As we approach our last night, I wanted to give a brief review. For perspective, I should do a full disclosure that we are one of the families who were moved to the GF because of WL construction. We have previously stayed at WL, BC, CR, POFQ and Pop.
We were given an amazing lagoon view room, #8125, which is first floor Boca Chica. There was a pine tree that kept this from being a 100% theme park view, but it was amazing nonetheless. You simply had to lean a little left to see the castle and the fireworks were somewhat obscured. But otherwise stunning for a lagoon view. On the negative side, my 2 yo is having PTSD from the sound of the fireworks. It was like a canon going off every night next to our room and made his bedtime slide to way later. So keep that in mind if you have young ones scared of fireworks. I would have loved it during our DINK days!
There was a big snafu with our room on check in. Our flight landed at 10:10 am, and I received a text that out room wasn't ready. But, we drove to the resort anyway and checked in just to be sure. We were reassured the room would be ready between 3-4 pm. We headed to a park (big mistake with a 2 yo on a long travel day, btw), and by the time we got back to the resort at 6:00 pm the room was still showing not ready. I'd been up since 3:30 am with a really hard week previously, so I was pretty wobbly at this point. Thankfully the lovely CM at the desk went straight to work to figure out the problem. She could not have been sorrier, but of course it wasn't her fault! There was a computer snafu, and apparently I wasn't the first.
My thoughts on the resort and the room are that they are lovely. But I also noticed a lot of issues unbecoming of such an expensive resort, even if it is Disney economics pricing. The tile in our shower had a hole in it by the faucet, the grout was filthy. The paint was scratched and dingy. The ceiling fan and bath fan squealed. The mattress was comfy at first but then rather lumpy after a bit. The linens and patio were very well kept though. What really surprised me is the ridiculous lack of drawer space. It wouldn't have been enough for two adults to unpack, let alone a family. What were they thinking?
As mentioned, Gasparilla was appalling. Just this morning we tried to run in quickly to grab pastries, and of course got stuck in a huge line bc to get the pastries you had to get in the hot food line, which never moves. Then, despite it being 8:30 am and prime breakfast hour, there was only one cashier, so that line was backed up to the food counter! It's nuts. Do they even have a manager?!
Transportation has been great. Almost no wait for monorails, which were running at good hours. We only used buses three times, but they were on time according to the sign.
The weather was awful. I'm from Texas, but still hate the heat. And reallllly hate humidity. The things my hair did...*shudder* The crowds were not at all what I expected. People can say, "it's the new 10 point scale", but my teeth. All the crowd predictors got it wrong, no matter what they want to say. I'm not saying it's their fault, but nonetheless they were wrong.
Also, my DS got a horrible goose egg falling at Epcot. I'm a first time mom so prone to being nervous, but still... it was ugly. We had to run across the park to two wrong places bc two different CMs misdirected us where the first aid was. I was so close to screaming at someone out of stress and fear. I didn't, but still. What if this had been a real emergency?
So, in short: I like a lot of things about GF. I loved a few things and really disliked a few things. All in all, I wouldn't pay the extra money to stay here. If it cost the same as the other places I stayed, it would be a top contender certainly. But as it stands, my faves still remain a tie between BC and WL, with CR second and GF third. If CR and GF were the same cost, it would be a tie between them. That being said, I do wonder if my opinion would be different were it just DH and I traveling, where we could have more relaxing down time, more signature and more evening drinks
) and I really couldn't find anything to complain about. The furniture was in great shape and didn't look worn. If I had to find one thing I did see one spot where the seam in the wall paper was coming apart - but that really is being picky! Most importantly, the bed was super comfy! The sheets were a good quality, but like I mentioned, I would have liked a comforter on the bed. Otherwise room comfort would have been an A+. There was plenty of space in our room and we had plenty of room to unpack comfortably with lots of drawers and closet space. The number of outlets in the room was amazing. One of my pet peeves at hotels is when you can't find an outlet for your phone. This room had outlets at both nightstands, on the dresser with the TV, and on the desk. I put N/A for our view because we really didn't have a view. We had a big tree outside our balcony so we couldn't see anything but a little bit of the pool through the tree. But I didn't request a view of anything so I don't feel it's fair to grade the view. As far as the quiet level - at first it was great. We were away from the lounge in a dormer room with an A/C closet on one side of us. It seemed very quiet...until a couple of days before we left. Our first couple of days we had PPO breakfasts so we were up and out early. But the last two days we had slower mornings. The family across the hall would be up around 6:45 and they would just let the door slam shut or they'd put the bolt out so that the door would slam, hit the bolt, and bounce a few times. And they had a young child that sounded like once the door opened he/she would go running down the hall screaming. We found out that if someone is in the hallway talking you can hear it as if they are in your room. Once they were gone for the morning it was fine. Also, the last night, we heard a lot of noise above us. Almost like someone was pulling furniture across the floor and jumping around until about 10:00. We were still up packing so it wasn't a big deal, but I couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from since we were in a dormer room. Either there was a room that partially overlapped our room on the 4th floor or a room to the side of ours. Every now and again late at night when it was really quiet I could hear a toilet flush, but that's common. One night my husband said he was awoken by a couple fighting really loud and to the point he thought there might have been a physical confrontation where he almost called the front desk. I am a heavy sleeper so I didn't hear anything. Overall, it was really quiet but there were periods were there was a lot of noise. 
