. We didn't eat here; the food menu looked fine but for the price we wanted to treat ourselves and go out for very little extra money.
FINAL THOUGHTS 🤔
I would absolutely stay here again, providing my security deposit is returned in the next couple of days. We wanted to spend more of our budget on great meals out, so this hotel was the perfect solution on a limited hotel budget with an incredible location and a clean and comfortable space to relax. If I could stretch the budget, I’d go for an elevated experience in a heartbeat. The hotel is nothing special but we were very happy here, had a wonderful holiday and we hope it’s an option for the future.
