Just back from CSR - a review

[ekmom]

Husband and I stayed last week at CSR so I thought I'd post a review. Keep in my that this is just my opinion. Hope it helps someone!

A little background first: we've visited WDW about yearly for about the last 15 years, less often before that. Most stays have been onsite and we usually stay at POR but we were at CSR once before about 10+ years ago but didn't care for the Pepper Market format at the time.

When we saw the deal for CSR, we decided to go for it since it was substantially cheaper than POR and we knew that Pepper Market was now a "normal" food court. Our stay was...okay, but I much prefer POR even irrespective of the construction.

We booked a water view king and I did some research before making a room request. Apparently that room category isn't available in Ranchos, so our options were Casitas or Cabanas. We wanted to be as far as possible from the construction, so Cabanas was out. Casitas 1-3 are preferred, Casitas 4 is closed currently, so that left Casitas 5. We requested a top floor room with a good view of the lake and got exactly what we asked for. Unfortunately a view of the lake is not that appealing right now between the big construction site across the way and the construction equipment on the lake itself. And the non-updated rooms are in worse shape then I anticipated (beat up furniture, stained walls, dust, chipped paint).
We joked that we could recognize our room by the huge paint chunks missing from the door

As far as the actual construction goes, they started in the morning quite early, we heard them when we were walking to breakfast before 7. But I couldn't hear it in our room, my husband said he could but it wasn't loud enough to wake anyone up. None of it really affected our use of the resort, but it's not pretty. While we were there they were also painting various exteriors so there were cranes all over and paths were periodically blocked. There was lots of construction equipment everywhere.

We found that we still didn't care for Pepper Market. It seemed understaffed. We were usually at breakfast the first hour and there weren't CMs at each station and those that were there weren't monitoring the unattended stations so we'd have to go fetch someone to serve us.

Bus service was excellent and being near Bus Stop 2 was great.

So should you stay there during construction?
I would consider it if one or more of the following is true:

• CSR is your go to resort
• You go to WDW often
• You don't mind some ugly
• Price is a high priority for you

I would NOT consider it if one or more of the following is true:

• You've never stayed onsite before
• You're celebrating a special occasion
• The attractiveness of the resort is important to you

I'd be happy to answer any questions

 

[kwdw]

As an add-on - we were in Casitas 5 in January - and we didn't hear any construction noise in our room. I also don't think they started terribly earlier. There were definitely doors missing paint - we saw that, too! Ours was fine - but the one next to us was worse than the above picture. We walked around the resort in the morning - and yep - in the Casitas - because they are working on those buildings - construction equipment was around. We didn't notice any in the Ranchos section yet.

Our room was in pretty good shape. Bed was great, actually (we wondered if it was new). There might have been a ding on the wall or furniture here and there - but not enough that we really noticed. I would not call have called the room dingy or beat up. Our HVAC, unfortunately, was NOT working properly - but since it didn't bother us for the 14 hours we were there - it didn't hamper our stay (we reported the issue - so hopefully that was fixed for next guest).

I do agree with previous poster - if you go to Disney regularly and appreciate the discount on this mod right now - it's still in fine enough condition I would go here. If "special" for you is upgrading from a value to a mod - I'd suggest you consider it. However - for a first-timer - this might give a bad impression of Disney. I also would not recommend it if napping every afternoon is a priority for you - as there will be construction noise at times.

 

[vinotinto]

@ekmom and @kwdw - thanks for the reviews and impressions.

I just switched resorts a few days ago. While it seems the rooms are mostly quiet, and the pool area is not affected by the construction, and the restaurants and bars are operating, we only go to WDW for a few days every year so we wanted a peaceful resort. Also, it is difficult to determine how visually obtrusive the construction would be months from now, and I started to get concerned that if it became more obtrusive and my other choices were booked, we would not be able to switch.

 

[kwdw]

Visually - you can see the LARGE construction from all sites within view of the lake - they are building a huge tower hotel (15 stories, I think). And the are building a restaurant ON the lake. So - if you don't want to see construction in your view - you might want to book elsewhere.

 

[vicb]

This confirmed my earlier decision not to consider this resort during construction, thanks for the honest review.

 

[loves to dive]

We were there the week before Christmas and, yes, the construction was noticeable but did not bother us at all. I had actually asked for a room in Cabanas but early check in was my #1 priority since we drive down and get there around 2. So, when we checked in our room wasn't ready (no surprise) and we were told we would be in Casitas 4, so request #2 a no go. I wasn't upset since I really don't care where my room is located, I'd just stayed in Cabanas the last two times I was there (once solo, once with my grown son) and liked the area. So we took the car and parked it in the Casitas 4 parking lot and hopped on a bus. When we got the room ready text it was in Casitas 5. Well, all righty then, 3 for 3 in the not what we expected department but we rolled with it. We debated moving our car but we knew we wouldn't be using it and that's why suitcases have rollers so we left it. Our room was on the third floor facing the lake. I don't care about view in a moderate since we don't leave the curtains open since we prefer people walking by not seeing our room but it was kind of nice when coming and going. When we walked in our room it smelled like someone had had a very nice party with a lot of pot. It was late when we got back to the resort and I'm just not going to complain unless possibly a giant rat is sitting on the bed so we just turned on the fan, turned up the AC and settled in. When my son went to turn on ESPN (Disney is a sports fan dream) we couldn't find the remote. Well that certainly wouldn't do so I did call down for that and someone was knocking on the door in 10 minutes so no foul there. Other than the smell, which was gone the next day, our room was in pretty decent shape. I didn't notice any obvious yuckyness or problems other than the only place to plug in both our phones was over on the work desk and behind the night stand. My son pulled the night stand out and problem solved, although I did have to make sure my phone was plugged in well since it did have a habit of not staying plugged in, no problem for us since the first thing my son did in the parks was buy one of the chargers they have that you just exchange. We don't eat at QS in the resorts for anything other than breakfast and didn't have any problems there, we were always able to get a table and there was always someone at the check out counter (we don't go to breakfast very early so that might have been why). We did make ADRs for Mayan Grill one night while on the bus back to the resort and loved it. We went to the pool one day but spent the entire time in the hot tub area, since it was December but especially warm that week, that area of the pool wasn't bad crowded.

So, would I recommend CSR. I tend to agree with previous posters that if you want the perfect resort, the site of the construction might not be good but we heard no noise while there and it didn't bother us. I think the only moderate not under construction right now is POR and maybe POFQ so if moderate is the way to go, POR might be the best choice. We always just stay in whichever one is less since we rarely stay in moderate resorts for the entire trip, that Christmas trip was the exception, we didn't do a split stay but stayed at CSR the entire time.