Just finished our stay at Dolphin a couple days ago and here's my thoughts.
The good:
Beautiful hotel. I actually liked the tree and train. I also really liked the decorated revolving doors and beautiful starry ceiling in the entry way.
We had a great view! We were upgraded to an eighth floor pool view, and it was amazing.
The bed made me want to just stay there all day. It was nicer than my bed at home, and I loved the soft fluffy pillows as well.
I also liked all the Christmas activities available and other amenities like the in room Christmas movies. I just wish we could have stayed longer to enjoy everything. I really wanted to see Santa in his Tiki hut, and I wanted to swim, but we didn't have time for either.
All the hotel staff were very friendly and helpful. (when u could find them)
The 24 hour cafeteria was nice after coming back late at night.
We must have timed it right because we never waited more than 10 minutes for a bus or boat to come by. It was a pretty quick trip after that to the parks.
The so so:
It is not the easiest hotel to find your way around. It took me awhile to get the layout of the hotel. The way the lobby is laid out with the big tree, huge columns, and low outer ceiling, it makes it hard to see what is where. The tree looks the same from all sides, so its not a good landmark for orienting yourself, and it blocks everything else you might use. You can also only reach certain floors of the hotel from certain elevators which also made it a little more complicated to get around. By the end of the stay, I had it all figured out, but it was a bit confusing the first few days or if I tried to go somewhere new.
I could never figure out how to get the phone check out to work. It sounded easy in theory, but was actually complicated in practice. Maybe we just had a bad phone, but I never could get it to work.
The bad:
Self Parking. I will never self park here again. They won't let you pull up and unload or checkin at curbside first. Valet only has this privilege. If you self check you must carry all your stuff from the parking lot, and it is not close.
There also were not enough parking spaces, so people were parked in the aisles, making a small crowded parking lot that much worse.
Our second parking related issue was that our room key wouldn't work to open the gate. I don't think it was just ours either. I noticed many other cars with issues as well, but this was a minor annoyance as we used the public transport mostly.
The whole stay the only thing that really annoyed me was that there weren't enough people available to check in or help with anything. The Guest Relations counter was vacant every time we went past. The checkin counter never had more than 2 people at it, except the morning we checked out, and then only 4. For a hotel this size, that is just unacceptable to me when you have lines of people.
It wouldn't have bothered me as much if half the people in the line weren't there for some other reason. No one could get checked in because the people behind the counter were too busy having 10-15 min conversations about what to do at Disney, helping with a problem, giving advice, directions, ect. All things Guest Relations or the Concierge should be handling, only those counters were always empty, so people had no choice but to go to the checkin desk for help.
On top of this, one night one of the two available people was having a private conversation with two friends. This lasted for at least 20 minutes while they discussed football and other things not hotel related. The lady in front of us in line was beyond irritated with the situation. She had been waiting longer than us. There were only two other people at the counter, both handling a complicated issue for the same person, one of them a supervisor who had only come over to help with the issue. The lady in front of us finally got so annoyed she asked the supervisor to do something about the other employee who was just hanging out with his friends as we were all just waiting here while he had his personal conversation, but the supervisor didn't do anything. She looked over, then went back to work. Kind of an I have bigger issues to worry about right now attitude. Maybe she didn't realize this had been going on for a long time. Maybe he was on a break. I have no idea, but if he was on break, he should have it somewhere not at the counter, and they should have more than 1 or 2 people at the counter to begin with. Guest relations was empty again, every counter but check in was empty. We all just had to wait until the guest with the issue was taken care of. Not sure if the guy ever stopped hanging out with his friends as he was still talking to them when we left, leaving all the work to the one other employee.
Another time, we actually got the bell hop to help us after waiting 15 min in a line that wasn't moving as he was the only other person around.
Maybe we just have bad timing, but we walked through that lobby on week days, on weekends, in the morning, afternoon, evening, even the middle of the night, and every time there weren't enough people behind the counter and the other counters were empty.
This is my only real complaint about the hotel. I would definitely like to see the counters staffed better on future visits, but overall we loved the Dolphin, and once you got to a person, they were very nice, professional, friendly, and helpful. I would stay here again despite the small in inconveniences.
A lot better than below zero here, wind chills about 15 below and snow. 
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) next time! 
