I took my family of 4, me, wife, 5 and 2 yo daughters to WDW and stayed at Caribe Royale on a deal from mousesavers. Last time I went to WDW was in 1983 so its been awhile. We went there for 7 days, six nights in early May.
I choose to look for an off-site suite since I have the young child and suites with certain conveniences were preferable. I was VERY disappointed in that they made the refrigerators into mini-bars. That did not help me at all and caused me to go back to the icing down milk for the baby.
Oh, and the TV remote controls were screwed up. Apparently, they got changed with some other remote controls so the channel selector in the front room did not work for channels and changed volume. It was a laugh at first but annoying after a few days of screaming kids and walking all day.
Overall the room was adequate size and like an amerisuites or comfort suites room. I suspect that the room was not very well cleaned but it was adequate. The room was in the middle of the hall and I don't think that anyone else was staying in our wing. In fact, every morning about 7 am when we left to go to breakfast, we could hear an alarm clock ringing on and on.
Across the street is a buffet place that I do not recommend for breakfast. I'd rather pay $20 on Main Street in WDW for something that at least taste decent rather than that.
The 7-11 and CVS across the street was very convenient. Also, if you are going toward WDW but take a left at the first light where the 7-11 is, and go down a ways, there are some decent outlet malls, one of which has Disney gear for souvenirs if you are so inclined. Also, a little further down, is fast food and casual food mecca. Sorry I don't know the streets.
With young kids, I will probably stay on-site for the convenience. If I stay off-site, I would try either the Buena Vista Suites or somewhere else.
There were conventioners there but they did not really bother us since they were in another part of the hotel. We only encountered them when we went the first day to the pool. They have a fairly nice slide but otherwise it seemed more adult oriented, i.e., conventioneers hitting on each other. The baby pool was a little cool since it was between two buildings but otherwise it was neat enough for the kids.
The place was generally empty and we did not use many of the hotel's alleged amenities. I actually went into the lobby once when I checked out. Otherwise, I did not see anyone except the person selling stuff in the elevator lobby of the building I was in. If I had to do it over again with this place, I would stay at its cheaper sister hotel next door, the Buena Vista. It looks the same and I did not see a compelling reason to spend more for amenities I would not use.
By the way, this is an aside but I am putting this in all my posts. Being my first time to go to WDW in over 20 years, I heard the breakfast at the Nick Hotel was great. We thought you could just stop there and pay whatever price. At the gate, the guard was nice enough and gave us a brochure, told us that we could call the manager to see if there was some last minute cancellations, and told us how to turn around since we were already at the gate and he had to lift it to let us turn around.
Well, our understanding was that we would call right then and there. So in the parking lot, we were waiting to talk to the restaurant manager, and some old hag in a golf cart came by and was pretty ugly about telling us we had to leave, even as we explained what the gate guard told us--in front of my kids no less. After reading some comments on this site and others, I WILL NEVER GO THERE. If that is their attitude, I don't need to do business with them and would encourage everyone else to stay away as well.
