Been going to Disney world with family and on business since late 70’s and have stayed at both off site hotels and Disney properties ( Contemporary when is was new and actually contemporary), Swan (rooms small but great pool at Dolphin it’s sister property and great location if doing Epcot), Port Orleans and Art of Animation). We just did a family group of 6 visit to Magic Kingdom and Epcot with 3 adults, 2 teens and a pre teen. We wanted to take advantage of Early Entry to both parks as well as Disney’s current promo offer of free day in either water park on day of check in at Disney hotel. In addition to getting to parks early for early opening, I also preferred NOT to drive so I wanted to use Disney free transport to parks and back. We had never used Disney’s Skyliner which goes from some properties to Epcot and Hollywood studios. After research I decide to book 2 rooms at the Caribbean Beach Resort, a “Moderate” Disney property, and use Skyliner to Epcot and Disney bus to Magic kingdom though I had some apprehension about the bus for getting to Magic Kingdom early due to distance and the large total capacity of the hotel. Here are key review comments about Caribbean Beach Resort
Great Rooms: our 2 rooms were great in regard to decor, comfort, size, convenience, cleanliness and amenities. Two very comfortable queen beds with nice linens plus a flip down small single bed, high quality shampoo, conditioner, body wash and lotion, excellent coffee for the in room coffee machine.
Not so great about the room: On the not so good side, when we checked into the rooms after a hot day at Typhoon Lagoon and were looking forward to hit showers before dinner, we discovered there was no hot water in either room. I tried to call the hotel front desk but discovered the phone in the room didn’t work. My daughter called from her room phone and they said they would put in a request for someone to come and check the hot water. Be aware that you cannot call and talk directly to the resort front desk or management whether you use an in room floor or cell phone. You will be speaking to a centralized call agent center who will then “get a message to the resort personnel” to address your issue. I had multiple occasions where I wanted to speak to the hotel front desk with questions about checkin, parking, and Disney’s complicated technology and it was very frustrating. If you actually want to speak to the hotel front desk staff ir manager, they said you need to go to the actual front desk which in our case was a very long distance from our rooms.
Anyhow, after waiting about an hour from someone to come regarding both the hot water and the dead phone, I called the centralized guest services number on my cell phone and convinced the agent to have a hotel manager at the hotel call me and to also send somebody to fix the phone in my room. Eventually someone did come and fix the phone and a manager did call me. He said they were aware that the hot water might be out in the whole building given that they had just received a report from a third room without hot water. He said he would ensure someone would come and check the boiler and restore the hot water or he would change our rooms the next day. They did restore the hot water that night.
In addition to the above issues, the AC unit under the window in our room made quite a racket when running. It needs maintenance since the AC in our daughter’s room next store didn’t not make the same rattling noise when running.
Getting luggage to and from the room: Again this is a sprawling property with multiple areas each with its own large parking lots with a very small number if disabled parking spots which of course people without disabled parking stickers or plates also park at. The buildings are 2 story buildings with no elevators so if you’re in a second floor, be ready to haul ll your luggage up and down stairs in 109 degree weather during a summer day. I was smart enough to request ground level rooms which we did get. However it was still quite a distance from the closest we could get the car to the room and we had a lot of luggage for 6 people. It took a while but by sheer luck we found a cart to help get the luggage to the room. However for checkout, we were not so lucky and after walking around the buildings and parking lots for 15 minutes, there were no carts to be found.
Disney technology for entry into resort parking lot with car, room entry and entry into parks: Though eventually and with multiple calls to guest servuces and conversations with front gate guards, we were able to figure out how to use our phones to get through the front gate, get into our rooms and use our tickets to get into the parks, unless you have figured all this out before hand or actually physically gone to the front desk of the hotel for help, be prepared for a lot of frustration and wasted time.
“Disney Magic” is seriously diminished: again I’ve been coming to Disney world with the family for like 50 years. In the early years Disney was known for it very high standard of quality and customer service. Other companies paid money to send their employees and leaders to school at Disney to learn how to replicate it. Over the years since, that standard has come way down. Though there are always exceptions, guest services staff can be very unhelpful and rude on the phone or even worse in chat (don’t even bother with their virtual agents). People at the front gates of the parks who check your “tickets” used to be cheerful, friendly and helpful. Don’t expect that now and you won’t be disappointed. And what makes this even worse is that the cost of getting into the parks has increased orders of magnitude since 1975.
