Hello all! We're back after spending 4 days at the CR Atrium Club Level and I'm going to post a quick review:
1. We arrived and checked-in at front desk on first floor at around 11:00 a.m. and was told room wasn't ready and did we want to go up and see the club anyway. DH said yes, so we were taken upstairs by Amber and showed around. They had homemade potato chips out as well as cookies and it looked pretty nice and clean, and we got to talking with Sarah for a few minutes before we had to head downstairs and get going to the park.
2. As the days went on, we thought all the club level cast members were very sweet and helpful. There's one though: David, who has the character voices nailed down and was very sociable, and we all really liked him.
2. We got our room ready text around 3:00. We requested room 4847 and got room 4846. The view of the castle and Space were incredible! Room was very comfortable, mousekeeping was great and we had turn-down service nightly with chocolates left on the bed. We also got a welcome box of chocolate (3 truffles and one larger piece with a pic of the Contemporary on it) which daughter just loved. After going to the Poly this past September, while I loved the closeness of MK, everytime I looked out the window either in the club lounge or room, I kept seeing the parking lot first and really missed the more tropical relaxing feel that I had at the Poly.
3. We ordered a Moana cake from Brian in private dining for daughter's birthday and it was delivered very promptly at 9:00 a.m. as promised and was delicious! Cake was bigger than we thought, so we cut it up shared with the club CMs. We would've shared with those on the first floor too, but blue frosting/blue cake was getting everywhere and I'm fairly certain it was more appreciative not to share with the first floor than to share.
4. A few downsides I would say is the set-up of the club lounge and the food offerings is a bit underwhelming and in that regard, I much preferred the Poly. For example the cereals and milk were in odd containers and carafes that made it difficult for daughter to get her own bowl of cereal and milk. You had to ask for the beer, none was left in refrigerator even during lunch/snack/evening hours. Don't get me wrong, there was always a CM not far away to ask for one, but if you wanted to just go to the lounge and grab one, you couldn't, and same for the beer bottle opener.
Another downside was the wait for elevators. I understand being there over Christmas there are tons of people coming/going, but we waited about half an hour for an elevator and after waiting for people to get out, the door was pretty fast to close and no one inside the elevator was helpful in holding the door and just letting it close and a few times people just pushed their way past us to get on before the doors closed. Once we finally got on an elevator we encountered a lady in the elevator near tears because she said she waited 45 minutes for an elevator and was told she had to catch the Magical Express bus 5 hours prior to her flight. 4 hours seemed excessive, 5 hours I probably would've been near tears myself.
One final downside and this is probably more on the Magical Express side than anything, but the Contemporary when arriving from the airport is always the last stop; and going home its always the first pick-up. In the grand scheme of things the hour we lost wasn't that big of a deal, but its just something that always annoyed me. And 4 hours is just wayyy too long to be at the airport and I really hope they go back to no more than 3 hours prior or we'll likely be taking Uber or Lyft to the airport from now on. Speaking of Lyft, there were TONS of minnie vans all over the place. Buses were very slow but if you wanted a minnie van, there was no shortage of them. I wondered to myself if they're cutting back on bus service to encourage more people to use the minnie vans.
6. On our day before last we had some time to kill so decided to head over to the Boardwalk as we've been contemplating a stay there and wanted to see for ourselves what the room and surrounding area looked like. The clown pool/slide seemed smaller as did the boardwalk itself from videos I've seen. Maybe once all 'comes to life' at night it looks and feels different, but I'm still on the fence on whether we're going to split stay Boardwalk/Poly or go all Poly again for our November 2018 trip. A very nice CM from the Boardwalk arranged for a runner to show us a standard garden view room and it was ok -- but the club lounge and walk to/from the elevators was just really odd to me. Long hallways, followed by a door that you have to 'key into', then more long hallways then the club lounge where they apparently close the doors when closed for the night and you can't access the lounge for drinks until they re-open, which is much different than the openness of both the Contemporary and Poly lounges. Another downside was it seems to share buses with Swan and Dolphin which makes me think during busier times, buses are packed.
So that's my take of our Christmas trip. While it was fun and daughter handled it very well considering the high crowds, I think we're one and done during the Christmas Holidays for awhile and will anxiously await November 2018 for our next trip. Happy Holidays and New Years to all!
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We've even become friendly with one of the CL CMs and stopped by AKL on our last vacation (we were booked at the POLY) just to see if she was working. As luck would have it, she was, and even though we had just wanted to say hello and give her a hug, she invited us up to the lounge for some refreshments while we chatted for a bit. I've never experienced that level of service anywhere else, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with your visit. They really do try to make you feel at home.
