we have found a new "home"!!! We absolutely loved everything about CSR.
We arrived @ check in around Noon on 8/3. Our room wasn't ready yet, so we headed to the Pepper Market to have lunch. We didn't find the card/stamping thing confusing at all, but that's probably because of all of the good information we received from this thread. The food was okay... not great, but certainly not bad. As we were finishing lunch, I received a text that our room was ready!!!

We received our request of Ranchos, Bldg. 7B and were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a corner room, right next to the laundry room and quiet pool, room 7523. What a bonus to be close to both!! The room was what we expected, and we did receive 4 towel animals throughout the week. The really tickled my girls, since we weren't expecting any. My DH and I LOVED the queen beds. We are both tall (I'm 5'11" and DH is 6'1") so that made a huge difference in how we slept. Mousekeeping was wonderful... kept us well stocked and clean throughout the week. We also were just about equidistant from 2 bus stops. We typically chose stop #4 (by the Cabanas) but did use stop # 3 a few times. We had no issues catching a bus or having full buses. I think we only had to stand twice, and that was the weekend of Labor Day. The longest we ever waited was a little over 10 minutes, but that was well within our expectations. Otherwise, buses ran often.
We didn't mind the walk to El Centro from our room. It was about an 8-10 minute walk each way but it was beautiful, especially at night. We really liked all of the selections at Cafe Rix (my girls and I loved the gelato and that a small sized counted as a snack on the meal plan!). Panchitos had everything we needed, in regards to milk and other supplies. Again, we didn't need to hit El Centro too much (maybe twice), but we didn't mind being one of the further locations.
The pools... we had so much fun @ the main pool! The Jaguar slide was a big hit with all of us, and the campfires and marshmellow roasting was an added bonus. Plus, they showed movies pool side @ night starting at 8 p.m. They really had some fun things for kids/families, so we appreciated that, after busy days at the parks.
I can't say enough about how much we enjoyed our stay at CSR... we are already talking about a trip in 2013 to see the Fantasy Land expansion and renovations and plan on booking to stay here again.
Happy travels everyone!
~Kelly