Rescuing this thread from the depths because we just switched our GDT pre-cruise stay to CR thanks to a great discount rate. Had some questions now that we finally get to check this resort out. 1. About how long is the walk from the garden wing to the tower for transportation? 2. And how long does it generally take to get to EP for rope drop? We’ve only ever monorailed there direct from the TTC on our Poly stays and it still wasn’t running when I stayed at GF so trying to get a gauge of how much time we should allot to transfer if we want to be on the first train for EE.
1. It is not bad at all. Prior to last summer, I'd only ever stayed in the tower, but we've now stayed in the garden wing twice. The length of the walk depends a little on the location of your room. The rooms are just on the far side of the pool, so it is just a little longer than it takes to walk to the pool from the tower. In the tower, you then take the elevators to get up to the monorail platform.
(For going to MK, we just walked around the outside of the building, so that was also comparable to how long it took us when we stayed in the tower.)
2. It does take a little while to get to Epcot and back again via monorail.
The day we went to Epcot, there was a mob going to Epcot, so the CM's routed EVERYONE down the ramp (as if we were all stopping at the TTC), through a queue, then up the Epcot monorail ramp. It still only took two monorails to get on the monorail to Epcot (from TTC). I think we left room about 8am, and got to Epcot just about 8:30am. We didn't quite make rope drop, but we were just behind the people who did.
Getting back from Epcot, we just missed a monorail (leaving Epcot), but the next one arrived within 2 minutes. We lucked out at the TTC, and went almost directly from one monorail to the next. I didn't keep track of timing, but getting back was very quick.
2B. If you have a car though, it is EASY to get from the Garden Wing to anywhere else. The CR has a parking lot over by those rooms, and we never had any problem getting a good spot. Driving to Disney Springs was a snap with the new roadways.
2C. On prior trips I did a better job of notetaking, I'm sorry I can't be more specific, but we used Google Maps and the drive time predictions were pretty accurate.