Well, I'm back from 9 nights @ YC - my second time there. I started w/ 3 nights @ the GF, my first 'split' stay, and my first stay @ GF, then moved to the YC, where my son joined me.
Room was way out - practically @ the Swolphin, on the map provided it was located in the corner that has been cut off to make the map fit on the half paper they give you @ check in.
Positives - first floor, right by an exit door w/ a nice view of the pond and trees - kept looking for an alligator, as I'd heard they were in every body of water in Florida, never saw one, just ducks and one day a crane.
Negatives - it was a long walk to the lobby and a really long walk to fill the refillable mugs we had as part of our deluxe dinning plan, thus we didn't use them much. The shower temp was initially lukewarm @ best. The plumber came (after 3 calls and 1 visit to the front desk) and the max temp he could get was 101 F. He cleaned something and got it up to 107 F. He said the max temp they set it at is 110 F due to safety concerns w/ children. I don't recall this being an issue last year when we were closer to the lobby and it certainly was not an issue @ my GF stay, I suspect because the room is so far from the main facilities the hot water takes awhile to get to the room and cools from the 110 F in transit. I noticed the plumber let the water run a long time before he checked the temp., so thereafter I did the same before I hopped in, waste of water, but a coolish shower wasn't working on my tired muscles. They offered to move us, but the room offered was over SAB w/ a lot of roof in the view so we declined. When I checked in the white duvet cover on one of the beds had some blood stains on it - I called housekeeping and they replaced it right away. The last night I noticed the sliding glass door was unlocked, as I checked each time I left and returned to the room, I found this troubling, but nothing of value was in the room, and nothing was missing, I just found it to be odd. The safe was very small (son's normal size tablet did not fit, nor would my camera fit in, only my Ipad mini fit in it) and used a key to secure it, the GF safe was bigger (fit my Nikon w/ lens on + Ipad mini easily) and was keyless, much better set up.
The weather was great, 70s for all 10 YC days (and my solo 3 GF days,) only rain was as we left MK after midnight on Sat. night, our last night.
Buses were better than many years, w/ only the DTD trip home after Fulton's dinner being bad - I timed it, it was a 50 minute wait at the DTD stop for the YC/BC/Swolphin bus to show up - didn't time the ride, so don't know total transit time. Epcot monorail was not working one night, and they had buses running from the TTC instead.
Parks - they shut down/roped off test track/Ellen/mission space area of Epcot @ 3pm for a 'press event,' which was inconvenient for us as it happened to be the evening we planned to do that area of Epcot and when we decided to head over to MK early, we discovered the monorail problem. Was surprised to see a few BTGs and saw a lot more clumps of pop warner cheerleaders in the parks than we have in past years. Both the BTGs & the cheer/football kids were well behaved - just normal excited/giggly teens.
We do the deluxe dinning as a ts lunch and a 2 ts dinner, so we see a lot of restaurants in our stays. I was amazed at how much less the wait time after check in was vs. previous years. Not sure what WDW did, but it was much improved from previous years. Only Cape May and Mama Melrose were like the old days of check in and wait far too long. It was my first Cape May dinner, as I liked the food, I'll give them another shot, Mama Melrose is out of the rotation for awhile.
We had decided before going to give WDW a pass next December, opting for some other destination, but we'll be back in 2014, which gives me lots of time to plan.
