Safetymom asked me to copy this report I did onto this thread so here goes:
My family of four, me, dh, ds12, dd10 returned from 9 nights at CBR. Our dates were the 14th to the 23rd. What a great resort. Its huge but we love that (loved it with CSR and POR too and missed it at POFQ). The large nature of CBR just made us feel even more like we were in the Caribbean. We were in Barbados, Bldg 16, room 1630. I really love having a first floor room, I learned that from our first floor stay at CSR and how nice that is. The resort is so quiet! We would hear people walking a bit in front of our room but not the usual toilet flushing etc. The food court was fine, I didn't like it quite as much as POR's (never ate at the Pepper Market so no comparison). The main pool was very nice but my kids thought the slide was not as good. But the quiet pools, esp. the one in Martinique were wonderful. Due to the warm weather and crowded parks we spent a good deal of time swimming. We were conveniently located between two quiet pools and the water was nice and warm at both of those as well as the main pool. The pool areas were very clean as were the laundry rooms and other common areas. Our room was really nice, we had great mousekeeping, the beds were comfy and again this was the quietest of any Disney resort I have stayed at. The staff was wonderful. The grounds and the lake were so nice, of course this makes for some sweet if not painful memories since we live in Colorado and have over two feet of snow still in our front yard with another 12 inches coming tomorrow!
The highlights of CBR for my family:
Bus service. The best we have ever had. I think a lot of people must rent cars or have their own. The resort is huge, it seemed full but the bus ques were always the shortest. We stood many times but never had to wait for another bus. The internal buses seemed to run very regularly. We didn't use them since we enjoyed the walking. I always think bus service at WDW is a gamble but this time we were winners.
Shutters. Our last day we decided to cancel our ADR at the Plaza to spend less time eating in MK and more time riding. So I changed that last ADR/Dining Credit to Shutters for a late dinner for convenience. I had no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Really good food, a bit noisy but excellent service. I would eat here again in a minute.
Room. Of all the moderates this room size and layout really fit our needs. The beds are nice and high up so all of our suitcases fit nice and easy under the bed. The double sinks were nice and I liked the counter set up better than the pedestal sinks at POR and POFQ. Also the room seemed bigger, normally I don't think the mods feel much bigger in room size than the values but this one seemed larger and more spacious.
Theming: The grounds, the pretty building exteriors (Jamaica bldgs were really pretty, I loved those) and just the overall theming really did it for us. And the lake was great.
Location: This resort seems very centralized. It was great to be able to see Spaceship Earth and from the bridge that connects the Old Port Royale/Main Pool to across the lake is the perfect place to watch Illuminations. We did that one night and we could even hear the music we were that close. Even from our great room location at BWV last year we did not have that great of a view of Illuminations.
I hope this might help anyone planning a stay at this resort. We have enjoyed varying levels of great stays at all of the WDW resorts we have stayed at. But CBR ties with SSR for my family's favorite. I would and will stay here again and would highly recommned it to anyone
Hopefully, it won't come to that, though. It is hard to justify all the money just for the room at Poly when we could get a preferred room AND the DDP at CBR for a hole lot less. Even if we could do Poly, we'd be packing our illegal peanut butter sandwiches into the park each day because we couldn't afford the food. So, long story short, I think we will be at CBR in late Sept and lovin' it! And, maybe we'll get really lucky and they'll do free dining again.
