alanmason
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2014
- Messages
- 28
This is my second time staying at this hotel in a year. The first time I was leading a group of over 70 high school students and parents in April. This time was just myself and my wife with our 16 month old toddler.
Details:
Check In: 1/8/15
Check Out: 1/15/15
Room Type: 1 Bedroom Suite
The hotel location is great. It's about 3 miles from DTD and 2 miles from a grocery store (Winn Dixie)...for the beer lovers, it's also about 2 miles from a decent ABC Store on Apopka Vineland with a good selection of Florida craft beer.
I wasn't able to check any of these places out in April(remember, with 70 people)
Overall the hotel was great for what we needed. Each suite came with a full sized fridge, a microwave, a two top stove, and a dish washer. There was a dining room table and split bathrooms. The beds were brand new and were really nice...not too firm, not too soft. The couch pulls out into a queen sized bed and each room had plenty of outlets for plugging your phones/iPads/laptops/baby monitors(which is what we used them for). There were bathroom entrances from both the bedroom and the living room. The shower was nice. They provided you with utensils, plates, wine glasses, and standard cooking items in each room. Each room had a 32" flat screen tv(more to come on that later).
BREAKFAST:
So as a band director who comes with 70 kids to WDW/USF/IOA every other year at least, I keep a close eye on things that I would need. Breakfast is one of them...the breakfast while we were there this time was horrendous. In April, it was a decent breakfast every morning but this time was not.
Each day we would have a form of the silver dollar egg patty, or the other light egg mix. They would also alternate between silver dollar pancakes, silver dollar waffles, and french toast sticks. All were cold at around 7:30-8:15 in the morning. The protein is what made me the most upset...The first day we had sausage links, which is great, but from there on out the rotation got worse and worse. The next day we had ham...cold deli meat ham....like machine sliced ham that was taken from the package and put in the serving tray. Then there was a ground up ham that was mixed with something...nothing that any kid would try. I don't think anyone (there were at least 75 people at breakfast when we were down there every day) had that on their plates. Now this was during marathon weekend, and a lot of people were eating this(or not) as they are prepping their bodies for a long run, or eating it after they had already run that morning. It was not an ideal breakfast place, and on this alone, I will NOT be bringing my band back to this place.
COFFEE, YES....COFFEE!!!
As many of you know, you have to be at the marathon start corrals at around 4am, so many of us had to call it an early night and settle in around 7:00pm to 8:00pm to wake up early (around 2:00am) for the marathon...so coffee is a necessity. Our coffee machine that was in the room came with two decaf packets, (it's not a normal coffee machine..sort of like an oversized Keurig...you can't just buy coffee and bring it with you for this machine) so I had to ask for caffeinated coffee at the front desk. They then informed me that I would have to pay for this coffee that I was trading out and charged it to my room! There is NO WAY that I can make my own coffee in my room and they only had coffee going in the morning down at the breakfast area.
TV's:
So this is what pushed me over the edge. The weekend that we were down there, my favorite NFL team was playing in the playoffs, that afternoon I walked in early to watch the game and I got WUCF (the local PBS station) on my ESPN, turn it to ESPN2 and it was also WUCF....I counted 60 channels on my TV that were WUCF. I call down to let them know and they stated that it was happening down the street, and that other hotels have called and said that it was happening all down Palm Parkway. I went to bed and woke up the next morning, same issue throughout all of Sunday. The next day, Monday, was the College Football Championship game and it was still messed up. My wife went downstairs and complained for the third time and they assured me that it was trying to get fixed, but that it was happening down the entire street....so I called down the street to three different hotels to ask if they are having or had any cable issues and they each said no. The front desk lied to us about the issue. Finally, at around 8:15 ESPN was back on....the game started at 8:30.
Maybe it was an off couple of weeks for them, I came back to this hotel for my personal vacation because I had a good experience with them in April, but I won't be back again. I hope they get some stuff worked out before the next big tourist season.
Details:
Check In: 1/8/15
Check Out: 1/15/15
Room Type: 1 Bedroom Suite
The hotel location is great. It's about 3 miles from DTD and 2 miles from a grocery store (Winn Dixie)...for the beer lovers, it's also about 2 miles from a decent ABC Store on Apopka Vineland with a good selection of Florida craft beer.
I wasn't able to check any of these places out in April(remember, with 70 people)
Overall the hotel was great for what we needed. Each suite came with a full sized fridge, a microwave, a two top stove, and a dish washer. There was a dining room table and split bathrooms. The beds were brand new and were really nice...not too firm, not too soft. The couch pulls out into a queen sized bed and each room had plenty of outlets for plugging your phones/iPads/laptops/baby monitors(which is what we used them for). There were bathroom entrances from both the bedroom and the living room. The shower was nice. They provided you with utensils, plates, wine glasses, and standard cooking items in each room. Each room had a 32" flat screen tv(more to come on that later).
BREAKFAST:
So as a band director who comes with 70 kids to WDW/USF/IOA every other year at least, I keep a close eye on things that I would need. Breakfast is one of them...the breakfast while we were there this time was horrendous. In April, it was a decent breakfast every morning but this time was not.
Each day we would have a form of the silver dollar egg patty, or the other light egg mix. They would also alternate between silver dollar pancakes, silver dollar waffles, and french toast sticks. All were cold at around 7:30-8:15 in the morning. The protein is what made me the most upset...The first day we had sausage links, which is great, but from there on out the rotation got worse and worse. The next day we had ham...cold deli meat ham....like machine sliced ham that was taken from the package and put in the serving tray. Then there was a ground up ham that was mixed with something...nothing that any kid would try. I don't think anyone (there were at least 75 people at breakfast when we were down there every day) had that on their plates. Now this was during marathon weekend, and a lot of people were eating this(or not) as they are prepping their bodies for a long run, or eating it after they had already run that morning. It was not an ideal breakfast place, and on this alone, I will NOT be bringing my band back to this place.
COFFEE, YES....COFFEE!!!
As many of you know, you have to be at the marathon start corrals at around 4am, so many of us had to call it an early night and settle in around 7:00pm to 8:00pm to wake up early (around 2:00am) for the marathon...so coffee is a necessity. Our coffee machine that was in the room came with two decaf packets, (it's not a normal coffee machine..sort of like an oversized Keurig...you can't just buy coffee and bring it with you for this machine) so I had to ask for caffeinated coffee at the front desk. They then informed me that I would have to pay for this coffee that I was trading out and charged it to my room! There is NO WAY that I can make my own coffee in my room and they only had coffee going in the morning down at the breakfast area.
TV's:
So this is what pushed me over the edge. The weekend that we were down there, my favorite NFL team was playing in the playoffs, that afternoon I walked in early to watch the game and I got WUCF (the local PBS station) on my ESPN, turn it to ESPN2 and it was also WUCF....I counted 60 channels on my TV that were WUCF. I call down to let them know and they stated that it was happening down the street, and that other hotels have called and said that it was happening all down Palm Parkway. I went to bed and woke up the next morning, same issue throughout all of Sunday. The next day, Monday, was the College Football Championship game and it was still messed up. My wife went downstairs and complained for the third time and they assured me that it was trying to get fixed, but that it was happening down the entire street....so I called down the street to three different hotels to ask if they are having or had any cable issues and they each said no. The front desk lied to us about the issue. Finally, at around 8:15 ESPN was back on....the game started at 8:30.
Maybe it was an off couple of weeks for them, I came back to this hotel for my personal vacation because I had a good experience with them in April, but I won't be back again. I hope they get some stuff worked out before the next big tourist season.
