CBR (Long)

[southjerseymom]

Just returned from 5 nights at CBR on Friday. Arrived at 3 pm last Sunday. A room had not been assigned, however, they were able to accomodate my request for a 1st floor room in Martinque. We paid for a preferred location room (room 2530). Excellent location close to everything. I would not have been happy had I been at some of the out lying island complexes - but that is personal preference. The whole complex has impeccable well maintained grounds.
Our "Nemo" room was spotless and we had good housekeeping all week. My only small complaint would be that the blower is always on in the air conditioning unit even is the cool air kicks off. We actually ended up freezing the room before we went to bed - then turning it off and using the ceiling fan. In the morning we turned it back on and it cooled down rapidly. Small complaint. No biggie.
Food Court was clean and well staffed. We stayed at Riverside last time we were in WDW. The food at CBR was well prepared but I liked the choices at Riverside better. I loved their made to order salads and pasta dishes. I am sure it is just a matter of time before CBR gets an updated food court and then it will be darn near perfect.
Great store in Port Royale. Nice for browsing. Loved Banana Cabana. Great bartenders, ice cold draft beer and sports on TV. Wish I had time to spend a couple of nights there!
What can you say about the pool. It is lovely. I may be old but I went on those water slides again and again. Pool is a good depth for all ages. I can't say enough about the lifeguards in Disney. They are awesome! I am a nut around water even though both my kids are good swimmers. But after watching those guards the first night I was actually able to relax and only keep one eye on my kids! (I think I even read some of my magazine - they must be good!!). Unforunately, the only issue we had was a "bio hazard" in the water our first night. I'm not sure what the answer is to this problem. Not to be gross but my kids wore swimmy diapers and I know that there was nothing between this floater and some kids heinie. Why some folks think it is ok for their kids to go without swim diapers is beyond me. Someone told me the same thing had happened the day before. I don't know what the answer is. On our Disney cruise my DD refused to be potty trained and she was not allowed in the big pool. I guess you could never enforce that in a resort pool - but I would love to give those parents who think the rules aren't for their kids a piece of my mind. (Maybe Disney could leave complimentary swim diapers beside the pool...just an idea!) Anyway, the pool was reopened in about 45 minutes and we didn't have the problem again. With the water slides etc. I can understand why the big pool closes at 10 pm and we very much enjoyed our late night swims in the quiet pool.
Bus service was ok...not fantastic just ok. We never waited a long time but we did see people complain about some busses taking forever to get there and then 3 of them coming right in a row. Saw a couple of guests using the phone to complain. We made out all right but we were laughing when the bus driver would bring us to a park and try to tell us where we picked up the return bus....we would look at each other and remark that it would be the furthest one from the exit!!! Again, no biggie.
All and all I wouldn't hesitate to stay at CBR again. Even DH who really doesn't love Disney said that CBR was very peaceful and quiet. High praise from him! We will be back!

 

[catbertdave99]

Thanks for the review -- we can't wait to get back to CBR and see the pool and relax at the resort!!

 

[safetymom]

southjerseymom, glad to hear you had a good time at CBR. Could you do me a favor and copy and paste your review into the CBR FAQ thread? It would help others with their CBR planning. Thanks.

Link is below.

 

[kaysmommie]

Thanks for posting . We check inot CBR in 12 days .

 

[ZImkoucl]

Had a 5 day stay at Caribbean Beach. Took a long time for everything: checking in and out, had to wait in long lines for food, had to wait for the shuttle to take us from the hotel reservation building to our hotel then had to walk from the shuttle to the hotel. Had to wait for the shuttles to go back and forth to the parks. Most of the workers at this hotel were not friendly.

They only had one bar outside by the pool and it was very expensive and when we had a storm they closed the bar so we had no other place inside to go to. You had to walk at least 1/4 to 1/2 mile to get to anything at the resort itself from where we stayed.

The hotel that we stayed in (Jamaica) was dirty and not very clean outside of our room. The food was not good and we only found one restaurant where we could actually be seated and waited on. All the other food places were just stand in line and order then you take it back to a table that you could find that was clean. I asked one of the workers if they could clean one of the tables that we wanted to sit at and she literally took a used napkin that was left at the table from someone else and just wiped off the leftover food from the table to the floor. We were thankful that we had trays to keep our food on to eat off of.

The best thing about this place overall was the big pool they had. The kids had alot of fun at the pool, but, other than that, not to much more to do. I will never stay at this hotel again.

 

[Momof2Disneyboys]

Southjerseymom ~ So glad you had a great stay at CBR! We are looking forward to another great stay in 4 months!! My DH is the same way, it's hard to get him to say that he "loves" anything Disney, but he will say that he loves CBR!! He has been disappointed in other resorts we have tried.

We also had a "floater" incident at POFQ in 2007. Gross! But they did get everyone out within a few minutes. Not sure what happened after that, we went back to the room and showered!

 

[disneynutinpa]

So...I've seen the new Pirate Rooms coming in 2009 and those look really cool. What are these Nemo Rooms that people are talking about?

 

[LoraJ]

Glad you enjoyed your stay at CBR.

 

[Surr]

We were at CBR last week as well, we arrived on Saturday the 14th at about 10am and our room was ready. We had no wait to check in, and waited just a couple minutes for the internal shuttle to our room. We were also in a Nemo room Matinique, building 26 though. We were at the pool twice when it had to be cleared for "bio hazards". Hopefully, those were the two times you were aware of also.

My DD4 loved the pool and play area at Old Port Royale. She didn't like the pirate ship dumping water, and wouldn't play on it, but did play around it. She also like the smaller slide in the main pool, but wouldn't try the larger one. I did try it, and liked it myself.

We had horrible expereinces with buses, and decided to rent a car on Monday. We arrived at the Old Port Royale bus stop 8:10 Sunday morning, hopeing to get to MK for the rope drop ceremony. We saw two internal shuttles, three EPCOT, two or three DHS, a couple Animal Kingdom shuttles, and a few downtown Disney and finally about ten till 9 decided to get on what ever shuttle was next. We went to EPCOT on the fourth shuttle there we saw.

I timed a few of our trips on my stop watch, including time waiting for a bus and go through all the stops we averaged about 45 minutes to get where we wanted to go. I was amazed to find that with the rental car it never took more than 10 or 15 minutes. We booked through AAA, so had AAA parking, which was great. The walk from our parking spot was often as close or closer than from the bus stop, with the exception of MK, where we had to ride the monorail to MK from the parking lot. Gas and rental for the car cost us about $200 Monday to Saturday, and was well worth it IMHO.

 

[Amy&Dan]

So glad you enjoyed CBR, its our favorite moderate and we hope to be back there sooner rather than later! Thanks so much for posting the review.

 

[Momof2Disneyboys]

So...I've seen the new Pirate Rooms coming in 2009 and those look really cool. What are these Nemo Rooms that people are talking about?

There are pictures of the Nemo rooms in Safetymom's FAQ thread! http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=22755512#post22755512