Are the slippers supposed to be available in every CL room? If so I will know to request them if they are not in the room during our BWI CL stay next month.
Also, is there supposed to be a welcome gift in CL rooms?
I am asking because neither of these was offered with our Jambo CL stay this past April, but if they are part of the package I will be sure to ask.
I don't pay attention to slippers, but we usually get a box of chocolates. My most recent AKL stay was not CL, I don't recall if we got any. I remember getting chocolates at WL, CR, and GF.
We had an odd experience at GF. The first day we got turn down, including chocolates on the pillow, but then we did not get room service the next day, or turn down any other days. Room was serviced all of our other days though.
Over at Portofino CL, we got room service every other day.
We all agreed the food at Portofino was better quality than GF. The pastries were better. the fruit was slightly better at GF, but at both resorts we saw less than ideal fruit. Glad to see berries at GF, but some were not in great shape. Most the fruit at Porto was excellent quality, but the selection was watermelon, melon, pineapple. and they had a small bowl of berries every morning by the yogurt. they also had some sometimes questionable looking bananas. Other times the bananas were fine.
Porto has maybe a smaller selection of desserts, but everything we tried was very good! Nice cannoli! One downside is their desserts close at 9pm, so the timing is a bit tight to get back from the parks before the lounge closes.
Porto puts out a nice salad every evening. I normally go for the espresso machine offerings, but Portofino serves excellent regular coffee! It was really good. The milk there was also really good. I'm not sure what was so great about it, but it was very good milk.
For water, we like the dispenser at GF, while all the Universal CL's give out bottled water. I did not recognize the brand, but it was decent water. We had to ask for reusable bottles at GF to get them. We happened to see someone else with bottles, or we would not thought to ask. Porto also had a rotation of chilled lemon or orange water. They also have some out by the pool, and in the lobby with cups. GF does not.
Staff at both was nice enough, but mostly we did not interact with them as much as on prior stays. At Porto, they do a quick spot check when you enter the lounge now. (check your name/look up your reservation). Bell staff at Porto was top notch. They are however, doing major repainting at Porto right now. It was kinda neat to see the buildings transformed by the workers though as they added paint details to the buildings while we were in the parks. The boat captains at Porto were also very nice!
The Porto lounge has a nice bathroom. Royal Pacific also has one, but I don't think HRH does. I don't think GF has one, and our room was on the 3rd floor, so going back to the room was a bit of pain. At check-in, I asked CM if our room was near the lounge. She turned bright red, then tried to tell me it was, "just a short elevator ride away." While I think some rooms are further away, I would not describe our room as close to the lounge at all. So that was a bit annoying. We had one of the rooms that faces towards the main GF pool/ the Mad Hatter splash pad. Not the best room, but I liked the layout. We had a small table with a bench near the door. We like to have a place to put things when we get back to the room, so the table was handy. On a prior non CL stay at GF, we did not have that table, but I think the other room was slightly larger.
On check out day, we accidentally left some small cold packs in the fridge, on the tiny top shelf. I realized I'd left them about an hour after we left the room. CM's were nice, but they could not enter room. They said they would check again and email me about the ice packs plus another question we asked, but I have not heard back. Now- I will add here, a few years back we left a pillow behind at a Fairfield, and THAT hotel called us right away AND offered to mail the pillow to us! We drove back to get it, and it was only a $5 cheap pillow. So it is a little disappointing that GF didn't contact us at all.
When we did ask a few questions about the food at both hotels, the food staff was very nice. One of the CM's even gave us a small box of cookies. The piano music was outstanding as always, except for playing Every Breath You Take multiple days in a row. (We call it the stalker song),she also played Game of thrones, so we laughed a bit at that one.
1900 Park Fare was a disappointment. Mirabel was outstanding, Snow White was okay (she replaced another princess who could not make it, so I give her credit for that), but the other characters either did not come to our table at all or only came when only one of us was at the table (and didn't return). The food was not very good, and they had trouble keeping the buffet stocked with a number of dishes. Now, normally, the characters are not all that important to us, but the way they didn't come to our table was really not good. The table next to us had two little girls dressed as princesses, and they ALSO got similarly bypassed. Tiana made a quick stop to their table when just one of the girls was there. The other girl was almost in tears because she was dressed as Tiana, AND it was her birthday! So that was upsetting to see such sloppy carelessness.
Both were decent stays, and neither was perfect, but we thought Porto was better overall than GF this time around.