Amy&Dan
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2004
We just returned Monday from 11 nights at Pop Century. First let me say, my family typically stays moderate. But our "kids" are now 18 and 20 and we just cannot all occupy one room anymore and call that a fun vacation! Two rooms at a moderate was just not possible for the pocketbook, a suite at AoA was quite a bit more expensive and two rooms at Pop really seemed like the best choice. This would be our fourth stay at Pop, but we hadn't stayed there since 2008 so it had been awhile.
We arrived late on Thursday, October 23rd. I had requested two lake facing rooms, as close together as possible, in the 50's and our request was met. We had two connecting rooms in Building 2, fourth floor facing the lake (rooms 2454 and 2455). The walk was not bad from the main building.
The rooms had been nicely redone since our last stay. I had thought about requesting a King bed for dh and I but decided against that, since I really wanted adjoining rooms, in the 50's facing the lake way more. I like the triple sheeted beds, having a frig standard and the flat screen tv, all of which were nice new additions since our last stay. I have to say the double bed wasn't bad, but there were a couple of nights I was missing my queen bed.
We LOVED being on the lake. I walked out our room that first morning and saw this:
Loved seeing this every day, and we could even see the tops of the Swan Dolphin, Tower of Terror and our last night discovered that we had a nice little break in the trees that allowed us to see Wishes and Illuminations. Okay, not like a view from the Poly or Beach Club but a view nonetheless!
We loved the lake path, and walked it often. Seeing AoA was very nice. Since our last stay still had these rooms looking over at the abandoned Legendary Years, this is a big improvement.
We had very good housekeeping service the entire stay. We got some really cute towel animals, I wish I had taken some pictures of one of them, it was an elephant watching television. These aren't a big deal to me normally but it was a nice touch.
The food court was fine. At breakfast, omg forget it lol. I twas insane. We tried to eat there once and just walked out. Dd ate there one morning and said she just got a Danish because it was so insane she knew she'd never make meeting up with the rest of us for a fastpasss. Now for lunch and early dinners it was good. We ate lunch there probably four times and it was awesome. Not crowded at all. And dinner if you ate early was also good. Our favorites were the nachos (at lunch only), sloppy Joe's, tuna salad sandwich, build your own chicken sandwich and of course the tye dyed cheesecake.
The pool was nice. We spent several afternoons at the main pool and the 50's pool. I love palm trees so the main pool is my preference but the loud pool games start too early and go too long so it was nice to escape over to the 50's pool which was right outside our building.
We really were surprised at how much we enjoyed Pop. Why I don't know because we have always enjoyed our value stays. For sure having two rooms was a huge plus. I don't see us every going back to one room if we travel with both kids. And to give you an idea of what makes this even better, had we stayed in one room at a moderate for our eleven nights, we would have saved a total of $78. The higher per night rate, plus the fact we'd be paying an additional $30 per night for both adult aged kids made this a no brainer.
Busses were very good. I will say that probably four times we used the AoA bus to get back to our resort. Pop busses are good and they come often but its a huge resort and the ques at Magic Kingdom in particular at closing were just insane. For some reason the AoA busses at closing were never crowded. It took us maybe five minutes longer to walk from the bus stop at AoA to our room vs. the Pop bus stop.
Here are some more photos I took around the resort.
Thank you for reading!
We arrived late on Thursday, October 23rd. I had requested two lake facing rooms, as close together as possible, in the 50's and our request was met. We had two connecting rooms in Building 2, fourth floor facing the lake (rooms 2454 and 2455). The walk was not bad from the main building.
The rooms had been nicely redone since our last stay. I had thought about requesting a King bed for dh and I but decided against that, since I really wanted adjoining rooms, in the 50's facing the lake way more. I like the triple sheeted beds, having a frig standard and the flat screen tv, all of which were nice new additions since our last stay. I have to say the double bed wasn't bad, but there were a couple of nights I was missing my queen bed.
We LOVED being on the lake. I walked out our room that first morning and saw this:
Loved seeing this every day, and we could even see the tops of the Swan Dolphin, Tower of Terror and our last night discovered that we had a nice little break in the trees that allowed us to see Wishes and Illuminations. Okay, not like a view from the Poly or Beach Club but a view nonetheless!
We loved the lake path, and walked it often. Seeing AoA was very nice. Since our last stay still had these rooms looking over at the abandoned Legendary Years, this is a big improvement.
We had very good housekeeping service the entire stay. We got some really cute towel animals, I wish I had taken some pictures of one of them, it was an elephant watching television. These aren't a big deal to me normally but it was a nice touch.
The food court was fine. At breakfast, omg forget it lol. I twas insane. We tried to eat there once and just walked out. Dd ate there one morning and said she just got a Danish because it was so insane she knew she'd never make meeting up with the rest of us for a fastpasss. Now for lunch and early dinners it was good. We ate lunch there probably four times and it was awesome. Not crowded at all. And dinner if you ate early was also good. Our favorites were the nachos (at lunch only), sloppy Joe's, tuna salad sandwich, build your own chicken sandwich and of course the tye dyed cheesecake.
The pool was nice. We spent several afternoons at the main pool and the 50's pool. I love palm trees so the main pool is my preference but the loud pool games start too early and go too long so it was nice to escape over to the 50's pool which was right outside our building.
We really were surprised at how much we enjoyed Pop. Why I don't know because we have always enjoyed our value stays. For sure having two rooms was a huge plus. I don't see us every going back to one room if we travel with both kids. And to give you an idea of what makes this even better, had we stayed in one room at a moderate for our eleven nights, we would have saved a total of $78. The higher per night rate, plus the fact we'd be paying an additional $30 per night for both adult aged kids made this a no brainer.
Busses were very good. I will say that probably four times we used the AoA bus to get back to our resort. Pop busses are good and they come often but its a huge resort and the ques at Magic Kingdom in particular at closing were just insane. For some reason the AoA busses at closing were never crowded. It took us maybe five minutes longer to walk from the bus stop at AoA to our room vs. the Pop bus stop.
Here are some more photos I took around the resort.
Thank you for reading!
