anyone stay at the holiday inn maingate?

[tinkandhook]

we are planning a trip for july 2004 to wdw, we have been looking at the holiday inn maingate becuase we have 5 kids and they offer the kidsuites. has anyone stayed there before? how is transportation? ( i ask this becuase we got a room by the usf/ioa this last summer and was told it was very close. well when we got there, it was no where near close. so we found a different hotel but was still pretty far away and had to hike back and forth every day, after walking through the park, i didnt want to walk back at all)
also was wondering what the rooms where like. pricing ect?
thanks in advance for any info.
tinkandhook

 

[Tank]

We stayed at a Holiday Inn Family Suites a couple of years ago and it was a great place for the kids. I'm not sure if it was called maingate or not. It was very close to the entrance to WDW but of course the entrance is still a very long way from the parks. The kidsuites were very nice. they sectioned off a part of the room and made it a kids room it had bunk beds and a sofa/bed so it would sleep 3. They had their own tv with a video game consule. the main part of the room had two queen beds. It was very nice to have the kids in their room and have some quiet time to ourselves. They had a good breakfast buffet every morning where the kids eat free. They had special programs for the kids all day long. They even had a movie theater in the lobby showing cartoons. We wished we had planned a day to just stay at the hotel so we could have enjoyed the kids programs. We had a car so I don't know how their transportation was.

 

[mad4themouse]

The HIFS is not the same as HI Maingate. And there is a HI Maingate East which is actually 3 miles from WDW and a Maingate West which is 1 1/2 miles from WDW. I'm not sure about the quality of the Maingates. I suggest looking them up on Expedia or Travelocity and reading the reviews there.

On the other hand, the HIFS have gotten rave reviews on this and other Disney boards and it's actually closer to WDW than the other two (1/2 mile). It is also more expensive. Here's a link to their website if you want to check out their rates, etc. Holiday Inn Family Suites

 

[tinkandhook]

thanks mad4themouse. i checked that site and it is great. we are military so we might just have to take them up on their military offer.@$119.00 anight for a kidsuite. not too bad.
tinkandhook