We just returned from a wonderful stay at POR, February 1st-8th. Here's my take on the things I see commonly talked about here.
1) Room Request - I requested mansion, top floor, away from quiet pool on my original reservation. I then faxed a request about a week prior to our arrival after doing online check in. I did not receive a response to my fax and chose not to follow up since those requests were not going to make or break our trip. All requests were granted. Yay!
2) Check-in process - we arrived around 5 pm. There were CMs waiting for people to get into the online check in line so we were all checked in and ready to go in about 5 minutes.
3) Delivery to room - I had ordered a case of water from Costco a week before arrival. It was there waiting for us when we checked in. Bell Services would have delivered it to us, but since we weren't going to be in the room to receive it, we chose to lug it to the room ourselves.
4) Food at food court - we had a couple of breakfasts and a few dinners here. The breakfasts were typical Disney food court breakfasts. Dinner was good, especially the make your own salad and pasta people rave about. The pasta was a large amount so DH, DD (8 years old) and I split it and got a small side salad and an order of bread sticks to go with. We were all plenty full!
5) Housekeeping - our room was clean, but not overly so. By that I mean that the sinks, toilet, and floors were clean but the beadboard in the bathroom could have used a scrubbing since it had lots of splatters and dust/gunk in the seams and along the base board. I also noticed some used tissue and an old playing card between the headboard and the wall when I was checking for bed bugs. Now, there's no telling what you'll find if you look between the headboard and the wall in my own home, so it didn't bother me enough to call about it, lol!
Our housekeeper kept forgetting to restock our coffee, but a quick call to them had it delivered within 15 minutes. The coffee is not good and we are not coffee snobs. It was made slightly more tolerable if we used bottled water instead of tap water, but our Folgers at home was still vastly superior.
6) In-room storage - there was plenty of room for our stuff and luggage. We had two full-sized suitcases, one large duffel, two standard carryons and three back packs. All fit quite nicely in the area behind the door with room to spare. It did not feel crowded at all.
7) Slippery spot on bathroom floor - the "marble" threshold between the bathroom and carpeted area was very slippery. All three of us slipped on it at various points but, luckily, none of us actually hit the ground. It would be easy to bash your head on the vanity, so this made me nervous.
8) Pools - we used the main pool twice. It gets busy and there are only a few chairs in the sun, which were highly sought after this time of year. The quiet pool had many more sunny chairs and we actually preferred this since there was more room to move around and actually swim or play in the pool.
9) Busses - we had good bus service from the East Depot. We stood once on the way to a park in the a.m. and also in the evenings when we left a park at close, which I expected. The longest wait was 20 minutes for a bus to DHS one morning, but the rest of the waits were 10 minutes or less, even at park close. The lines in the POR coral at the park would be long, but one bus after the other would pull up so it went very quickly. We sometimes would stop at POFQ, but mostly not. We would often get off the bus at the South depot to refill our mugs and enjoy the walk back to our room.
Overall, we really enjoyed the stay. The resort really is very picturesque and all the CMs were very nice. We will definitely stay here again if we are lucky enough to be able to make it happen!
