Just back from first trip "Home" VWL

[Guads6]

Hi everyone! We had a great time! We had a two bedroom dedicated. I requested the Baylake side. We ended up with the famous "Dumpster View", we thought about changing rooms, but we had the fifth floor with the vaulted ceilings so we decided to stay. The view wasn't bad at all. We weren't there enough to really look at it. I do think they could make it a bit more attractive with some low lying bushes and flowers. I took pictures of it, once I have them up you can take a look for yourself! The villa was in excellent condition! It was clean and perfect! We didn't hear much noise at night, and the beds were very comfortable. The lobby for the villas is so nice! I love the pictures of Walt on the walls and the cozy areas to sit in. And the tables with chinese and regular checkers what a great idea! The rockers outside, even the covered walkway were very pleasing. And the quite pool, we were there a lot. We saw lots of ducks and bunnies. Last week crowds were low with no more then a 10 minute wait on stand-by. This past Sunday things changed! As of tuesday all the parks are crowded with 65 minute waits on stand-by and fast pass returns running 2-4 hrs! Even Animal Kingdom was packed! We were glad we did everything we wanted to last week. We just decided to go back to the villas and enjoy them these past couple of days. I'm glad we became DVC members! Now it's time to start planning my trip "Home" in Jan. 05!

 

[Happy Birthday Cat]

Glad to hear such a positive report, even considering the "dumpster view" room. How was the boat transportation to and from the MK?

HBC

 

[Granny]

Guads6....glad to hear that you enjoyed your trip! And it sounds like VWL lived up to your family's expectations! It also sounds like you enjoy the little details that Disney is famous for...and VWL is a great place for that!

Thanks for taking the time to share your impressions. And time to get hopping on that January '05 trip because very soon you'll be swimming with the "7 months" crowd competing for reservations!!

 

[Disney-Kim]

Hi,
We just stayed at the VWL for the first time in May. We LOVED them as well. stayed in a studio.
Funny...our room was the dumpster view as well on the 3rd floor. I walked in, looked out the window at the dumpster, not 1 minute later called the front desk and asked to be moved. No questions/no problem. We moved to the 1st floor in a room right off the lobby. Our patio faced the walkway to the Busstop.
We LOVED it. It was one of the best rooms we have ever had at WDW. You have lots of privacy from the bushes and the first floor was great.
We can not wait to stay here again. I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it.

 

[pmcpmc]

Perhaps they could paint Disney characters on it or have bear and animal figures around it looking for food.

 

[lodgelady]

We have stayed at VWL twice and managed to avoid the dumpster both times
I may be wrong, but it seemed from my experience that if you plan to stay longer and check in on a day when others are mostly checking out (ie fri or sat) you are more likely to score the non-dumpster view.

 

[Pig Pen]

Do you think they sometimes try to sneak newbies into the dumpster view room?

During my first trip "home" I had just come off a 3 night stay at CSR (one of my faves) where I overlooked the parking lot. I was only paying $74 per night and I knew I was moving to the VWL soon so I didn't complain....but when I checked into VWL, I very nicely asked for a good view and explained I had spent the weekend looking at concrete. The CM punched a couple buttons, and voila, I had pool view with a sliver of the bay showing through!

This past trip I didn't say anything until they circled the room number on the map. Yippee! Another bayside, pool-woods view.

I just love VWL.

 

[lsutigger2]

We also stayed in a first floor room (studio) once and it was great. It had the same view as Disney-Kim. I loved being close to the entrance/exit, Short walk to the WL lobby, and it was close to the laundry. It really was a great room. And it was very quiet.

Can't wait to see our room in Oct!

 

[Guads6]

We didn't wait for more then 5 minutes for a boat. We did have one bus running late that was suppose to be there at 7:00 for TTC. We had priority seating for the Contemporary but the bus driver took us straight to the Contemporary so we wouldn't be late. How nice that was! As far as getting the "Dumpster View" the gentleman that was checking us in wasn't exactly the friendliest, he was also training someone so he might have been a bit distracted. The only thing I can think of was that we arrived there at 10:00 a.m. before check out time so I thought that would put us in a postion to get a "Dumpster View", as it wasn't check out time and those rooms would probably be available as most people don't want them. We checked in on Sunday, May 16th for a ten night stay. My family was so impatient to get there, I wanted to wait until 12:00, and I warned them that the villas available would probably be the ones no one wanted! But again it wasn't that bad, it didn't ruin our vacation and now next time I'll say when checking in "Honey I've done the Dumpster give something else!" We don't plan on visiting there for a while we plan on staying at OKW in Jan. 05, then Beach Club May 05. Keeping fingers crossed for that 7 month window!

 

[Lyndarella]

We checked in on Monday last week, assuming the best rooms would be given out on Sunday, for those people staying all week. Our 1 BR was on the second floor right by the elevator, and had a lovely view. We heard very little noise from the elevator area, maybe the villas had low occupancy? Never saw many people in the parks. Busses and boats were not usually full. Weather was not hot yet, and only rained twice briefly. The last night we took the Wishes cruise from the WL dock. What a great way to end the week!