Holiday Inn Sunspree.

[gingernick]

Hi, I've booked to stay at Hol Inn Sunspree at Easter 2004 with DW, DD & DS. Now after finding this site & reading some of the reports I'm a little nervous about staying there. Should I try & change my booking to the HIFS or is someone out there who's been recently who can reasure me that the place is fine, if it's past it's best then I would rather know so we can do something before it's too late.

 

[LKS]

Hi, I'll take a stab at this since no one else has responded. We stayed at the Sunspree years ago (I'm thinking 6 years ago) and we thought it was a bit run-down then. The pool area was fine, but the rooms looked like they had taken regular, large Holiday Inn rooms and stuck a kidsuite in the front up by the windows. As a result, I felt the adult area was dark back behind there. Our room had a problem with damp carpet too, that never dried during our 2 night stay. On the plus side, the theming of the kidsuites was very cute.

We stayed at HIFS twice about 4-5 years ago. The kidsuite we had was unthemed, but I would definitely pick HIFS over the Sunspree. The breakfast is adequate, and although we found the rooms already showing their age a bit, we had much more room, the rooms were brighter and we like the pool better.

So if you can get the Sunspree for a lot cheaper than HIFS, it might be worth it, but I'd switch to HIFS.

 

[HockeyDadof2]

We stayed there twice, way back in '95 and again in '00. The pool was nice. We didn't like the food service, we went in for a meal walked back out and never went back. The rooms were updated but just didn't feel clean. It wasn't a ruin your vacation kinda bad hotel, it just was well below our standards. The last time we went to Orlando we stayed at the Courtyard Lake Bryan and were completely satisfied. They "kidsuite" is cute but if you expect to be able to listen to your TV and not hear the kids TV it doesn't work the walls are short of the ceiling and there is no privacy. We won't go back, but others have said it was OK.

Edited to add: The reason we went back in 2000, was in '95 we saw a kidssuite while we were staying in a regular room, it looked really cool, we were disappointed......you might not be.

 

[dtauer]

When we stayed there the KidSuite concept was still kind of unique. Since my kids had never stayed at a themed hotel before they loved it.

Since that time we have stayed at many other resorts and have now found the Sunspree kind of lacking. My opinion is the same as some other posters, it's a nice concept but is now done better by other hotels (such as HIFS).

Some friends of ours stayed there earlier this year and their opinion was the same as ours. It was OK, not great, not horrible.

My brother in law works for a travel agency and said that this is one of the hotels they push a lot. The problem is that because of the theming and concept of being geared towards kids, a lot of people take the travel agents word for it and book this hotel, often at rack rates. Be careful if your travel agent pushes this hotel, there are MANY good deals that you can get at the Sunspree if you decide to stay there.

 

[gingernick]

Hi Guy's, thanks for your replies, these are the things I was reading on the UK boards but all seemed to be from a year or two back, so I thought I had better get an update. When I booked we got a rate of $97.00 a night for Easter fortnight (2 weeks), which I thought was good, only downside was they said "no cancellation or changes to booking." I tried ringing them today but with my shift pattern & the time difference they had to call me when I was at work. So just got in 21.15 hours UK time & there's a message on the answerphone telling me they've cancelled my booking at no cost, so I'm free to book Wherever I like now(after consulting these boards & you lot of course). Thanks again. Doh, after previewing my reply I noticed I'll have to change my sig!