Just got back from a 6 night stay at Gran Destino Tower, so I thought I’d give my impressions.
As you can tell from photos, the building is gorgeous! Our room (standard view) was nice and clean and very spacious. I loved the wardrobe. There’s a huge empty space to the right of it that is perfect for storing a stroller. We had a room right around the corner from the elevator, so that was nice. We arrived on Sunday and the resort was pretty empty, but it filled as the week went on. I had a lot of opportunity to stroll the grounds and they are beautiful as well. It was my first time at CSR.
The bus situation was fine. Disney usually had employees there. The buses usually weren’t full, but it was hard to tell sometimes who got there first when the waiting groups got bigger. I wish they would implement those snake lines to better serve the people who got there first. But it wasn’t really an issue since there were so few people waiting. Our worse experience was Monday waiting for the bus to to HS. We got there around 8:45 for a bus only to find out that the first bus doesn’t run until 9:30! It was a long wait and lots more people filled up the space in those 45 minutes, but we did make it to HS and we’re in the park when it opened. We didn’t get the SW spaces in the virtual queue, so it didn’t really matter. All in all, no problems with buses but it is a negative to this resort that buses are the onot option. I can see this being a problem as the resort fills up.
Food situation was frustrating aspect of our stay. Not having a food court is a huge negative. It was just DH and I, so we made it work. We had two dinners at the Bridges restaurant. We really enjoyed it both times, but we only got one app, a drink for me and an entree for DH, so it didn’t really fill us up. (I don’t eat meat and my only entree option was a salad.) it was a great experience both times, but putting out $60 and leaving hungry was frustrating. We flew, so we didn’t have access to our car to make a grocery run. The food at the gift shop was slim pickings. If we had our car it wouldn’t have been so bad. I highly recommend bringing groceries like drinks and snacks if you’re staying there. The coffee machine worked great and luckily I brought some half n half for my coffee since they didn’t have it in gift shop (I brought the shelf stable kind). Disney provides Coffee Mate. We never made it to Dahlia Lounge. Both times we tried we were too early. We did the Barcelona Lounge one morning. DH got me a latte and scone. Both were excellent but service took half an hour. Wish there was an option to place a mobile order and pick up. We would have used that option a lot more. We never went to the sports bar, so I can’t comment on that. Our last night there we used the pool bar for dinner after a day on the magic kingdom. We were hungry and really missed having a food court at that moment. Halfway to the pool it started pouring, so we waited in rain to order and ate our food under an umbrella sitting on wet chairs. Plus we felt the need to tip, so a QS meal ended up costing $50.
The food options didn’t put that much of a damper on our stay, but it was an inconvenience when the hangriness set in. I would still recommend the resort for couples. If we brought our kids, we would have blown our food budget and been dealing with some non happy campers a lot of the time. We big QS people, so the lack of that option negatively affected our stay. If you’re not as into QS, you’ll be fine.
Overall it was a great stay. I’d definitely return...when the food court opens!