At SSR there are 2 booking categories standard and preferred. Preferred rooms are every room in Congress Park and The Springs. The location is preferred not the view. Standard is the Paddock, Grandstand and Carousel. You can request a specific room or building or floor. If you get it or close to it great. If you don’t get it you were never guaranteed to get it. Yes the odor of fresh paint can be strong, SSR is under construction and newly renovated rooms are continuously being added to inventory. They will smell like fresh paint. There is no way for them not to, unless they opened the windows for a month and left it empty. I will agree with you that you should not have been assigned a uncleaned room, but if you were originally assigned a room in with the Springs or Congress Park, it was your choice not to accept the room. At BRV they have rooms the balcony looks at dumpsters, guess what, someone has to stay in those rooms. Normally
DVC runs near 100% occupancy all year long at most resorts. SSR has 3 or 4 buildings from what I have heard blocked off for refurbishment. This greatly affects their ability to meet requests for people. We recently stayed at OKW. We were assigned to building 22. It is probably the worst building location at OKW. Last building on the road, 4th bus stop, next to a major road. We did not let it affect our trip. The room was very nice. There were some other minor issues, but these are different times we are going through. We were just grateful to be at WDW for a long needed vacation.
