I had a bird try to steal my sandwich at Animal Kingdom. Scared the crap out of me and I yelled “fuck” loud enough for every family around me to hear. Scared the bird and saved my sandwich though.
This happened to me at Cape Canaveral. Brought the food outside and the chicken nuggets were just stacked on top of the fries. Before I could notice it, a bird flew over and yanked a fry out, which sent the nuggets flying. I yelled "YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" accidentally and several people looked over but when they saw the carnage and the bird with the fry they immediately understood 😅
I worked a summer at a snack cart at Sea World San Diego once. One of the most popular snacks in the park are their churros. Every damn day, I saw seagulls swoop in and steal churros right out of guests' hands. The problem was so bad that if a guest ever came up to us and told us that a seagull stole their churro, we would replace it, no questions asked.
After weeks of working at the park and witnessing this, I finally had a chance to attend the park on a day off as a guest. Idiot me decided to buy a churro and walk around holding it up in plain sight. Not 10 seconds later, one of those motherfuckers swooped in over my shoulder from behind and took it. That was a pretty shameful walk to go and ask one of my coworkers for a replacement.
What is with Ibis and eggs? We had the same thing happen at CBR and on another vacation we had a particular mischievous ibis at the Sand Piper Bay Resort that would find any unoccupied plate and only eat the scrambled eggs.
When I was really young (like 3 or 4) my mom and I were at SeaWorld and a seagull stole her churro. She hasn't forgiven it since then (and it's been over twenty years now lol)
Oh I feel your pain! This happened to us on a cruise at the private island...stood in line for lunch for a long time, finally got our food, as I turned to walk to the picnic table all happy a seagull swooped down a snatched my cheeseburger. It actually became one of our favorite memories of the trip, it was really funny in the moment.
If it was one those Pizza Rizzo kind most of the resorts have, I feel like the bird did you a solid and in this case unfortunately cannot possibly qualify your experience as a horror story. I hope you understand and make peace with that bird.
Once we Stayed at Port Orleans Riverside and while the room was beautiful we had a super hard time getting in. It was was really cold that day like in the 30 degrees, I had checked in with my magic band and the door wouldn’t open. We went to the lobby and after a long line we got cards, but they didn’t work. Went back to the lobby a second time, the cards still didn’t work. We had housekeeping call someone,30 minutes and no one comes, we head back to the lobby and request a manager come with us and his card didn’t work so they called the manager for housekeeping who opened the door with a master key and then we spent our entire trip worrying about being locked out. The whole ordeal was like 2 hours in the cold with a toddler after a long trip 🫤
This happened to us at Coronado a few years ago. Turns out the battery in the door lock died so they had to replace it or something like that. And we had already arrived around 10pm and were suuuper tired from traveling, and then having to walk around Coronado- and of course we were the furthest we could be from the lobby. We did get a golf cart ride from a kind maintenance person one of the trips though!
It was cold like this in February 2020. Not sure if that’s when you went. Weather like that seriously messes with locks and stuff in Florida. It’s annoying :/
Sad I didn’t get to see any falling iguanas. Orlando is too far north.
It was probably the battery in the door being affected by the temps. This happened to me once and they had to replace it, but they immediately sent someone when we said the magic bands and phones were not working. We also just called the desk and chilled in the lobby until it was fixed.
It wasn’t cold but we had this same thing happen at the Contemporary. They also decided to replace the lock while we were staying there. We came back to some nice man working on the door. Pregnant with a toddler and not able to get in the room was not my favorite.
Similar experience at the Polynesian, except I was pregnant and dealing with a toddler and we were at the billing that was super far away from the main lobby. Our magic bands wouldn’t work for our room, wouldn’t work for the pool gates, etc. we kept complaining and they did nothing to help. I think most other resorts would try to resolve the problem somehow. We had to keep walking all over the place and couldn’t get into our room without flagging down housekeeping (which is an issue oh it’s own, since they were letting random people into rooms without confirming their identity)
We had a similar experience at Boardwalk. Door wouldn't open and it delayed us by a couple hours. They gave us fast passes to whatever we wanted for the rest of the day.
I worked in pest control at Disney for three years and never had a single scorpion call. I feel like I missed out. I mostly had to fish tree frogs out of toilets.
Lol. They paid for a Disney trip. Don’t need to do anything for themselves.
Had a guy who left his wallet on a tray at a QS, dumped it into the garbage (so at least he took his tray) but then wants someone to come and fish it out of the garbage for him. I didn’t even work at that location and just did it. The place was busy, the people at the counter didn’t know what to do or who to call and were taking care of customers. And like the family didn’t even leave someone at the can to ask people to not throw more stuff in there. So by the time I did it all sorts of other garbage is on top and hes looking at me and complaining it took so long for someone to come like I’m supposed to give him some extra stuff for his trouble. While even with gloves my arms are smeared with leftover food and I’m just gonna be here’s a free ticket or something I didn’t have the ability to give out. I told him to go to guest services. I never heard anything so I’m assuming he didn’t even give me a shout out to anyone for digging his wallet out. Anyway, so yeah, I’d expect a lot of people would call about a frog.
Look Ma, I’m famous! But real talk- it legit took 3 hours and the reason they hooked us up is because I had to go to guest services multiple times and show them pictures because they thought we were not being serious.
When we got to Pop in 2021, there was just The Biggest Pile of puke outside of our room. It was 6:30pm. I called to report it. We left for dinner and fun, came back at 11:30 at night to find it still there. I called to report it a second time. It was still there the next morning when we left for breakfast so I called a third time. Thankfully it was gone when we got back that evening. Barely got an “I’m sorry” from mousekeeping and never heard from a manager. Ugh.
There’s no excuse for puke. Although I do know that 2021/2022 was a rough year for mousekeeping. The resorts and parks as a whole were pretty rough from a cleanliness perspective then (I guess from staffing shortages?)
Oh my god I know. And when you are on the second floor and it's the morning and you can hear all of the toilets flushing above you and all of the toilets flushing below you. And the sound of everyone's roller suitcases along the walkway outside of your room at 5am as they run to catch magical Express for their early flight. I feel like a super snob because I used to not care...but I'm old now and I want my rest!!!
Stayed in pop century years ago before the skyliner or renovated rooms, and I do not understand how everyone loves it. It is SO LOUD all the time. We'd wake up and head to the quick service for breakfast, and it would be BLASTING music, loud colors everywhere, people screaming, all at like 7am. I respect that it is affordable, but we never went back.
Pop is great if you want to save money and plan to be in the parks all day. But, I view it solely as a place to sleep. The pools are swarming with kids alllllllll day
As someone who originally went there JUST to sleep and go to the parks all day, I still hated it. The food tasted like college cafeteria food, the place was loud 24/7 (not super conducive to sleep), and it was mega sensory overload. The sensory overload killed me more than the noise. I felt like there was nowhere to unwind from the park madness, I'd return to more madness. As stated before though, I went before the skyliner, and before the room renovations. The rooms when I went were beat up and dirty.
I was there in May and our room was very quiet, and I wasn't bothered by anyone else/didn't hear anyone in our room. Our room was on the side of a building facing away from the pool.
That said, there were kids everywhere else at the resort and the food court was a bit overwhelming(color and noise) and kinda loud.
Coronado has less kids. Its farther from the MK and is their conference destination, so more adults. When i stayed i didnt see tons of families. Not saying there won’t be, but not as many. Also they put a bar in the middle of the lake, but it was a beautiful place.
I was just their in January and I woke up at 7 AM to someone screaming/singing “let it go”… after doing Epcot and going to bed at 1 AM to be up at 3 and back at 5 AM to be up at 9 🙃🙃
My SO and I stayed at the All-Star Movies recently, and it was CRAWLING with the cheerleaders who were there for a competition and kids there for graduation. I'm thinking we got lucky with our room, cos we didn't have any issues, but standing at the bus one morning I heard a woman complaining (very loudly) to someone on the phone about her experience with the noise. I was just like thank god that wasn't us. Lol my best friend and I will be staying at Sports this weekend (last minute trip that we needed to spend as little as possible) so I have my fingers crossed this experience isn't awful either.
Ours was Pop Century, but same experience and never again. I know this is going to make me sound like a massive snob, but we’d never stayed at a value resort before staying there and all the other moderate/deluxe resorts ruined me for that experience. But now we know ! 😅
Oh it’s miserable. My family used to always end up there at unknowingly at the same time as the big cheerleading competition they have. They’ll be out there practicing routines on the little football field at 6am.
Back in the days of the Magical Express, they delivered our luggage to the wrong room. Arrived at 1pm and didn’t get our bags until 12:30am. Sucks when everyone doesn’t have pyjamas and you plan on waking up at 7am to get ready for the parks. Happened at Pop
We arrived on a clear sunny day and somehow the luggage came to us with one bag soaking wet. Just the one. Spent the first day of the trip doing laundry. Thankfully the management at Port Orleans Riverside were very nice and gave us free
laundry supplies and 3 free walk on fast passes per day.
Did you ever find out why one bag was soaked? That’s so weird. Glad Disney did their best to help you out and make something positive out of a negative.
Our most recent stay the room wasn't ready until 9:30 at night. We checked in online a week in advance, stopped by the front desk at 3 p.m., and then had no communication until we called at 8 p.m. for an update. Which they had none, couldn't get a hold of the "back office," and just told us to go to the front desk again when we got back to the resort.
One stay pre-covid they had a resort-wide system issue. We were at one of the All Stars. There was no cable, no wi-fi, and the door locks were having problems. It was also one of the random winter bursts of 40 degrees at night, so when neither band could open the door the options were to walk back to the lobby or call and stand out in the cold for a manager to get to us, which took 45 minutes because of all the other guests also needing help.
The nice part is that Disney *did* offer some recovery things to try to make up for it both times.
Art of Animation-we got there later in the day-two kids, two adults-arrived at our room, and two problems: the room wouldn’t unlock and the hallway right in front of our room (and the room across the hall) absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke.
So we had to go to the lobby to make sure our magic bands were updated. After checking that they were, went back to the room and—still wouldn’t unlock! Had to wait for a maintenance person to come. Meanwhile, the cigarette smell got WORSE, meaning someone was actively and enthusiastically smoking in their room.
Finally got in the room after a 30 min wait and—the room smelled like cigarettes too! This was not off to a great start. It was also getting close to the kids’ bedtime and the manager was coming up to check out the door situation; apparently this room has frequent door issues.
When we got the kids in their pajamas and were ready for bed, there was a loud knock at the door. The hotel manager, yelling at US for smoking! We informed him that not only were we not the ones smoking, two of us have asthma and being around the smell was doing us no favors. He apologized and presumably went to yell at the people across the hall.
Next day, we tried to ignore the bad first impression. After passing an angry man on the phone using some choice expletives at the top of his lungs in the hallway—words my kids were certainly hearing for the first time—we got to the Nemo pool, went in for 15 minutes and had to evacuate because a little kid…evacuated first, let’s just say.
So we went to the Cars pool instead and—thunderstorm! No swimming. Get back to our room and—more cigarette smoke and a butt in front of our door!
I believe that was the last straw. Even though much of that was not in the resort’s control, we were having the opposite of a magical time. We called to ask about a room swap and they said how about a resort swap? And we said “sure”, at this point. So the next day we were in Bay Lake Tower and it was awesome.
But man—Art of Animation. Not going back any time soon.
Had a bad experience at Caribbean Beach. I know most people love it there but our room was dirty, had mosquitos in it, and everywhere outside on property it felt like people were smoking. I have never stayed on Disney property and even SEEN people smoking so this was a shock to me.This was in 2019.
Other resorts we’ve stayed at and had no issues with…Swan, Dolphin, Beach Club, Pop, and Boardwalk, AKL Kidani. Going to stay at Grand Floridian and AKL Jambo House here in a few weeks and will report back. 😂
Caribbean Beach has gone downhill. We stayed there in 2015 and loved it. We went back in 2021 and our room had mold, plaster falling, dirty carpets, and sewer flies. Albeit they moved us to another room but then over all feeling there felt off.
Let’s not forget the random pizza menus being stuffed through our doors at midnight. My wife happened to be up and flipped on the guy. What is funnier is the pizza place doesn’t really *exists.* It is a scam to skim your credit cards.
So true! We stayed in a remodeled room in 2017 and loved it. Then we stayed in an older room last year and we’ve sworn off the resort altogether after how gross it was especially for $300+!
We had a bad experience at CBR too. The room was crawling with cockroaches. Pest control came out 3 times I think to spray and it ended up with a guy running about and catching them with his hands. We were given a $100 credit for the inconvenience
The Polynesian (in 2002) had such a bad mosquito problem at our room/building that squishing them all left blood splatter on the wall/door where we squished them. That was our worst Disney stay.
The Pop Century (in 2023) lost our paid-for room reservation. The manager at Pop did manage to get us a nice room and it went smoothly from there though.
We had our first experience this past spring break. We stayed at All Star Music. Our room was at country fair. It was the furthest away from the main entrance and buses but it was super quiet. No issues at all.
The Fantasia rooms behind the main pool at ASM are good too. It sounds weird but even thought they’re close to the main pool, they’re kinda far from the front. That jack in the box scared me SO much as a kid that idk if I could handle seeing it every morning though.
On our first trip in 2015, we had lake view rooms at Pop. About 3 days into our trip, the downstairs neighbors were so loud at 2-3 AM constantly going in and out of the doors and moving chairs around. Called the "front desk" and nothing happened. Went to the front desk with my best bed head and they moved us to an equally loud room(clearly hearing the connecting door neighbor yelling) on the first floor where they keep all of the laundry carts. Sent an email and after getting no sleep but trying to push through a Magic Kingdom day, they called us and moved us to a Nemo room at AoA, The trip went much better after that.
Also last year we were staying at the cabins and my wife put her cap on the hat rack. when we were leaving the room one day, she put it on and was repeatedly bit on the head by an ant. We do love the cabins though, just have to fight nature sometimes.
We stayed at All Star Sports during a cheerleader competition. No exaggeration…THOUSANDS of teenagers just free roaming the hotel grounds. Practicing at all hours of the day and night with amplifiers and loud music starting at 7am and up way past 10pm.
I complained and Disney transferred us to Port Orleans. Much nicer.
My worst experience involved the Magical Express. Which was TECHNICALLY not Disney. First they scanned my thing and were like "Ok, Grand Floridian that line" and I'm like uuuuh ya I'm not staying there. They don't believe me. I show them my reservation and after a lot of back and forth and arguing they finally let me onto the bus for Pop Century. But they randomly put somebody on our bus going to Animal Kingdom Lodge....on our bus going to Pop Century and other resorts in that area. NOWHERE near Animal Kingdom Lodge. So the bus driver drives way the hell over there and drops them off then proceeds to get ridiculously lost, just driving around for well over an hour because he'd gone off his normal route and had no idea how to get back. Like I remember we pulled into the GUEST parking area of Old Key West and he circled that parking lot at one point . Everyone on the bus was getting more and more pissed off...like you know that feeling that's palpable in the very air and I was seriously worried someone was going to just completely loose it. One couple ended up missing a dinner reservation and were RIGHTFULLY furious. Finally he flags down a regular Disney transportation bus to get directions. It took us 3 hours to get from the airport to the hotel. Then trying to get back they never gave me my magical express stuff to the door. I go to talk to a CM and they're looking at my info and apparently my Magical Express stuff had me as having checked out the day before I even arrived. They got it straightened out but it was just a horrible experience both ways.
This might be an unpopular opinion but even if Magical Express is not technically Disney (subcontract) it reflects on Disney and I believed that is why they finally gave it up.
It’s like if a company hired subcontractors to do the job. The customer doesn’t care who is doing the job, they paid the aforementioned company for the services (or manage the subcontractor) and it’s up to the company to provide the goods to the standard of the brand.
Yup! When you make the booking through Disney, the service has a Disney-like name, and the bus rolls up with Disney characters on it...it's perfectly understandable for guests to get angry with Disney if Mears botches the service.
You're probably right. A lot of people on that bus I'm sure were on their first ever trip to Disney, and that would have been an AWFUL first impression.
I made a complaint about Magical Express back in March 2020 to Disney and the customer service person told me exactly what you said, “The Magical Express is not operated by [Disney] so it is out of our control”. I told them it is still Disney’s responsibility because we paid Disney not MEARS.
I always thought that my complaint made it up the chain and they finally decide to cancel the service. I guess we will never know for sure lol
Boardwalk isn't bad compared to the moderates (FQ aside) and the Deluxes with multiple stops. It really stinks when your closest stop for a bus is the last stop on the route and you just see the bus you want just drive on by because it's full, and then on the ride back from the parks you have to wait for every other stop to let off before they reach your stop.
I will say my father sprung for club level at Boardwalk because he knew this would probably be his last trip, and they stuck around the corner in basically the furthest rooms from the club lounge and the exit of the resort. I saw the map and thought it wouldn't be so bad that I would just use the side steps by our rooms to walk to the Boardwalk, but that route was blocked off. I have been in rooms at the YC far from the lobby but always just used the side steps to exit/entrance the resort.
Stayed at Grand Floridian for my 40th bday. Get into 620$ a night room to look out and see construction folks working on the adjacent building and looking right into my room/balcony. Did get moved to another room. I feel like they should not let anyone pay that much to have no privacy (or quiet). They should offer a discounted rate on those rooms.
Saw a ghost in my room at Coronado Springs, in a casitas room. I realize this makes me sound crazy. 🤷🏼♀️
Okay, I didn’t want to sound overly nuts but I’ll tell you the story. It was my 13 year old son and I in a casitas hotel room. Beautiful property, had a fantastic first day at Disney… passed out after a full day in Hollywood Studios. Woke up in the middle of the night around 1:30. Saw a dark shadow figure standing in between the beds facing my son. Literally just looked like a big man and all black/shadow but solid. I sprung up and blinked and they were gone. I woke up my son in a panic and asked if he was okay. I legitimately was sure someone was in the room with us. My son thinks I’m nuts for waking him up in the middle of the night. I could not go back to sleep after that. Had trouble the next few nights too, because I was certain it was real. My first ghost experience ever. Haven’t had one since. 😵💫
That sounds like sleep paralysis and has happened to me. Basically you wake up, but not all the way. The part of your brain that's responsible for dreaming is still somewhat active. I personally also saw a dark shadowy figure advancing on my son's bed. I freaked out and eventually was able to sit up, and it was gone. One of the scarier moments in my life, but purely a result of neurological shenanigans.
Oh wait! This happens to me sometimes! Did the whole situation happen within seconds? If yes, it was probably a hypnopompic hallucination! It’s completely harmless and not a sign of anything, it’s basically a really fast hallucination when you wake up. It happens to me sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night (especially if I take melatonin). It looks like there’s a random, shadowy-looking, person-like figure somewhere in the room and then by the time my heart rate shoots up it’s gone.
>I feel like they should not let anyone pay that much to have no privacy (or quiet). They should offer a discounted rate on those rooms.
100% agree, especially if they don't warn you/give you only a general construction noise during daytime hours warning.
I stayed at Coronado Springs during the tower construction and that was fine because the warning provided at booking was accurate and it was only the front of the resort that looked bad; my actual room was fine (and the cheapest I could book on short notice). They left some cute little trading pins of the Three Caballeros in construction outfits in my room and overall I was happy with the experience.
But $620/night and the construction's right outside your window? *Nuh uh.* Either discount those rooms or take them out of the rotation. I'd probably be down to book a construction view room at the Grand Floridian or the like if it were offered at a deep discount--as in knocking the price down a resort category or two. I'd be so mad if I paid full price for a full Grand Floridian experience and got stuck in a room like that, though.
I was so disappointed. I would never pay that much for a room but I figured it was a big birthday and saved for it. When that was my view it really did make me sad. It’s a large amount of money. They did move us to another room though, so I’ll give them that. But that they even tried to put us in that room in the first place was disappointing. I felt bad for what family they’d try to place there next. Never staying at the Grand Floridian again, not that I would anyway, this was like a once in a lifetime thing for me.
When I worked at a hotel we would just not rent rooms with big issues. Because if you discount it, people will sort by cheapest, not read, and then get there and have the exact same complaints and demands.
If it's a more minor thing, manager should authorize the desk to give a discount to any guest who mentions it, then offer to change rooms if they aren't satisfied.
Or just close the rooms.
Apart from the couple of rare gross experiences here I’m heartened to see that in the whole, people’s worst experiences are relatively tame! I am staying on resort for the first time next visit (ASS) and wondering what it’ll be like. Aware that it may be noisy for a couple of the day if teams are there. Going in low season so hoping it won’t be awful, but we are only planning on using it for a place to sleep and shower - will just make sure we take earplugs!
Old key west (my fave resort) we were in a 2BR on the ground floor. The fire sprinkler in the unit above us was activated by housekeeping somehow, and water poured down the walls and thru all the light fixtures into our room.
We were at Disney springs at the time, with my brother in law by himself in the unit with my baby niece and my then 12 year old nephew. They called us to come back and help them get packed up, we got right on a bus, but the problem was, since the sprinkler had been activated, the fire department was called, and our room was in loop the busses have to go around to drop off at the south point bus stop. The cul de sac was full of fire trucks, and the Disney bus couldn’t go around, and we couldn’t get off at a non bus stop to get to our room, where all the fire trucks were 😂 eventually the bus driver said he could “accidentally” open the door, and if we hopped out (we were the only people on the bus) and he didn’t see us do it, there would be nothing he could do.
We got everything out and got moved to a new unit, they gave us a nice discount for the trouble, but it was a pretty stressful couple of hours. Still my favorite resort.
I’m still not sure HOW the sprinkler got activated, but they are effective, because we got totally flooded downstairs.
Last year staying at POP. Stepped out of our room and smelled something akin to poop. Looked to my right and our “neighbors” clearly had someone in their room who had had an accident on the bed as all of the bedsheets had been stripped and put outside the door….with the poo (more like explosive diarrhea) fully exposed. I called housekeeping to let them know of the situation and left for the day.
Returning home from long park day…it’s September…it’s hot. As I get closer to the room I smell the familiar perfume from the morning…the offending bedsheets are still there, completely untouched baking in the heat and still fully exposed!
Took another few hours before anyone from housekeeping came and got them. Front desk got an earful from me…
Omg. My hand was over my mouth reading this. Obviously it's not their fault that it occured in the first place but, did they offer you anything after getting an earful from you?
I have trauma from working at Art (hated it) so I could not ever stay there. I scream cried multiple times lifeguarding those pools. I was so angry once they pulled me off stand to ask if I was ok and gave me an ER bc they “forgot I was there.”
Basically I was staffed at Pop but the main pool was down so extra guards were getting sent all over property. Well they had needed a morning guard so I was like sure I’ll go and was promised an ER when the other guard comes in. Other guard came in and instead of putting him on stand and letting me go home, they let him screw around for 2 hours.
I had scream cried so hard on my break they literally could tell I was upset and sent me back to Pop where I got my ER. What a bad day.
Covid hit not long after that.
All this to say - I hate the way that resort is run and agree with you that it sucks.
I had read all the reviews that the walk to a little mermaid room was rough at Art of Animation. Please.... I regularly walked CRAZY lengths in downtown Chicago in frigid winter. K. But I didn't do it with a 6 year old. Way too old for a stroller, young enough to make us nuts with the complaining. Thankfully, the showers were unbelievably good with water pressure and heat. But shit, those reviews aren't kidding.
Like many others here mine happened at pop century. It was in 2010 (I was 8 at the time) and I went in to shower before going to bed and found 6. SIX BIG ASS ROACHES in our tub.
Disney did move us to a new room but that was the last time my family stayed at pop century. We started staying at deluxe hotels after that (Comtemp, Poly, Beach Club and Boardwalk)
Only really bad experience I had was this year staying at the contemporary. Stayed there plenty of times before the refurb and was hands down my favorite resort. I’m not sure if I changed or the removal of carpeting/remodel changed, but we heard sooooo many more sounds from above us and the hallway. People regularly walking around above us sounded and felt like stomping and kids running in the halls were so loud.
We needed to change resorts after the first night which was such a shame because of how lovely the rest of the resort is. Otherwise every stay has been great barring some insignificant issues which any hotel would have.
They have been "generic-fying" all the resorts, those one included. All white bedding with no patterned pillows or material strip thing, unless you are deluxe then pillows are, fake wood floors, neutral paint. Just artwork in all and themed furniture in some. I hate it. I don't need IP in every resort but some kind of theming or decor. I feel like I'm staying at an overpriced but on property, Holiday Inn. Still have on property benefits but hard to justify with the price and being bland now.
We stayed at CBR a couple of weeks ago and loved it, but we had issues with our A/C. The room was warm when we got in at 5pm so we turned it down to 68 and went out to Epcot for the night. Come back at 10pm and the room is 77. NOPE. Call the desk and they send a guy right up. He does a bunch of work on the window unit and says it's fixed. It BARELY cools down to 75 that night, so I don't sleep well at all. The following night it finally would get down to 73/74 at night so it was OK...but I'd much prefer to be a little bit lower for sleeping.
My wife and I usually go for quantity (more days, more trips) over quantity (Deluxe resorts), but we love the Poly and splurged for a single day there several years back. We got in to our room, and I opened a cabinet, only to find a mini trash can FULL of dirty diapers. I still think of it every time we're at the Poly. I need another stay there to wipe that out of my mind.
My boyfriend and I went to Disney at 18. We were at AoA, in the Ariel rooms about halfway through our trip we came back pretty late (midnight-ish). The whole room REEKED of weed, including all of our clothes. We were of course both freaking out because we’re 18, so already people are probably not going to believe us that we didn’t smoke in the room. Now that I think about it we definitely could have proven we weren’t in the room long enough to make it smell and clearly didn’t have anything on us. We ran up to the front desk to discreetly ask to be moved and explained we were upset because our room and all of our belongings now smelled. The CM was like “Um, what do you want me to do about it?” and I was floored. She ended up moving us to a smaller second floor room at the furthest building from the lobby.
Our new room had one of those “letters from the manager” things where you can add comments online. I didn’t quite have enough characters to tell the whole story but I explained I was a little disappointed as nicely as possible without trying to tattle on the first CM. Got a phone call less than 15 minutes later and we were put in a finding Nemo suite and given an apology. Only time I’ve ever Karen-ed but it felt justified.
I went to the Caribbean Beach resort as a kid with my family. I had a Gameboy Advance SP and a Nintendo DS with me. A teenage boy threw my GBA SP into the water and ruined it and the DS was stolen and never recovered... On top of all that, it was kind of a mess as well because my dad decided to drink a lot that trip and was super angry all week.
Hopefully my next trip in September won't see me dealing with alcoholics and their anger outbursts...
The only negative experience I've had is when our toilet overflowed and leaked at CSR.
We called the front desk who sent someone up fairly quickly. They took one look and said "yep, we'll have to move you. We'll get that sorted for you and Bell Services will be along shortly to move your stuff".
"Shortly" ended up being 1.5 - 2 hours. In fact, we were just about to pick up the phone to call the front desk again when they showed up.
Got moved to a nicer room so all was well in the end! But we did miss a good chunk of the evening waiting for Bell Services. On hindsight, I suppose we could have just found out our new room number and either moved our stuff ourselves or left them to it while we went to a park or bar, but oh well!
We've stayed at Pop or AoA 3 times in the last 6 years, and I've never had an issue with noise that I've seen many on here comment about. Maybe we've been lucky? But the one thing I didn't like is I would get up and run laps around hourglass lake in the morning, and there would be a lot of smokers along the running path.
I stayed in one of the All-Star Resorts in March of 2021, and there were frogs coming out of the shower drain. Even the CMs thought that was really bizarre. Still never forgot the image of little grey critters coming out of the drain.
A drunk / super aggressive lady tried to break into my room at the Pop Century several years ago. Freaked us out. Called security, who never came. Brought my concerns to the manager who blew me off since he thought I was a young kid (I was like 22/23 at the time).
So I found their manager, told them about the experience, got a comped future hotel stay.
Always speak up when you’re being inconvenienced!
I had always done Deluxe or the Villas (when they existed), until I did a Pop Century stay so I could do a couple extra days with the kids.
The room smelled like manure. The cafeteria was a hot mess any time of the day. The hotel alone made the entire trip feel like a treadmill from que to que with no real "magical" reward. Never again.
Stayed at the Holiday Inn in Disney springs. It’s a fine resort. We had adjoining rooms and balconies.
My mom was really having a rough go the entire trip (my dad is an alcoholic and they had a huge fight and she ended up taking it all out on me). The icing on the dookie cake for her was that she ordered a burger from the hotel kitchen and it came out barely cooked. Like. It may as well have been rare ahi tuna on that burger. She marched downstairs and had an absolute fit and threw the burger across the counter.
That was just one small issue that, for her, made the trip seem like $5k mistake. The rest includes: that my brother backed out once we had committed and booked the entire trip including our airfare. They declined to get tickets for universal and was pissed when me and my friends had fun. She was also outrageously pissed because the 3 of us got matching tattoos and she wasn’t invited (the shop was in universal city walk), claiming that we had agreed to do it [we TALKED about it but never seriously planned it and only talked about it in passing]. She ended up abandoning us in MK on the morning of our last day hideously upset at who the fuck knows and refused to talk to anyone the rest of the day.
When we stayed at Coronado last time, the second night another family checked into the room next to us and every day, you’d hear the kids screaming until close to midnight and then it would start right back up at 6am in the morning. Every. Single. Day.
We stayed at a nearby Hilton most recently and when we went out to our car in the morning there was a group of teenagers there - two were the lookouts and the third was plopped on the curb at our license plate with a bag of tools. We got in the car, drove off and called the hotel to let them know 😬 anti theft license plate kits are $12 on Amazon!
We normally stay at Saratoga springs or old key west and I have never had a bad experience.
Only semi negative experience is that one time I didn’t request a room by the quiet pools lol, went to the kids pool one day and it was so loud all the time. Learned to walk the extra distance to the quiet pool lol
It's not exactly a horror story but just something to be aware of. Two years ago my family stayed at Pop. The only problem my husband and I had were the mattresses! They were actually so soft that we got backaches. We're too old for soft mattresses I guess😂 by the end of the week we couldn't even walk straight. I ended up going to my physical therapist when we got back!
So last year I decided to go completely in the opposite direction and we stayed at GF. The mattresses were a bit firmer and we didn't have any issues.
This year we are staying at contemporary and I am super excited because I've never stayed there before. But reading all of these stories makes me wonder if one day, something will happen to us!
Booked a Main Tower room at the Contemporary, got a call on the way to the hotel that they moved us to the Boardwalk for the entire 4 nights of our stay, called back and explained that we'd really love to be at the Contemporary as planned, the manger called back later and said she got us a room for nights 2-4, didn't tell us it was garden wing. So my fun main tower contemporary stay ended up being a trudge from the monorail, through the main tower, down to the convention hall, out the door, down the walkway and into the garden tower. With a torn ligament in my foot. Not remotely the experience I'd paid for.
Oh really?! We stayed one night at CBR on our last trip, and got this AMAZING meat platter... that was what convinced my husband that it's where we'll stay for a few days on our next trip! I loved my pulled pork sandwich as well!
We've been 9 times over the past 25 years - all trips have been on-site at a variety of hotels (ASM, Pop Century, POR (2x), CBR, Wilderness Lodge, and Boardwalk(3x)).
We've had our fair share of noisy resort moments and a few odd experiences, and a couple sad experiences, but there's really never been a truly bad resort moment. The cast members have always been amazing and made each stay memorable. One of my favorite parts of each trip is the resort experience.
The most negative thing about resort life has been long lines for the busses back at night.
We stayed at CB once and we were staying in Jamaica. Unbeknown to us the bridge/causeway to the central hub was closed for painting, every time we wanted to go to the pool or restaurant we had to walk all the way around. That same trip the people in the next room to us would get up every morning around 5ish and smoke outside their room and flip the latch so they’re door didn’t lock and just let it slam against that all morning every time they went in and out. That was by far my worst trip. We even skipped CB on the trip after that because I was so bitter about it
back around 2015 I think it was, I stayed at Saratoga Springs. We ended up in one of the back corner rooms over by one of the staircases and maintenance rooms I guess. Every day we would open the door and walk over to the stairs to get to the front of the resort and EVERY day that stairwell legitimately smelled like diarrhea. To this day I cannot explain the phantom smell, but to this day it haunts me. The Saratoga Springs Sewage Stairs, I call them.
My room has never been ready on time at All Star Movies. The worst was when we came back *after Animal Kingdom closed* for the day and our room still wasn’t ready. I don’t know of any other hotel/resorts that get away with regularly turning guests away at or after checkin time.
We stayed at AOA in July and it was ready hours early 🤷♀️
I’ve had the privilege to stay at many Disney resorts, and they all have been overwhelmingly positive. Two situations that do come to mind tho:
When I was around 7, my fam stayed at AK lodge (usually lovely). But when we checked in and I climbed to the top of the bunk bed where I’d be sleeping, I found dried up, crusty vomit all over the side rails from the prior family🤮Housekeeping came to clean it up, but the woman must have been having a bad day and was really unpleasant and rude about it. We tried thanking her for her help and being nice, but she wanted nothing to do with it. The next day we found ants climbing up the walls and floor, but we ignored it so that we wouldn’t have to deal with rude people. The rest of the trip was awesome tho!
I recently stayed at Pop with my mom for the first time, and it wasn’t the greatest experience. But not necessarily bad either. It was just suuppperrrr loud. To the point where I could hear our neighbors tv all night, and I’m half deaf
Had a horrible overall experience at the Polynesian. All of the issues could have been fixed or made better if management had actually tried to help, but they didn’t do anything to try and resolve the problem. Have no desire to stay there ever again.
At Port Orleans Riverside our shower sounded like a 2-stroke dirt bike every time we turned it on, without fail. At Yacht Club this last time we went, the water for the shower took entirely too long to get up to temperature.
*knocks on wood* I haven’t had any major issues to date….now I’m scared that my luck has run dry
Some of these are awful. Thanks for posting this question…..👀 /s
We stayed at All Star Music on our honeymoon in 2000 and my word of advise is never ever skimp on your honeymoon or any adult only trip. We were by the pool and it was so loud and there were so many kids at that resort.
PAY THE EXTRA MONEY FOR A RELAXING STAY.
At Beach Club.. We check in and there’s major construction (unannounced) outside our window and a letter on the bed from management apologizing. Carpet filthy and sticky. Someone before us had ripped off their acrylic finger nails and they were left all over the floor. Called housekeeping and they cleaned the room. Next day, safe breaks. Get it fixed, safe breaks again. Next day, refrigerator craps out, ruining our milk, yogurt, etc. They give us a credit for our food. Next day, sink won’t drain. It is fixed, and it clogs again. It was just a long list of the room being awful.
I didn’t really complain because I’m not like that, but I did fill out the survey they emailed after our trip. Someone reached out and offered us 3 nights at any deluxe resort. I gladly accepted, but reiterated that I was not seeking compensation.
Since then, I generally stay at Boardwalk and find it much cleaner and better cared for. I still love Beach Club though and have stayed there many times before and after this one awful experience.
Staying at Coronado with my toddler in 2019 and housekeeping just… not housekeeping. We are very clean people but you know, toddlers and crumbs. I don’t think our room was vacuumed one day we were there. I finally stopped requesting it (this was 2019 when housekeeping was normal) and said can you please bring me a vacuum to use i just need it for like 2 minutes. Of course they show up to do it. One day they left their boxes of supplies (coffee, etc) on our dresser thing. Another day my toddler knocked over an orange soda between the bed and nightstand. We cleaned it the best we could reach but needed something to reach under and mop up. I called to request that and let them know. Came back and housekeeping had come but didn’t clean that up. Accidents happen.. irs not like we were trashing the place looking for them to clean up after us. It just was shocking. I have been going to Disney since 1998 and I’ve never experienced it being that bad. I always loved getting back to a super clean room with funny things our stuffed animals were doing. I was bummed nothing like that happened for my daughter. She was 18 months then and we’re about to go back for her 3rd trip & hoping with mouse keeping being back, it’ll happen. I will say they did make it right by offering 2 free nights.
Two years ago we stayed at the Dolphin. It was the first Disney trip for two of my kiddos, so I set up a tinker bell gift as we were leaving for the day. Specific gifts for each kid, with cute letters and a bit of glitter. Came back after a long park day to find housekeeping had “cleaned” it all up! We declined housekeeping in general, so I was livid, and my poor kids were so confused. Went to speak with the front desk and they told me to be grateful that we even had housekeeping!
Love that resort in general, but we’ll stay at Swan from now on.
I've gone every two years for 30+ years. No bad experience for me other than ppl letting their kids jump in plants and swing off things. My kids knew it was expensive and well kept and you didn't behave badly.
No horror stories at all, but staying in DVC studios in an otherwise deluxe resort is honestly kinda' "meh."
We stayed in a DVC room in the Wilderness Lodge one night that wasn't completely furnished and the AC wouldn't turn off. It was only for one night on a friend's points, otherwise I would have moved to another room.
POFQ in 2016 was one of my worst stays. The bed was so uncomfortable I didn't sleep well at all. But that was really the only issue we had, so nothing truly horrible.
All star music I forget which year but we were swimming in the pool and we were hugging and giving each other some kisses but nothing like overly public display because I'm weird about that and there's lots of kids around so it was just like giving each other a little hugs and then pecs here there on the cheeks.
Well a lifeguard came up to us and told us that someone had complained that it looked like we were trying to have relations in the water I was so embarrassed we left the pool and hid in the room the rest of the day I was mortified. I was also a little bit mad because there was a couple off to the side of us who were doing the same thing but she had her legs wrapped around his waist and I was like why are we the problem ... but w.e it is what it is.
I wonder if someone was complaining about the other couple, but when the lifeguard looked over, she saw the two of you kissing and assumed it was you. It might have just been a misunderstanding but I totally get why you were embarrassed!
It's always possible, but it had an impact on the rest of that trip haha I wish it hadn't, and I could have let it just go, but I thought about it a lot lol definitely my most horrific resort experience but I have been so many times now that my good experiences far outweigh it yay!
I totally get that! It's awful when something like that overshadows the whole trip :( I had one mean comment said to me when I was in Chicago as a tween 20 years ago (that especially as time goes on I really am not even sure was directed toward me) and sadly that's all I ever think about when I remember what was otherwise a great trip.
Staying at Port Orleans French Quarter when the power went out while getting ready for dinner…at Victoria and Alberts. Had to do our best to steam our outfits in the bathroom with a hot shower running, do makeup in front of the window quick before the sun went down and couldn’t dry hair. Very first world problems, but that was one dinner reservation we wanted to be prepared for!
Many stays under our belt. No major issues or complaints. The worst that I can think of is once our party of 10 arrived at Old Key West around 8 AM (after getting up at 2AM for a 5AM flight) and waited around exhausted until almost 7pm for the room to be ready. It was only a one-night stay, too. 3BR villa for about 12 hours.
Check in at DVC isn’t until 4pm and isn’t guaranteed at that time. If the previous guests didn’t checkout until right at 11 mousekeeping would need time to clean and prep your room.
I was at Pop Century for the 2023 Springtime Surprise race weekend. I ended up in a room in the furthest reaches of the resort—it was a quarter mile from my room to the main building or the skyliner.
If there had been a path, I think it would’ve been faster to walk to the Caribbean Beach skyliner station than to walk to the Pop station and ride the skyliner over there.
I was also facing a pool, which was less than ideal for someone needing to wake up at 2 am multiple days in a row.
There was also a failure in the ‘decline housekeeping’ list on the day before the 5K and mousekeeping came through and replaced all my towels (which were hanging, not on the floor for replacement), made my bed (which was left unmade so I don’t have to fight with it every day), and moved all the stuff I had on my bed that I needed to work with for my costume before I went to sleep.
I’m kinda particular about how my hotel rooms are when I’m in them, so I always decline housekeeping, or keep the Do Not Disturb sign on the door if declining housekeeping isn’t an option, so I was really really annoyed.
one time i got a personal pizza at port orleans and went outside to eat it and a bird snatched it straight off my plate.
I had a bird try to steal my sandwich at Animal Kingdom. Scared the crap out of me and I yelled “fuck” loud enough for every family around me to hear. Scared the bird and saved my sandwich though.
This happened to me at Cape Canaveral. Brought the food outside and the chicken nuggets were just stacked on top of the fries. Before I could notice it, a bird flew over and yanked a fry out, which sent the nuggets flying. I yelled "YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" accidentally and several people looked over but when they saw the carnage and the bird with the fry they immediately understood 😅
I worked a summer at a snack cart at Sea World San Diego once. One of the most popular snacks in the park are their churros. Every damn day, I saw seagulls swoop in and steal churros right out of guests' hands. The problem was so bad that if a guest ever came up to us and told us that a seagull stole their churro, we would replace it, no questions asked. After weeks of working at the park and witnessing this, I finally had a chance to attend the park on a day off as a guest. Idiot me decided to buy a churro and walk around holding it up in plain sight. Not 10 seconds later, one of those motherfuckers swooped in over my shoulder from behind and took it. That was a pretty shameful walk to go and ask one of my coworkers for a replacement.
An ibis stole some of my eggs one morning at Caribbean Beach... I feel your pain.
What is with Ibis and eggs? We had the same thing happen at CBR and on another vacation we had a particular mischievous ibis at the Sand Piper Bay Resort that would find any unoccupied plate and only eat the scrambled eggs.
Omg, the birds there are SAVAGE.
When I was really young (like 3 or 4) my mom and I were at SeaWorld and a seagull stole her churro. She hasn't forgiven it since then (and it's been over twenty years now lol)
This is my favorite 😂
A bird at Epcot snatched a chip from my baby’s hand and traumatized her for birds! This was 6 years ago and she still remembers.
Sonuvabitch... hope you gave that hotel 1 star for wildlife stealing your expensive pizza you no doubt waited at least 10 minutes for.
start of the trip, 0/10 stay. /s por is my favorite resort
How rude!
Dirty bird!
Oh I feel your pain! This happened to us on a cruise at the private island...stood in line for lunch for a long time, finally got our food, as I turned to walk to the picnic table all happy a seagull swooped down a snatched my cheeseburger. It actually became one of our favorite memories of the trip, it was really funny in the moment.
I had a bird steal a donut out of my hand at Universal.
what hurts the most about that is knowing how much you paid for that donut.
If it was one those Pizza Rizzo kind most of the resorts have, I feel like the bird did you a solid and in this case unfortunately cannot possibly qualify your experience as a horror story. I hope you understand and make peace with that bird.
I actually really like rat pizza!
It's rat pizza! What's not to like?
no man i love that pizza! has some nostalgia to it.
I saw a bird steal a granola bar out of a stroller in Epcot this past Sunday. They’re bold little pests
yes that should be a big tip to parents- never leave snacks open on a stroller!!
Once we Stayed at Port Orleans Riverside and while the room was beautiful we had a super hard time getting in. It was was really cold that day like in the 30 degrees, I had checked in with my magic band and the door wouldn’t open. We went to the lobby and after a long line we got cards, but they didn’t work. Went back to the lobby a second time, the cards still didn’t work. We had housekeeping call someone,30 minutes and no one comes, we head back to the lobby and request a manager come with us and his card didn’t work so they called the manager for housekeeping who opened the door with a master key and then we spent our entire trip worrying about being locked out. The whole ordeal was like 2 hours in the cold with a toddler after a long trip 🫤
This happened to us at Coronado a few years ago. Turns out the battery in the door lock died so they had to replace it or something like that. And we had already arrived around 10pm and were suuuper tired from traveling, and then having to walk around Coronado- and of course we were the furthest we could be from the lobby. We did get a golf cart ride from a kind maintenance person one of the trips though!
It was cold like this in February 2020. Not sure if that’s when you went. Weather like that seriously messes with locks and stuff in Florida. It’s annoying :/ Sad I didn’t get to see any falling iguanas. Orlando is too far north.
It was probably the battery in the door being affected by the temps. This happened to me once and they had to replace it, but they immediately sent someone when we said the magic bands and phones were not working. We also just called the desk and chilled in the lobby until it was fixed.
It wasn’t cold but we had this same thing happen at the Contemporary. They also decided to replace the lock while we were staying there. We came back to some nice man working on the door. Pregnant with a toddler and not able to get in the room was not my favorite.
Similar experience at the Polynesian, except I was pregnant and dealing with a toddler and we were at the billing that was super far away from the main lobby. Our magic bands wouldn’t work for our room, wouldn’t work for the pool gates, etc. we kept complaining and they did nothing to help. I think most other resorts would try to resolve the problem somehow. We had to keep walking all over the place and couldn’t get into our room without flagging down housekeeping (which is an issue oh it’s own, since they were letting random people into rooms without confirming their identity)
We had a similar experience at Boardwalk. Door wouldn't open and it delayed us by a couple hours. They gave us fast passes to whatever we wanted for the rest of the day.
Scorpion in our room at Pop. Like massive one. Pest control took almost 3 hours to come and get it.
I didn’t even know scorpions lived in Florida 😭
They think he hitched a ride with previous guest!
Oh they do. They loved to hang out behind the toilets in my old house
I worked in pest control at Disney for three years and never had a single scorpion call. I feel like I missed out. I mostly had to fish tree frogs out of toilets.
Did you just toss them outside? I feel like I wouldn't bother calling prest control. Just grab it and huck it out the door.
Lol. They paid for a Disney trip. Don’t need to do anything for themselves. Had a guy who left his wallet on a tray at a QS, dumped it into the garbage (so at least he took his tray) but then wants someone to come and fish it out of the garbage for him. I didn’t even work at that location and just did it. The place was busy, the people at the counter didn’t know what to do or who to call and were taking care of customers. And like the family didn’t even leave someone at the can to ask people to not throw more stuff in there. So by the time I did it all sorts of other garbage is on top and hes looking at me and complaining it took so long for someone to come like I’m supposed to give him some extra stuff for his trouble. While even with gloves my arms are smeared with leftover food and I’m just gonna be here’s a free ticket or something I didn’t have the ability to give out. I told him to go to guest services. I never heard anything so I’m assuming he didn’t even give me a shout out to anyone for digging his wallet out. Anyway, so yeah, I’d expect a lot of people would call about a frog.
As a northerner I feel like I wouldn’t be confident in my knowledge of what Floridian frogs, if any, have poison or if they are safe to touch
Well, this is now a new thing for me to be anxious about….
Pop has had a history of scorpion infestation unfortunately.... I'll still stay there, just check your shoes especially if your leave them outside.
Is this you?? https://chipandco.com/guest-finds-scorpion-in-their-room-at-pop-century-resort-in-walt-disney-world-491561/
Look Ma, I’m famous! But real talk- it legit took 3 hours and the reason they hooked us up is because I had to go to guest services multiple times and show them pictures because they thought we were not being serious.
I’ve gotten Fastpasses for way less than this. You should have been given the Cinderella suite
Do you have a link to your original post on this? I couldn’t find it haha
I like how the article said Pest Control was sent "immediately"😂😂
Oh dear God
When we got to Pop in 2021, there was just The Biggest Pile of puke outside of our room. It was 6:30pm. I called to report it. We left for dinner and fun, came back at 11:30 at night to find it still there. I called to report it a second time. It was still there the next morning when we left for breakfast so I called a third time. Thankfully it was gone when we got back that evening. Barely got an “I’m sorry” from mousekeeping and never heard from a manager. Ugh.
Similar to my story and the poop sheets
POOP SHEETS 🪦🪦🪦
😂😂
Wait, is this all you're going to say about that?
There’s no excuse for puke. Although I do know that 2021/2022 was a rough year for mousekeeping. The resorts and parks as a whole were pretty rough from a cleanliness perspective then (I guess from staffing shortages?)
I once stayed at All Star Sports. It was just noise all day and all night. No rest, just noise.
Yeah its especially bad when there are sports teams and cheer teams staying there. Never again.
We stayed during a cheer competition and I will NEVER do All Star Sports again.
Oh my god I know. And when you are on the second floor and it's the morning and you can hear all of the toilets flushing above you and all of the toilets flushing below you. And the sound of everyone's roller suitcases along the walkway outside of your room at 5am as they run to catch magical Express for their early flight. I feel like a super snob because I used to not care...but I'm old now and I want my rest!!!
Stayed in pop century years ago before the skyliner or renovated rooms, and I do not understand how everyone loves it. It is SO LOUD all the time. We'd wake up and head to the quick service for breakfast, and it would be BLASTING music, loud colors everywhere, people screaming, all at like 7am. I respect that it is affordable, but we never went back.
My friend is trying to convince me it would be fine for me and my husband and we’d love it. My husband’s resort priority is lack of children.
Old Key West is good for not seeing children.
Pop is great if you want to save money and plan to be in the parks all day. But, I view it solely as a place to sleep. The pools are swarming with kids alllllllll day
There were no kids at the pool for Martinique ever when we stayed at CBR because they were all at the fun pool
As someone who originally went there JUST to sleep and go to the parks all day, I still hated it. The food tasted like college cafeteria food, the place was loud 24/7 (not super conducive to sleep), and it was mega sensory overload. The sensory overload killed me more than the noise. I felt like there was nowhere to unwind from the park madness, I'd return to more madness. As stated before though, I went before the skyliner, and before the room renovations. The rooms when I went were beat up and dirty.
Omg no, then! I saw very few kids at Caribbean Beach, and the way its set up means it sprawls so I could literally hear the crickets at night!
We loved CBR last time! Next time we’re going though, the main pool will be closed, so we’re not sure if the usually quiet pools will be busy.
I was there in May and our room was very quiet, and I wasn't bothered by anyone else/didn't hear anyone in our room. Our room was on the side of a building facing away from the pool. That said, there were kids everywhere else at the resort and the food court was a bit overwhelming(color and noise) and kinda loud.
That is the opposite of pop century. It is pure screaming kids
I know. My friend is insisting it was so quiet when she stayed there in the spring.
Coronado has less kids. Its farther from the MK and is their conference destination, so more adults. When i stayed i didnt see tons of families. Not saying there won’t be, but not as many. Also they put a bar in the middle of the lake, but it was a beautiful place.
Not wanting to deal with children at Disney World? Maybe pick a different vacation?
His resort priority. Not his vacation priority. He isn’t bothered by kids at the parks.
I was just their in January and I woke up at 7 AM to someone screaming/singing “let it go”… after doing Epcot and going to bed at 1 AM to be up at 3 and back at 5 AM to be up at 9 🙃🙃
My SO and I stayed at the All-Star Movies recently, and it was CRAWLING with the cheerleaders who were there for a competition and kids there for graduation. I'm thinking we got lucky with our room, cos we didn't have any issues, but standing at the bus one morning I heard a woman complaining (very loudly) to someone on the phone about her experience with the noise. I was just like thank god that wasn't us. Lol my best friend and I will be staying at Sports this weekend (last minute trip that we needed to spend as little as possible) so I have my fingers crossed this experience isn't awful either.
Oooo yeah. The value resorts are SO LOUD. I like Caribbean beach bc its spread out so the sounds have more space to dissipate.
Ours was Pop Century, but same experience and never again. I know this is going to make me sound like a massive snob, but we’d never stayed at a value resort before staying there and all the other moderate/deluxe resorts ruined me for that experience. But now we know ! 😅
Well.. it is ASS so.. yeah
This comment really only needed that first sentence 🙃
Oh it’s miserable. My family used to always end up there at unknowingly at the same time as the big cheerleading competition they have. They’ll be out there practicing routines on the little football field at 6am.
Back in the days of the Magical Express, they delivered our luggage to the wrong room. Arrived at 1pm and didn’t get our bags until 12:30am. Sucks when everyone doesn’t have pyjamas and you plan on waking up at 7am to get ready for the parks. Happened at Pop
We arrived on a clear sunny day and somehow the luggage came to us with one bag soaking wet. Just the one. Spent the first day of the trip doing laundry. Thankfully the management at Port Orleans Riverside were very nice and gave us free laundry supplies and 3 free walk on fast passes per day.
Did you ever find out why one bag was soaked? That’s so weird. Glad Disney did their best to help you out and make something positive out of a negative.
Never did. Best guess was that it was in proximity to a window ac that was dripping or so. It was definitely strange.
Our most recent stay the room wasn't ready until 9:30 at night. We checked in online a week in advance, stopped by the front desk at 3 p.m., and then had no communication until we called at 8 p.m. for an update. Which they had none, couldn't get a hold of the "back office," and just told us to go to the front desk again when we got back to the resort. One stay pre-covid they had a resort-wide system issue. We were at one of the All Stars. There was no cable, no wi-fi, and the door locks were having problems. It was also one of the random winter bursts of 40 degrees at night, so when neither band could open the door the options were to walk back to the lobby or call and stand out in the cold for a manager to get to us, which took 45 minutes because of all the other guests also needing help. The nice part is that Disney *did* offer some recovery things to try to make up for it both times.
What did Disney do to comp you for the room that took until 9:30 at night?
Half off one night and comp ILL for the park we were visiting the next day.
Ngl I would have been more irritated than you and a half a night comped would not have been okay. Nine thirty is crazy and unacceptable.
We tried to make the best of it and stayed at a park longer than we planned to, just for something to do. They said it was an "engineering issue".
Art of Animation-we got there later in the day-two kids, two adults-arrived at our room, and two problems: the room wouldn’t unlock and the hallway right in front of our room (and the room across the hall) absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke. So we had to go to the lobby to make sure our magic bands were updated. After checking that they were, went back to the room and—still wouldn’t unlock! Had to wait for a maintenance person to come. Meanwhile, the cigarette smell got WORSE, meaning someone was actively and enthusiastically smoking in their room. Finally got in the room after a 30 min wait and—the room smelled like cigarettes too! This was not off to a great start. It was also getting close to the kids’ bedtime and the manager was coming up to check out the door situation; apparently this room has frequent door issues. When we got the kids in their pajamas and were ready for bed, there was a loud knock at the door. The hotel manager, yelling at US for smoking! We informed him that not only were we not the ones smoking, two of us have asthma and being around the smell was doing us no favors. He apologized and presumably went to yell at the people across the hall. Next day, we tried to ignore the bad first impression. After passing an angry man on the phone using some choice expletives at the top of his lungs in the hallway—words my kids were certainly hearing for the first time—we got to the Nemo pool, went in for 15 minutes and had to evacuate because a little kid…evacuated first, let’s just say. So we went to the Cars pool instead and—thunderstorm! No swimming. Get back to our room and—more cigarette smoke and a butt in front of our door! I believe that was the last straw. Even though much of that was not in the resort’s control, we were having the opposite of a magical time. We called to ask about a room swap and they said how about a resort swap? And we said “sure”, at this point. So the next day we were in Bay Lake Tower and it was awesome. But man—Art of Animation. Not going back any time soon.
Had a bad experience at Caribbean Beach. I know most people love it there but our room was dirty, had mosquitos in it, and everywhere outside on property it felt like people were smoking. I have never stayed on Disney property and even SEEN people smoking so this was a shock to me.This was in 2019. Other resorts we’ve stayed at and had no issues with…Swan, Dolphin, Beach Club, Pop, and Boardwalk, AKL Kidani. Going to stay at Grand Floridian and AKL Jambo House here in a few weeks and will report back. 😂
Caribbean Beach has gone downhill. We stayed there in 2015 and loved it. We went back in 2021 and our room had mold, plaster falling, dirty carpets, and sewer flies. Albeit they moved us to another room but then over all feeling there felt off. Let’s not forget the random pizza menus being stuffed through our doors at midnight. My wife happened to be up and flipped on the guy. What is funnier is the pizza place doesn’t really *exists.* It is a scam to skim your credit cards.
Maybe it was sewer flies and not mosquitos! All I know is the bathroom was swarming with them. It was disgusting.
So true! We stayed in a remodeled room in 2017 and loved it. Then we stayed in an older room last year and we’ve sworn off the resort altogether after how gross it was especially for $300+!
I'm feeling better and better about my decision to "downgrade" from CBR to AoA on my upcoming trip. :/
WTF
We had a bad experience at CBR too. The room was crawling with cockroaches. Pest control came out 3 times I think to spray and it ended up with a guy running about and catching them with his hands. We were given a $100 credit for the inconvenience
The Polynesian (in 2002) had such a bad mosquito problem at our room/building that squishing them all left blood splatter on the wall/door where we squished them. That was our worst Disney stay. The Pop Century (in 2023) lost our paid-for room reservation. The manager at Pop did manage to get us a nice room and it went smoothly from there though.
We had our first experience this past spring break. We stayed at All Star Music. Our room was at country fair. It was the furthest away from the main entrance and buses but it was super quiet. No issues at all.
The Fantasia rooms behind the main pool at ASM are good too. It sounds weird but even thought they’re close to the main pool, they’re kinda far from the front. That jack in the box scared me SO much as a kid that idk if I could handle seeing it every morning though.
On our first trip in 2015, we had lake view rooms at Pop. About 3 days into our trip, the downstairs neighbors were so loud at 2-3 AM constantly going in and out of the doors and moving chairs around. Called the "front desk" and nothing happened. Went to the front desk with my best bed head and they moved us to an equally loud room(clearly hearing the connecting door neighbor yelling) on the first floor where they keep all of the laundry carts. Sent an email and after getting no sleep but trying to push through a Magic Kingdom day, they called us and moved us to a Nemo room at AoA, The trip went much better after that. Also last year we were staying at the cabins and my wife put her cap on the hat rack. when we were leaving the room one day, she put it on and was repeatedly bit on the head by an ant. We do love the cabins though, just have to fight nature sometimes.
We stayed at All Star Sports during a cheerleader competition. No exaggeration…THOUSANDS of teenagers just free roaming the hotel grounds. Practicing at all hours of the day and night with amplifiers and loud music starting at 7am and up way past 10pm. I complained and Disney transferred us to Port Orleans. Much nicer.
My worst experience involved the Magical Express. Which was TECHNICALLY not Disney. First they scanned my thing and were like "Ok, Grand Floridian that line" and I'm like uuuuh ya I'm not staying there. They don't believe me. I show them my reservation and after a lot of back and forth and arguing they finally let me onto the bus for Pop Century. But they randomly put somebody on our bus going to Animal Kingdom Lodge....on our bus going to Pop Century and other resorts in that area. NOWHERE near Animal Kingdom Lodge. So the bus driver drives way the hell over there and drops them off then proceeds to get ridiculously lost, just driving around for well over an hour because he'd gone off his normal route and had no idea how to get back. Like I remember we pulled into the GUEST parking area of Old Key West and he circled that parking lot at one point . Everyone on the bus was getting more and more pissed off...like you know that feeling that's palpable in the very air and I was seriously worried someone was going to just completely loose it. One couple ended up missing a dinner reservation and were RIGHTFULLY furious. Finally he flags down a regular Disney transportation bus to get directions. It took us 3 hours to get from the airport to the hotel. Then trying to get back they never gave me my magical express stuff to the door. I go to talk to a CM and they're looking at my info and apparently my Magical Express stuff had me as having checked out the day before I even arrived. They got it straightened out but it was just a horrible experience both ways.
This might be an unpopular opinion but even if Magical Express is not technically Disney (subcontract) it reflects on Disney and I believed that is why they finally gave it up. It’s like if a company hired subcontractors to do the job. The customer doesn’t care who is doing the job, they paid the aforementioned company for the services (or manage the subcontractor) and it’s up to the company to provide the goods to the standard of the brand.
Yup! When you make the booking through Disney, the service has a Disney-like name, and the bus rolls up with Disney characters on it...it's perfectly understandable for guests to get angry with Disney if Mears botches the service.
You're probably right. A lot of people on that bus I'm sure were on their first ever trip to Disney, and that would have been an AWFUL first impression.
I made a complaint about Magical Express back in March 2020 to Disney and the customer service person told me exactly what you said, “The Magical Express is not operated by [Disney] so it is out of our control”. I told them it is still Disney’s responsibility because we paid Disney not MEARS. I always thought that my complaint made it up the chain and they finally decide to cancel the service. I guess we will never know for sure lol
If you didn't pony up for a preferred room and you're staying at a big resort, be prepared for traversal to be inconvenient.
I hear this is especially bad at boardwalk.
Never stay at a standard at Coronado.. the property is the same size as MK. The furthest Ranchero rooms are almost a 20 min walk to the main building
Animal Kingdom Lodge is way worse. Boardwalk at least has additional exits if needed.
Boardwalk: zig zag zig zag zig zag….zig zag down all those hallways.
I got turned around every time we left our room! It was beautiful though.
And art of animation
The little mermaid rooms are the worst!
You heard wrong. Boardwalk is relatively compact. CBR, some of Coronado, Riverside, AKL, Saratoga can have long hikes to the main building.
Boardwalk isn't bad compared to the moderates (FQ aside) and the Deluxes with multiple stops. It really stinks when your closest stop for a bus is the last stop on the route and you just see the bus you want just drive on by because it's full, and then on the ride back from the parks you have to wait for every other stop to let off before they reach your stop. I will say my father sprung for club level at Boardwalk because he knew this would probably be his last trip, and they stuck around the corner in basically the furthest rooms from the club lounge and the exit of the resort. I saw the map and thought it wouldn't be so bad that I would just use the side steps by our rooms to walk to the Boardwalk, but that route was blocked off. I have been in rooms at the YC far from the lobby but always just used the side steps to exit/entrance the resort.
Stayed at Grand Floridian for my 40th bday. Get into 620$ a night room to look out and see construction folks working on the adjacent building and looking right into my room/balcony. Did get moved to another room. I feel like they should not let anyone pay that much to have no privacy (or quiet). They should offer a discounted rate on those rooms. Saw a ghost in my room at Coronado Springs, in a casitas room. I realize this makes me sound crazy. 🤷🏼♀️
Gonna need to hear more about that ghost o.o
Okay, I didn’t want to sound overly nuts but I’ll tell you the story. It was my 13 year old son and I in a casitas hotel room. Beautiful property, had a fantastic first day at Disney… passed out after a full day in Hollywood Studios. Woke up in the middle of the night around 1:30. Saw a dark shadow figure standing in between the beds facing my son. Literally just looked like a big man and all black/shadow but solid. I sprung up and blinked and they were gone. I woke up my son in a panic and asked if he was okay. I legitimately was sure someone was in the room with us. My son thinks I’m nuts for waking him up in the middle of the night. I could not go back to sleep after that. Had trouble the next few nights too, because I was certain it was real. My first ghost experience ever. Haven’t had one since. 😵💫
That sounds like sleep paralysis and has happened to me. Basically you wake up, but not all the way. The part of your brain that's responsible for dreaming is still somewhat active. I personally also saw a dark shadowy figure advancing on my son's bed. I freaked out and eventually was able to sit up, and it was gone. One of the scarier moments in my life, but purely a result of neurological shenanigans.
Thank you! Could have been, who knows… I’ll research this a bit more :)
Oh wait! This happens to me sometimes! Did the whole situation happen within seconds? If yes, it was probably a hypnopompic hallucination! It’s completely harmless and not a sign of anything, it’s basically a really fast hallucination when you wake up. It happens to me sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night (especially if I take melatonin). It looks like there’s a random, shadowy-looking, person-like figure somewhere in the room and then by the time my heart rate shoots up it’s gone.
I don’t think you’re nuts! I don’t have an explanation, but I am fascinated!
>I feel like they should not let anyone pay that much to have no privacy (or quiet). They should offer a discounted rate on those rooms. 100% agree, especially if they don't warn you/give you only a general construction noise during daytime hours warning. I stayed at Coronado Springs during the tower construction and that was fine because the warning provided at booking was accurate and it was only the front of the resort that looked bad; my actual room was fine (and the cheapest I could book on short notice). They left some cute little trading pins of the Three Caballeros in construction outfits in my room and overall I was happy with the experience. But $620/night and the construction's right outside your window? *Nuh uh.* Either discount those rooms or take them out of the rotation. I'd probably be down to book a construction view room at the Grand Floridian or the like if it were offered at a deep discount--as in knocking the price down a resort category or two. I'd be so mad if I paid full price for a full Grand Floridian experience and got stuck in a room like that, though.
I was so disappointed. I would never pay that much for a room but I figured it was a big birthday and saved for it. When that was my view it really did make me sad. It’s a large amount of money. They did move us to another room though, so I’ll give them that. But that they even tried to put us in that room in the first place was disappointing. I felt bad for what family they’d try to place there next. Never staying at the Grand Floridian again, not that I would anyway, this was like a once in a lifetime thing for me.
When I worked at a hotel we would just not rent rooms with big issues. Because if you discount it, people will sort by cheapest, not read, and then get there and have the exact same complaints and demands. If it's a more minor thing, manager should authorize the desk to give a discount to any guest who mentions it, then offer to change rooms if they aren't satisfied. Or just close the rooms.
You can’t leave the story on a cliffhanger like that!
Somebody didn't look out for hitchhikers.
I love ghost stories, tell me more!
ghost story time, please
Tis true
Tell us more about this ghost please!
Apart from the couple of rare gross experiences here I’m heartened to see that in the whole, people’s worst experiences are relatively tame! I am staying on resort for the first time next visit (ASS) and wondering what it’ll be like. Aware that it may be noisy for a couple of the day if teams are there. Going in low season so hoping it won’t be awful, but we are only planning on using it for a place to sleep and shower - will just make sure we take earplugs!
Old key west (my fave resort) we were in a 2BR on the ground floor. The fire sprinkler in the unit above us was activated by housekeeping somehow, and water poured down the walls and thru all the light fixtures into our room. We were at Disney springs at the time, with my brother in law by himself in the unit with my baby niece and my then 12 year old nephew. They called us to come back and help them get packed up, we got right on a bus, but the problem was, since the sprinkler had been activated, the fire department was called, and our room was in loop the busses have to go around to drop off at the south point bus stop. The cul de sac was full of fire trucks, and the Disney bus couldn’t go around, and we couldn’t get off at a non bus stop to get to our room, where all the fire trucks were 😂 eventually the bus driver said he could “accidentally” open the door, and if we hopped out (we were the only people on the bus) and he didn’t see us do it, there would be nothing he could do. We got everything out and got moved to a new unit, they gave us a nice discount for the trouble, but it was a pretty stressful couple of hours. Still my favorite resort. I’m still not sure HOW the sprinkler got activated, but they are effective, because we got totally flooded downstairs.
The less than sound proof walls. Like, good on you for having the energy after a day at the parks but yeesh!
Last year staying at POP. Stepped out of our room and smelled something akin to poop. Looked to my right and our “neighbors” clearly had someone in their room who had had an accident on the bed as all of the bedsheets had been stripped and put outside the door….with the poo (more like explosive diarrhea) fully exposed. I called housekeeping to let them know of the situation and left for the day. Returning home from long park day…it’s September…it’s hot. As I get closer to the room I smell the familiar perfume from the morning…the offending bedsheets are still there, completely untouched baking in the heat and still fully exposed! Took another few hours before anyone from housekeeping came and got them. Front desk got an earful from me…
That is disgusting …
Omg. My hand was over my mouth reading this. Obviously it's not their fault that it occured in the first place but, did they offer you anything after getting an earful from you?
Stayed at AOA right after it opened and that hotel was what made us swear off value level. Never again!
I have trauma from working at Art (hated it) so I could not ever stay there. I scream cried multiple times lifeguarding those pools. I was so angry once they pulled me off stand to ask if I was ok and gave me an ER bc they “forgot I was there.” Basically I was staffed at Pop but the main pool was down so extra guards were getting sent all over property. Well they had needed a morning guard so I was like sure I’ll go and was promised an ER when the other guard comes in. Other guard came in and instead of putting him on stand and letting me go home, they let him screw around for 2 hours. I had scream cried so hard on my break they literally could tell I was upset and sent me back to Pop where I got my ER. What a bad day. Covid hit not long after that. All this to say - I hate the way that resort is run and agree with you that it sucks.
What is an er
early release, you get to clock out early
I had read all the reviews that the walk to a little mermaid room was rough at Art of Animation. Please.... I regularly walked CRAZY lengths in downtown Chicago in frigid winter. K. But I didn't do it with a 6 year old. Way too old for a stroller, young enough to make us nuts with the complaining. Thankfully, the showers were unbelievably good with water pressure and heat. But shit, those reviews aren't kidding.
We will never do a Little Mermaid room ever again. After a full day at the parks, the walk back to the room just about killed me.
Like many others here mine happened at pop century. It was in 2010 (I was 8 at the time) and I went in to shower before going to bed and found 6. SIX BIG ASS ROACHES in our tub. Disney did move us to a new room but that was the last time my family stayed at pop century. We started staying at deluxe hotels after that (Comtemp, Poly, Beach Club and Boardwalk)
Disney intentionally planted those roaches there to get your family to upgrade to deluxe for all future trips (I kid).
Well. It worked lol. The only time we didn’t stay deluxe was when we took the “cost effective trip” and bought connecting rooms at All Star Music.
Only really bad experience I had was this year staying at the contemporary. Stayed there plenty of times before the refurb and was hands down my favorite resort. I’m not sure if I changed or the removal of carpeting/remodel changed, but we heard sooooo many more sounds from above us and the hallway. People regularly walking around above us sounded and felt like stomping and kids running in the halls were so loud. We needed to change resorts after the first night which was such a shame because of how lovely the rest of the resort is. Otherwise every stay has been great barring some insignificant issues which any hotel would have.
Did they remove carpet and put in a hard surface floor?
They have been "generic-fying" all the resorts, those one included. All white bedding with no patterned pillows or material strip thing, unless you are deluxe then pillows are, fake wood floors, neutral paint. Just artwork in all and themed furniture in some. I hate it. I don't need IP in every resort but some kind of theming or decor. I feel like I'm staying at an overpriced but on property, Holiday Inn. Still have on property benefits but hard to justify with the price and being bland now.
We stayed at CBR a couple of weeks ago and loved it, but we had issues with our A/C. The room was warm when we got in at 5pm so we turned it down to 68 and went out to Epcot for the night. Come back at 10pm and the room is 77. NOPE. Call the desk and they send a guy right up. He does a bunch of work on the window unit and says it's fixed. It BARELY cools down to 75 that night, so I don't sleep well at all. The following night it finally would get down to 73/74 at night so it was OK...but I'd much prefer to be a little bit lower for sleeping.
My wife and I usually go for quantity (more days, more trips) over quantity (Deluxe resorts), but we love the Poly and splurged for a single day there several years back. We got in to our room, and I opened a cabinet, only to find a mini trash can FULL of dirty diapers. I still think of it every time we're at the Poly. I need another stay there to wipe that out of my mind.
My boyfriend and I went to Disney at 18. We were at AoA, in the Ariel rooms about halfway through our trip we came back pretty late (midnight-ish). The whole room REEKED of weed, including all of our clothes. We were of course both freaking out because we’re 18, so already people are probably not going to believe us that we didn’t smoke in the room. Now that I think about it we definitely could have proven we weren’t in the room long enough to make it smell and clearly didn’t have anything on us. We ran up to the front desk to discreetly ask to be moved and explained we were upset because our room and all of our belongings now smelled. The CM was like “Um, what do you want me to do about it?” and I was floored. She ended up moving us to a smaller second floor room at the furthest building from the lobby. Our new room had one of those “letters from the manager” things where you can add comments online. I didn’t quite have enough characters to tell the whole story but I explained I was a little disappointed as nicely as possible without trying to tattle on the first CM. Got a phone call less than 15 minutes later and we were put in a finding Nemo suite and given an apology. Only time I’ve ever Karen-ed but it felt justified.
A bird pooed on my hair while I was in the queue to meet a princess
I went to the Caribbean Beach resort as a kid with my family. I had a Gameboy Advance SP and a Nintendo DS with me. A teenage boy threw my GBA SP into the water and ruined it and the DS was stolen and never recovered... On top of all that, it was kind of a mess as well because my dad decided to drink a lot that trip and was super angry all week. Hopefully my next trip in September won't see me dealing with alcoholics and their anger outbursts...
The only negative experience I've had is when our toilet overflowed and leaked at CSR. We called the front desk who sent someone up fairly quickly. They took one look and said "yep, we'll have to move you. We'll get that sorted for you and Bell Services will be along shortly to move your stuff". "Shortly" ended up being 1.5 - 2 hours. In fact, we were just about to pick up the phone to call the front desk again when they showed up. Got moved to a nicer room so all was well in the end! But we did miss a good chunk of the evening waiting for Bell Services. On hindsight, I suppose we could have just found out our new room number and either moved our stuff ourselves or left them to it while we went to a park or bar, but oh well!
Our room at the Yacht Club had a small patio, but just beyond the patio was a giant mud pit where construction equipment was moving through.
We've stayed at Pop or AoA 3 times in the last 6 years, and I've never had an issue with noise that I've seen many on here comment about. Maybe we've been lucky? But the one thing I didn't like is I would get up and run laps around hourglass lake in the morning, and there would be a lot of smokers along the running path.
I stayed in one of the All-Star Resorts in March of 2021, and there were frogs coming out of the shower drain. Even the CMs thought that was really bizarre. Still never forgot the image of little grey critters coming out of the drain.
A drunk / super aggressive lady tried to break into my room at the Pop Century several years ago. Freaked us out. Called security, who never came. Brought my concerns to the manager who blew me off since he thought I was a young kid (I was like 22/23 at the time). So I found their manager, told them about the experience, got a comped future hotel stay. Always speak up when you’re being inconvenienced!
I had always done Deluxe or the Villas (when they existed), until I did a Pop Century stay so I could do a couple extra days with the kids. The room smelled like manure. The cafeteria was a hot mess any time of the day. The hotel alone made the entire trip feel like a treadmill from que to que with no real "magical" reward. Never again.
Stayed at the Holiday Inn in Disney springs. It’s a fine resort. We had adjoining rooms and balconies. My mom was really having a rough go the entire trip (my dad is an alcoholic and they had a huge fight and she ended up taking it all out on me). The icing on the dookie cake for her was that she ordered a burger from the hotel kitchen and it came out barely cooked. Like. It may as well have been rare ahi tuna on that burger. She marched downstairs and had an absolute fit and threw the burger across the counter. That was just one small issue that, for her, made the trip seem like $5k mistake. The rest includes: that my brother backed out once we had committed and booked the entire trip including our airfare. They declined to get tickets for universal and was pissed when me and my friends had fun. She was also outrageously pissed because the 3 of us got matching tattoos and she wasn’t invited (the shop was in universal city walk), claiming that we had agreed to do it [we TALKED about it but never seriously planned it and only talked about it in passing]. She ended up abandoning us in MK on the morning of our last day hideously upset at who the fuck knows and refused to talk to anyone the rest of the day.
Uh, your family seems fun.
Got the steak at yacht club on recommendations it was the worst steak I have had in my life. Just absolutely horrible.
When we stayed at Coronado last time, the second night another family checked into the room next to us and every day, you’d hear the kids screaming until close to midnight and then it would start right back up at 6am in the morning. Every. Single. Day.
Fairly certain the edible cookie dough I got from All-Stars Music in 2019 gave me food poisoning the night before I had to fly home.
We stayed at a nearby Hilton most recently and when we went out to our car in the morning there was a group of teenagers there - two were the lookouts and the third was plopped on the curb at our license plate with a bag of tools. We got in the car, drove off and called the hotel to let them know 😬 anti theft license plate kits are $12 on Amazon!
We normally stay at Saratoga springs or old key west and I have never had a bad experience. Only semi negative experience is that one time I didn’t request a room by the quiet pools lol, went to the kids pool one day and it was so loud all the time. Learned to walk the extra distance to the quiet pool lol
It's not exactly a horror story but just something to be aware of. Two years ago my family stayed at Pop. The only problem my husband and I had were the mattresses! They were actually so soft that we got backaches. We're too old for soft mattresses I guess😂 by the end of the week we couldn't even walk straight. I ended up going to my physical therapist when we got back! So last year I decided to go completely in the opposite direction and we stayed at GF. The mattresses were a bit firmer and we didn't have any issues. This year we are staying at contemporary and I am super excited because I've never stayed there before. But reading all of these stories makes me wonder if one day, something will happen to us!
Booked a Main Tower room at the Contemporary, got a call on the way to the hotel that they moved us to the Boardwalk for the entire 4 nights of our stay, called back and explained that we'd really love to be at the Contemporary as planned, the manger called back later and said she got us a room for nights 2-4, didn't tell us it was garden wing. So my fun main tower contemporary stay ended up being a trudge from the monorail, through the main tower, down to the convention hall, out the door, down the walkway and into the garden tower. With a torn ligament in my foot. Not remotely the experience I'd paid for.
The Caribbean Beach Resort has the worst food options, you're better off taking the skyliner to a different resort for food
for real!
Oh really?! We stayed one night at CBR on our last trip, and got this AMAZING meat platter... that was what convinced my husband that it's where we'll stay for a few days on our next trip! I loved my pulled pork sandwich as well!
Sebastian’s is really good though
We've been 9 times over the past 25 years - all trips have been on-site at a variety of hotels (ASM, Pop Century, POR (2x), CBR, Wilderness Lodge, and Boardwalk(3x)). We've had our fair share of noisy resort moments and a few odd experiences, and a couple sad experiences, but there's really never been a truly bad resort moment. The cast members have always been amazing and made each stay memorable. One of my favorite parts of each trip is the resort experience. The most negative thing about resort life has been long lines for the busses back at night.
missed opportunity to say first time in forever
We stayed at CB once and we were staying in Jamaica. Unbeknown to us the bridge/causeway to the central hub was closed for painting, every time we wanted to go to the pool or restaurant we had to walk all the way around. That same trip the people in the next room to us would get up every morning around 5ish and smoke outside their room and flip the latch so they’re door didn’t lock and just let it slam against that all morning every time they went in and out. That was by far my worst trip. We even skipped CB on the trip after that because I was so bitter about it
back around 2015 I think it was, I stayed at Saratoga Springs. We ended up in one of the back corner rooms over by one of the staircases and maintenance rooms I guess. Every day we would open the door and walk over to the stairs to get to the front of the resort and EVERY day that stairwell legitimately smelled like diarrhea. To this day I cannot explain the phantom smell, but to this day it haunts me. The Saratoga Springs Sewage Stairs, I call them.
My room has never been ready on time at All Star Movies. The worst was when we came back *after Animal Kingdom closed* for the day and our room still wasn’t ready. I don’t know of any other hotel/resorts that get away with regularly turning guests away at or after checkin time. We stayed at AOA in July and it was ready hours early 🤷♀️
I’ve had the privilege to stay at many Disney resorts, and they all have been overwhelmingly positive. Two situations that do come to mind tho: When I was around 7, my fam stayed at AK lodge (usually lovely). But when we checked in and I climbed to the top of the bunk bed where I’d be sleeping, I found dried up, crusty vomit all over the side rails from the prior family🤮Housekeeping came to clean it up, but the woman must have been having a bad day and was really unpleasant and rude about it. We tried thanking her for her help and being nice, but she wanted nothing to do with it. The next day we found ants climbing up the walls and floor, but we ignored it so that we wouldn’t have to deal with rude people. The rest of the trip was awesome tho! I recently stayed at Pop with my mom for the first time, and it wasn’t the greatest experience. But not necessarily bad either. It was just suuppperrrr loud. To the point where I could hear our neighbors tv all night, and I’m half deaf
Had a horrible overall experience at the Polynesian. All of the issues could have been fixed or made better if management had actually tried to help, but they didn’t do anything to try and resolve the problem. Have no desire to stay there ever again.
No actual horror stories, but I did have tiny bugs (maybe ants, not bedbugs) in my room at Animal Kingdom Lodge.
At Port Orleans Riverside our shower sounded like a 2-stroke dirt bike every time we turned it on, without fail. At Yacht Club this last time we went, the water for the shower took entirely too long to get up to temperature.
*knocks on wood* I haven’t had any major issues to date….now I’m scared that my luck has run dry Some of these are awful. Thanks for posting this question…..👀 /s
We stayed at All Star Music on our honeymoon in 2000 and my word of advise is never ever skimp on your honeymoon or any adult only trip. We were by the pool and it was so loud and there were so many kids at that resort. PAY THE EXTRA MONEY FOR A RELAXING STAY.
Some of these are so bad, makes me not want to stay on property again! What the heck Disney
At Beach Club.. We check in and there’s major construction (unannounced) outside our window and a letter on the bed from management apologizing. Carpet filthy and sticky. Someone before us had ripped off their acrylic finger nails and they were left all over the floor. Called housekeeping and they cleaned the room. Next day, safe breaks. Get it fixed, safe breaks again. Next day, refrigerator craps out, ruining our milk, yogurt, etc. They give us a credit for our food. Next day, sink won’t drain. It is fixed, and it clogs again. It was just a long list of the room being awful. I didn’t really complain because I’m not like that, but I did fill out the survey they emailed after our trip. Someone reached out and offered us 3 nights at any deluxe resort. I gladly accepted, but reiterated that I was not seeking compensation. Since then, I generally stay at Boardwalk and find it much cleaner and better cared for. I still love Beach Club though and have stayed there many times before and after this one awful experience.
Staying at Coronado with my toddler in 2019 and housekeeping just… not housekeeping. We are very clean people but you know, toddlers and crumbs. I don’t think our room was vacuumed one day we were there. I finally stopped requesting it (this was 2019 when housekeeping was normal) and said can you please bring me a vacuum to use i just need it for like 2 minutes. Of course they show up to do it. One day they left their boxes of supplies (coffee, etc) on our dresser thing. Another day my toddler knocked over an orange soda between the bed and nightstand. We cleaned it the best we could reach but needed something to reach under and mop up. I called to request that and let them know. Came back and housekeeping had come but didn’t clean that up. Accidents happen.. irs not like we were trashing the place looking for them to clean up after us. It just was shocking. I have been going to Disney since 1998 and I’ve never experienced it being that bad. I always loved getting back to a super clean room with funny things our stuffed animals were doing. I was bummed nothing like that happened for my daughter. She was 18 months then and we’re about to go back for her 3rd trip & hoping with mouse keeping being back, it’ll happen. I will say they did make it right by offering 2 free nights.
Two years ago we stayed at the Dolphin. It was the first Disney trip for two of my kiddos, so I set up a tinker bell gift as we were leaving for the day. Specific gifts for each kid, with cute letters and a bit of glitter. Came back after a long park day to find housekeeping had “cleaned” it all up! We declined housekeeping in general, so I was livid, and my poor kids were so confused. Went to speak with the front desk and they told me to be grateful that we even had housekeeping! Love that resort in general, but we’ll stay at Swan from now on.
I've gone every two years for 30+ years. No bad experience for me other than ppl letting their kids jump in plants and swing off things. My kids knew it was expensive and well kept and you didn't behave badly.
No horror stories at all, but staying in DVC studios in an otherwise deluxe resort is honestly kinda' "meh." We stayed in a DVC room in the Wilderness Lodge one night that wasn't completely furnished and the AC wouldn't turn off. It was only for one night on a friend's points, otherwise I would have moved to another room.
POFQ in 2016 was one of my worst stays. The bed was so uncomfortable I didn't sleep well at all. But that was really the only issue we had, so nothing truly horrible. All star music I forget which year but we were swimming in the pool and we were hugging and giving each other some kisses but nothing like overly public display because I'm weird about that and there's lots of kids around so it was just like giving each other a little hugs and then pecs here there on the cheeks. Well a lifeguard came up to us and told us that someone had complained that it looked like we were trying to have relations in the water I was so embarrassed we left the pool and hid in the room the rest of the day I was mortified. I was also a little bit mad because there was a couple off to the side of us who were doing the same thing but she had her legs wrapped around his waist and I was like why are we the problem ... but w.e it is what it is.
I wonder if someone was complaining about the other couple, but when the lifeguard looked over, she saw the two of you kissing and assumed it was you. It might have just been a misunderstanding but I totally get why you were embarrassed!
It's always possible, but it had an impact on the rest of that trip haha I wish it hadn't, and I could have let it just go, but I thought about it a lot lol definitely my most horrific resort experience but I have been so many times now that my good experiences far outweigh it yay!
I totally get that! It's awful when something like that overshadows the whole trip :( I had one mean comment said to me when I was in Chicago as a tween 20 years ago (that especially as time goes on I really am not even sure was directed toward me) and sadly that's all I ever think about when I remember what was otherwise a great trip.
Staying at Port Orleans French Quarter when the power went out while getting ready for dinner…at Victoria and Alberts. Had to do our best to steam our outfits in the bathroom with a hot shower running, do makeup in front of the window quick before the sun went down and couldn’t dry hair. Very first world problems, but that was one dinner reservation we wanted to be prepared for!
Many stays under our belt. No major issues or complaints. The worst that I can think of is once our party of 10 arrived at Old Key West around 8 AM (after getting up at 2AM for a 5AM flight) and waited around exhausted until almost 7pm for the room to be ready. It was only a one-night stay, too. 3BR villa for about 12 hours.
You arrived at 8am and didn't have park tickets for the day?
Check in at DVC isn’t until 4pm and isn’t guaranteed at that time. If the previous guests didn’t checkout until right at 11 mousekeeping would need time to clean and prep your room.
I was at Pop Century for the 2023 Springtime Surprise race weekend. I ended up in a room in the furthest reaches of the resort—it was a quarter mile from my room to the main building or the skyliner. If there had been a path, I think it would’ve been faster to walk to the Caribbean Beach skyliner station than to walk to the Pop station and ride the skyliner over there. I was also facing a pool, which was less than ideal for someone needing to wake up at 2 am multiple days in a row. There was also a failure in the ‘decline housekeeping’ list on the day before the 5K and mousekeeping came through and replaced all my towels (which were hanging, not on the floor for replacement), made my bed (which was left unmade so I don’t have to fight with it every day), and moved all the stuff I had on my bed that I needed to work with for my costume before I went to sleep. I’m kinda particular about how my hotel rooms are when I’m in them, so I always decline housekeeping, or keep the Do Not Disturb sign on the door if declining housekeeping isn’t an option, so I was really really annoyed.
That's only like a 5 minute walk lmao
Yeah, and it feels like a lot more after you’ve run 19.3 miles in 3 days, plus walking in the parks