(CLOSED) Disney's WILDERNESS LODGE and VILLAS INFORMATION THREAD ~11/13 - 6/14~

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If both are normally part of the discount I think we will go for the villa. I'd much rather have our own bedroom and have a washer/dryer for a 9 day vacation. :-) Although... the pampering of the lounge would be nice... ah! I just can't decide!!!

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Thanks again!

We've never stayed at any of the villas as we really don't need the extra room and I don't cook or do laundry on vacation, but we love the WL as well as CL. If you can do without the washer/dryer and separate bedroom, I'd go with CL. Good luck.

This Port Orleans French Quarter gal just booked her Dec 2014 trip for Wilderness Lodge - courtyard view. I am so excited to do a holiday trip and wanted to be closer to the MK during this time. Hoping to get some great tips from this thread and soooo looking forward to staying there. I am have been thinking about it for a few years and finally made the step! :cloud9:

Congrats on booking the WL. You are going to love the WL as the resort is beautiful any time of year, but especially so during the holidays :santa:.

Just had the most winderful werk at WL CL..first off check in...right up stairs from the bus with someone waiting to greet you.

Loved getting snacks and drinks all day in the lounge and the staff amazing. Grace is my daughters new big sister. Any q you have they help. I can not say enough about them.

Glad you had a great stay :).

4 more sleeps!! Getting the clothes rounded up for packing...

Here's hoping the WL is ready for us!!:cool1:

Have a great trip...the WL is a great resort :wizard:.
 
...Villa:
You will get a master bedroom with a king bed, a bathroom with an oversize whirlpool bath, a walk in closet, a glassed in shower, and two sets of sinks, one in the section of the bathroom that has the tub and a second sink in the section with the shower and toilet. You will also have a full kitchen and washer/dryer. The living room has a sofa bed and there is a table and chairs for dining. There will be two TV's. I think there will be two balconies, too, in most of the villas, one for the master and one for the living room. Most of the villas have a view of the woods.

Club level:
I believe it is a standard room size with either two queens or a queen and bunk beds. The rooms all have enclosed balconies, unless you get a deluxe room. The biggest benefit to club level is the lounge.

So you would just have to decide which type of vacation you prefer. :)

Only OKW has full sized washer and dryer. All the others have stackables, so not full sized. In a one bedroom, there is sometimes no balcony off the bedroom, just the living room. The sleeper sofa in the living room is queen sized.

The one bedroom is worth it for the king sized bed alone.
 
Here is what I posted on the March thread when someone asked for suggestions:

It is hard to schedule the fp+'s. We were there in the first week of December and ended up using only a few of the original fp+ reservations. Test Track and TSMM were two of the ones that we made sure not to miss. Most of the time we decided not to go to the parks I had scheduled or not to go on the rides I had reserved. In fact, we didn't go on too many rides at all on that trip. We had the best time, though, maybe because it was Christmas and there was plenty to do there without worrying about the rides.

Here was/is my strategy:

1. reserve fp+'s for the most crowded rides, the ones they call the e-ticket rides, near the times you have an ADR

2. since most rides are walk-ons first thing in the morning, I made all my fp+'s for late afternoon and evening. When we used a fp+ in the evening, the fp line was empty. The fp return lines tend to be very long in the mornings because so many people schedule them for mornings.

3. I used the crowd calendars to get an idea of which parks to do that day, then scheduled the fp+ for that park

4. It is very easy to change times and attractions while you are in the park for most of the rides, except the e-ticket ones. Try not to miss your fp+ reservation for those few rides, because it will be hard to reschedule them. Most of the other rides are easy to reschedule. We were able to reschedule a fp+ for Buzz Lightyear and walk on the ride five minutes later, bypassing a 25 minute standby line.

Other things I learned:

1. if a ride that you had a fp+ for goes down, you can get in the fp return line for another ride, just tell the CM that your original ride is down. We had a fp+ for BMRR which was down when we went to it. We were able to ride Haunted Mansion and still reschedule the BMRR for another ride.

2. If you miss a fp+ reservation you can reschedule it for later that day. You don't lose your chance to have three fp+ reservations in a day. They do expire the next day, though, so you have to use them that day.

3. If you decide to cancel your fp+'s at one park in order to go to another park at the last minute, while riding the bus in, or something like that, you might have to wait until you are in the park before you can schedule new ones. We cancelled our HS fp+'s while riding the boat to MK. The app wouldn't let me make fp+'s for MK until after I had gotten into the park.

If the app doesn't seem to want to do what you want, like schedule a fp+, just shut it down, wait awhile, then go back in. Sometimes databases need to reset or record the data. I saved myself a lot of time and worry by just closing down the program for a short time rather than trying to fight with it. My MB suddenly refused to work on a purchase and to open our resort room. I just waited a few hours and then it magically started to work again. .:)

Thanks!! I copied and pasted this into my FP+MB doc. Do you use the Unofficial Guide/Lines app for the Crowd Calendar? We have a WDW newbie going with us on this trip, so I have to do a bit more planning than I would normally do. Between the new FP+, new cancellation policy for ADRs at all TS ( which would cost us $50.00), and touring with 2 new people (1 a newbie, the other has only gone once), this trip is going to require more effort on my part as chief planner. :)
Thanks again for your help! Now I am just waiting to hear the dates for the villas refurb and hoping that won't affect us!
 
Thanks!! I copied and pasted this into my FP+MB doc. Do you use the Unofficial Guide/Lines app for the Crowd Calendar? We have a WDW newbie going with us on this trip, so I have to do a bit more planning than I would normally do.

When we were at WDW the first week of December I spent a lot of time playing with the MDE app on my iPhone. I'm one of those people who likes to know how things work, so I was making and changing fp+'s while we were on the buses, in the parks, even in line. We got in one fp line and I scheduled the fp+ for that ride while I waited to get to the front of the line.

I used the website www.easywdw.com for the crowd calendar. He has a pretty basic formula that is really just avoiding the parks that have EMH and avoiding MK on Saturdays and Mondays. Then when we are in the parks I use the wait times on the MDE app to tell me which rides are crowded. It works out fine and it is free. :)
 

Thanks so much for the FP+ tips!!! Made my reservations yesterday, but I will be making a few changes!!!!
 
We leave on Friday, and I honestly don't know how I will make it through work this week (thank goodness for a holiday on Wednesday)! :)

Because of holiday travel, we haven't packed a thing, so I think this week will be busy! I will try to provide some updates and pictures while we are at the lodge!
 
We are leaving in about 4 hours, driving g for 6 and then spend the night in a hotel right outside Orlando only to wake up, drive 20 minutes to arrive at the happiest place on earth!!!

I have planned, counted days like crazy, planned more and its FINALLY here

:cheer2::cheer2::cheer2::cheer2:
 
We leave on Friday, and I honestly don't know how I will make it through work this week (thank goodness for a holiday on Wednesday)! :)

Because of holiday travel, we haven't packed a thing, so I think this week will be busy! I will try to provide some updates and pictures while we are at the lodge!

I hear you!

We drive down to Port Canaveral on Wednesday and we just started packing. We need to pack for the 1-night at Port Canaveral, 3 nights on the cruise and 7 nights at WDW. I'm playing luggage tetris.

Plus packing for a winter trip is hard! I need to bring stuff for 78 degrees and for 48 degrees. Not fun.
 
Wishes of safe travels to all of you getting ready to head to WDW and for those of you getting ready to go home.
 
Ok... so thanks to all of your help and information on this board I think we are set to book WL CL in July for 8 nights!!!!!!!!! This will be our first stay at the WL! Super excited!!

Are there cabanas by the pool to book? It doesn't look like it from most pictures I have seen but I just want to be sure. Thanks!
 
Ok... so thanks to all of your help and information on this board I think we are set to book WL CL in July for 8 nights!!!!!!!!! This will be our first stay at the WL! Super excited!!

Are there cabanas by the pool to book? It doesn't look like it from most pictures I have seen but I just want to be sure. Thanks!

Congrats!!! You won't regret it! :thumbsup2

No cabanas currently offered at WL though.
 
Congrats!!! You won't regret it! :thumbsup2

No cabanas currently offered at WL though.

Thanks! I didn't think that there were but I would've hated to have missed out on them if there are!

I just have one other question. Can you view Wishes from the lounge? Do they have the music? If not, can you watch it from the beach? We are just used to Poly CL and the experiences of watching it there... wasn't sure if it was similar at WL. Thanks!
 
Thanks! I didn't think that there were but I would've hated to have missed out on them if there are!

I just have one other question. Can you view Wishes from the lounge? Do they have the music? If not, can you watch it from the beach? We are just used to Poly CL and the experiences of watching it there... wasn't sure if it was similar at WL. Thanks!

No wishes from the lounge, but you can see the EWP. No music though. The lounge faces out towards the courtyard so viewing fireworks would be difficult, but you may get a room with a "castle view" like we had and you can see the fireworks. We were in room 7042 and also found that if you go down to the end of the hall (away from the lounge) and open the shutters of the window at the end of the hall, you get a really cool view of Wishes. :love:
 
No wishes from the lounge, but you can see the EWP. No music though. The lounge faces out towards the courtyard so viewing fireworks would be difficult, but you may get a room with a "castle view" like we had and you can see the fireworks. We were in room 7042 and also found that if you go down to the end of the hall (away from the lounge) and open the shutters of the window at the end of the hall, you get a really cool view of Wishes. :love:

Or you can go to the roof with a park ranger during wishes and purpose like I did :)
 
Thanks! I didn't think that there were but I would've hated to have missed out on them if there are!

I just have one other question. Can you view Wishes from the lounge? Do they have the music? If not, can you watch it from the beach? We are just used to Poly CL and the experiences of watching it there... wasn't sure if it was similar at WL. Thanks!

We used to stay at the Polynesian when our DD was young (and the prices were high, but not out of reach!). We loved the large beachfront there; my DD played in the sand while we got to relax. The WL's beachfront is smaller and the angle towards the MK is different than the Polynesian. It is like you are viewing around a corner instead of straight on. But there are so many things about the WL that we have come to love over the years that more than make up for what we may have missed at the Poly. There are many similarities, too. WL has themed music that you can re-create at home to re-live your stay. (During our Poly years I bought a few Hawaiian slack key guitar CDs!) It has the feel of being somewhere totally different than a theme park. It has that relaxing boat ride to and from MK. And it has one thing the Poly doesn't have: everything is under one roof, so no walks in the rain to get your morning coffee! I hope you come to love it as much as we have!

When we were at WDW the first week of December I spent a lot of time playing with the MDE app on my iPhone. I'm one of those people who likes to know how things work, so I was making and changing fp+'s while we were on the buses, in the parks, even in line. We got in one fp line and I scheduled the fp+ for that ride while I waited to get to the front of the line.

I used the website www.easywdw.com for the crowd calendar. He has a pretty basic formula that is really just avoiding the parks that have EMH and avoiding MK on Saturdays and Mondays. Then when we are in the parks I use the wait times on the MDE app to tell me which rides are crowded. It works out fine and it is free. :)

Thanks wood nymph! By the time we go, I think regular FP will be gone, but mid-August touring should allow us a bit more flexibility with shorter stand-by lines in the early morning and late evenings, combined with FP+. Like you, I want to feel comfortable with the technology by the end of our first day. Thanks for all your valuable info and insights!


KOOK- I was considering CA Grill as one of our splurge dinners, so I am looking forward to your review. I want to be very careful about where we spend money on food- we will be a party of 5 this trip! With the new policy, I am going to "plan" more QS than TS anyhow, but I definitely want a few nice sit-downs and we have wonderful memories of eating there and watching the fireworks. Hope your trip has been very magical!!
 
We used to stay at the Polynesian when our DD was young (and the prices were high, but not out of reach!). We loved the large beachfront there; my DD played in the sand while we got to relax. The WL's beachfront is smaller and the angle towards the MK is different than the Polynesian. It is like you are viewing around a corner instead of straight on. But there are so many things about the WL that we have come to love over the years that more than make up for what we may have missed at the Poly. There are many similarities, too. WL has themed music that you can re-create at home to re-live your stay. (During our Poly years I bought a few Hawaiian slack key guitar CDs!) It has the feel of being somewhere totally different than a theme park. It has that relaxing boat ride to and from MK. And it has one thing the Poly doesn't have: everything is under one roof, so no walks in the rain to get your morning coffee! I hope you come to love it as much as we have!

Thanks for understanding! We love the theming at the Poly (having gone to Hawaii while pregnant with DD3 it holds a special place in my heart) - and I love the idea of escaping all when at the resort. We plan to spend lots of time swimming and exploring the WL - there are so many similarities and even some additions to the Poly - excited to try out the playground and the splash area for DD3 - hoping she may even go to the Kid's Club one night so that DH and I could go on a date! I have a really good feeling about WL CL - now I just want to learn everything in the next 6 months! :-)
 
If I wanted to request deluxe room on 6th floor, is there a certain room number that would have a good courtyard view?
 
Just booked our first WL stay, March 17th-22nd. We booked a Courtyard View at a great price with our military discount. Thank you for all of the great info in this thread!
 
FP+ selections made and online check in complete! Yay! I can't believe it will be only 61 short days until our first stay at the VWL. Decided on "near elevator" and "higher floor" for room preference as part of online checkin. Thanks to all the great info here! Super excited!!!

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR, LODGERS!



I have so much catching up to do, Photobucket uploading, TR writing…We had the most wonderful Christmas at WL and the OFC and we hope to book soon for next Christmas. I wish all of you, posters and lurkers alike, a very happy and healthy 2014.​
 
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