Just returned - Had one week stay at SOG.
This will be a "the good, the bad, and the ugly review of Shades of Green.
The hotel is beautiful. The grounds, water features, flowers and waterfalls are very lovely. The interior of the hotel is also very beautiful and comfortable. The greens look beautiful and we saw a lot of wildlife from our balcony.
The rooms are large and the beds comfortable. There is a small (dorm room size) frig in room and a very small coffee pot. It makes about 2 cups of coffee. You are given exactly 1 pouch of regular coffee per day. If you want more, or need de-caf, you may purchase it in the store. We were given one bar of soap and one bottle of shampoo on our arrival. They did not ever leave any more in the 7 nights we were there. There is a nice size balcony with 2 chairs and a small table. The closet is small but it does have a wonderful large safe in it. The room size would be comfortable for a family of 5 using the day bed and two queens. There is a small table with two straight back chairs.
Where our problem came in was with some of the staff. Our arrival at the front desk was met with a much less then a welcome greeting. There was no greeting. There were two women at the front desk and it was made very appearent before the end of our stay that they need more help at the desk. That is probably the reason why there is never a smile or any customer service at the desk.
The hotel is designed with very long hallways that turn into other long hallways, that angle off into another long hallway. You really do a lot of walking. We were on the 4th floor in at the far end of the new wing.
There was always a line, no matter what time of day you went to the front desk. Which is frequent due to fact you must pick up any packages, disney or otherwise at the front desk. If anyone sends you a gift or flower arrangement you must in person go down to the front desk, stand in the long line and sign off on a clip board to receive the item. Also, they wanted the sponsor only to do this. Unaware of this rule I went to the front desk, saw the long line and went to bell services to ask if they could get my disney package. I was informed that they were sorry, but Bell services is not allowed to do this. You must stand in line and sign for the package. After standing for 25 minutes in line they informed me that my husband would have to come down to sign for our disney package. My husband is in a wheelchair and was in our room getting ready for bed. It was 10:30 PM.
The housekeeping really needs training and managment. Our room was never cleaned. They make the beds, and gave us clean towels, wipe the sink out, leave a package of coffee and pick up their mousekeepers envelope. Period. Our soap dish, tub and coffee pot was never cleaned. I would dump out the old grounds and rise the pot out each evening after we came back. The room was never made up before 4:00 in afternoon. When I tried to talk to one of the maids in the hallway she told me she didn't speak english, but was going on break!
All in all I think SOG could be a really wonderful hotel and a great benefit to the military both retired and active with some training and either new management or better trained management. Our military active, retired or disabled deserve better and I will be writting a letter to the management. Perhaps sometime in the future we will give it a second chance. But, I think we will be staying in disney resorts with discount on our next visit.
If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to answer.
We only used bus A in August and it was very much on time about every 15 minutes. We used the monorail to get to Epcot, And we drove to DownTown, Animal Kingdom and MGM so I have no Bus B experience to share.
