Just back from WL, YC, and POLY

[Pattymouse]

Just back from WL, Poly, YC, Poly again!

Hi all... just back from our 11 night stay. It was just the two of us on this trip so we decided to do a little resort hopping to try different resorts. It is hard for us to break away from the Polynesian, our all time favorite. Let me know if you have any questions.

7/3 - Wilderness Lodge Courtyard view. This was our 1st time staying at WL and we only stayed for 1 night. It was very nice for a night or two, but I preferred the "action" at our other resorts. We were on the 5th floor, corner room, overlooking the courtyard, pool, and lake. Great room, great view.

7/4 - Polynesian Fiji building, center of the 3rd floor. GREAT view of the marina. Loved this view! We have never stayed in this building or this "side" of the resort before. We really liked it. Had dinner at 'Ohana for the 1st time. It was great and I am not even really a big meat eater. The starters were wonderful.

7/5 + 7/6 - Yacht Club with Pixie Dust! This was our 1st stay at the Yacht Club. We were upgraded from water view to Concierge water view. Ther seemed to be a huge FBI convention going on and I guess they ran out of regular rooms. The concierge level was very nice. A small lounge that was quiet most of the time. The lounge was not open between offerings as it is in the Polynesian. The staff was very friendly and helpful. Loved the room and our view was perfect from our 5th floor balcony.

7/7 to 7/14 - Let the fun REALLY begin! Our 7 night stay at the Polynesian LVC was wonderful. We had requested room #3505 as we had stayed there in Dec 04 for our 25th wedding anniversary. It was not available so we were assigned room #3508 instead. Guess what...we loved it even MORE that #3505! The castle view was superb. I do not feel you can get a bad view in the Hawaii longhouse. Or, for that matter, any room in the Polynesian. It is truly a wonderful resort.

The lounge was well used. I did not witness any rude behavior by guests and there was always plenty of food. Some guests did not clean up the table after they ate. They just walked away leaving their mess even when other guest were waiting for a table. They were only a small handful though. Most everyone was very polite and cleaned up after themselves. In the afternoon instead of little plastic beach pails holding afternoon snacks such as gummy sharks, goldfish etc, they used ceramic sea shells. Cute, but I liked the little pails better.

Also, when we were there in December there was a huge barrel in the lounge. The barrel was filled with ice and icy cold soft drinks. The barrel is now gone and the sodas are put out on a tray. Sometime they were cold and sometime they were room temp. You guessed it! I liked the barrel better. Always icy cold!

Mousekeeping service was great as was the concierge staff. Love turndown service.

The weather was CONGO HOT! The 1st few days we were Disney we were told they were having a heat wave. It was about 96-97 degrees every day. Add the humidity to this and it feels like 105 degrees. Wicked! After Hurricane Dennis came through the heat wave ended and it was NORMAL HOT!

We had a great time. I will attempt to add pictures to this post sometime today. It will be my first time with pictures so wish me luck.

 

[Doede95]

Thanks for the great report. I do have a question for you. We are POLY lovers too.(atleast 8 times) We are going to hop like you in January. We are staying at the AKL 1 night, BWI 3 nights, and then POLY LVC for 4. I guess we just want to sample a few other resorts. Would you do it again? When you were at the others did you wish you were at the POLY? How did you like the Epcot area resorts? I would really appreciate your help. Thanks so much!!

 

[Mich Mouse]

Welcome Back! What a magical trip you had.

I just learned how to put a photo in my signature yesterday. I learned from reading the tech board, and then used a site called photobucket.com to upload the photos. It was easy! Good Luck with the photos, and thanks for your trip report! I especially enjoy reading the reports that include the Poly, and it also helps that my trip is less than a month away.

 

[Pattymouse]

Doede95...

We liked sampling the resorts but you do lose a good part of the day waiting to get your room unless you are very lucky. It was easy for us to move as it was just the two of us. We also had a rental car which made it even easier.

I like staying in the Epcot resort area for a few days, but greatly prefer the location of the monorail resorts. To me it feels more "magical". Also, while it appears that the Epcot resort area has quite a night life with the boardwalk area, it has always been deader than dead when we were there. However, if you do stay a few days it is nice to have Epcot so close (a 5 minute walk) and only a boat ride away from MGM (you can walk this in 15-20 minutes).

Wilderness Lodge was a great place to visit, but I found the one night to be enough. I felt isolated.

I hope this helps you.

 

[ufgator]

Thanks for the review. About YC - was the hotel quiet? was your room quiet? Are there long walks to the rooms? Were there a lot of children (I know it's WDW, but DH and I don't have kids yet)? Did you use the pool? Thanks.

 

[pennyplanner]

Pattymouse,

What fun -- three resorts in one stay!!!

We love the WL for the very reason you weren't fond of it! We enjoyed the relative quiet after the craziness of the parks. Let's hear it for everyone finding their favorite resort at WDW!

Thanks so much for posting!

--penny

 

[Pattymouse]

ufgator,

The Yacht Club was really no different than any other Disney Deluxe. There were kids, but not a million of the adorable little critters! Our rooms was perfectly quiet. It was pretty quiet in the hotel lobby, but with lots of kids at the pool. The pool is great with its sand bottom. It is so big that it seems younger kids are at one end and the rest of the pool is for us big kids. We had quite a hike to get to our room, but the view was worth it! Perfect view of the pool, lake, AND the boardwalk area. I think you would enjoy it there. It is now a favorite of ours ( right behind the Poly, our all time favorite).

Pat

 

[Tikiman]

Thanks for the report Pattymouse. Glad you enjoyed Fiji and Hawaii. I give you extra credit for spelling ‘Ohana correctly also.

 

[DisneyMomJen]

Pattymouse,

Welcome Back and I am glad that you had a wonderful trip!

I hope you can give me some advice. We are going in December for 5 nights and are trying to decide between Yacht Club Concierge and Polynesian Concierge. Which would you recommend? We have stayed at Poly CL and enjoyed it. We like the Epcot location. Which of the two had better food offerings? Thanks in advance!

 

[chamonix]

Also, when we were there in December there was a huge barrel in the lounge. The barrel was filled with ice and icy cold soft drinks. The barrel is now gone and the sodas are put out on a tray. Sometime they were cold and sometime they were room temp. You guessed it! I liked the barrel better. Always icy cold!

Out on a tray? How ridiculous! Did they provide cups and ice with this setup? I loved grabbing an icy cold soda on my way in or out of the lounge (we never hang out there really, we grab something on the run usually). Does anyone know why the change?
Sorry, but I will be asking for a cold one from the back. I hate to make them do more work, but I also don't care for room temp sodas--and this is probably one of the main things we use from the lounge--we're really not in there much at all. We drink a lot of water, and I am already buying tons of bottled water now too--which is fine, I am used to doing that, we drink bottled water at home --but, I have to keep so much in our room that there won't even be room in our fridge for sodas! (if I get them each day for the next day and put them in our fridge, which I don't want to do--I already have to keep up with rotating water bottles into the fridge to have cold ones ready for us)

This seems like a weird thing to change. Why not just put in a soda machine? It would look nice and tacky, if they're going for a particular look. LOL
Hopefully, the new lounge rehab will bring back a place for cold soda to be provided. How are sodas provided at the other concierge lounges at WDW?

 

[SeaSpray]

We were at the Polynesian, LVC room 3517, from July 7th - 10th, wonder if we saw you there?? I have a thread with my Polynesian pictures, and I agree that the view from the Hawaii building is spectacular! The view was better than I had anticipated.

I agree about not seeing any rude guests at all, including at the concierge lounge. DH, DSs, and I always cleaned up after ourselves by throwing out the trash and putting our used dishes on those round tables they had set up.

However, I saw something interesting one evening: I saw one family start to clear their table, they gathered up all of their dishes, and didn't see the round table in the middle of the room (they were sitting at the first table right by where the hot dishes are set up, we were sitting at a table right in front of them) so they looked over and asked Chef Dick where they should put the dirty dishes and Chef Dick told them to leave the dishes right on the table and not to worry about them. I realize that Chef Dick was being a good CM by telling them this and I have to say that I don't blame them for leaving their dishes on the table. They did ask, and that's what they were told. The small round tables that hold the dirty dishes were not very prominent while we were there. I had to specifically look for them. I knew to look for them though, because I had read on the boards here that you should clear your own table. At the Wilderness Lodge concierge they had those round tables set up right near where the food is (far enough away not to be gross) and also had a few other tables set up around the seating areas, so it was easy to clear your own table. But if I had not read about it here, and I was at the Polynesian for the first time and was trying to clear my own table and asked the Chef where to bring our used plates and he TOLD me to just leave them on the table, I would have done so.

I'm glad the humidity broke after Dennis. We checked out the day after Dennis passed through (did you see and hear the winds on Saturday night, about 1am?? What a site, from our room, to see that the castle had disappeared due to the sheet of rain, and the wind) and it was still a bit humid.

chamonix, the sodas were cold, during out stay, even though they were sitting out, and they did have cups and an ice bucket there too. They would put out about half a dozen of each flavor of soda, and then replenish with cold cans from the back.

 

[Pattymouse]

DisneyMomJen,

Personally, I preferred the Polynesian Concierge Lounge. It is huge compared to the Yacht Club. Of course the YC is much more quiet. The YC lounge view is of the front entry (street side) so you cannot compare the view to the spectacular one at the Poly. Also (I found this important) the YC lounge has periods of time when it is closed for an hour or two. You will have no access to a cold soda, hot coffee or a snack. I know the room fridges can hold soda and you can brew coffee in your room but...Hey, I am on vacation!

I also found the food offerings at the Polynesian far surpass that of the YC.
The YC had soup and some sort of beef and grits stew. The next night it was soup and raw clams on the half shell.

Can you see a trend here? I really loved the YC Concierge for 2 nights, but my heart belongs at the Poly. We LOVED our 8 nights there the best!

Pat

PS:
Re: Polynesian Concierge Lounge
We had cold soda from the lounge 75% of the time and warm soda 25% of the time. Ice and cups are provided. As a note the YC soda's were ALL warm. No cold ones at all. I asked and they said they have the cups and provide ice but do NOT chill their sodas.

Bye!

PS again:
SeaSpray...I think I may have seen you in the hall on your first day. I planned on saying hi but never saw you again. Pat

 

[BCV23]

Enjoyed your review. Glad you had such a nice trip.

We've never stayed at the YC concierge or not, but reading your description of the Polynesian concierge experience makes me want to go back there right now!

Did you see anything new back by Captain Cook's?

 

[Pattymouse]

BCV23

Nothing new at Captain Cooks. It is exactly the same as it has been for years.
The stores that lined the back wall are now all closed down a black curtain material hanging behind metal gates. Only the Wyland Gallery is open. It is at the far end of the back wall, nearest to Tonga longhouse.

From what I understand the stores that have closed will be a part of Captain Cooks. I do not know exactly how they are going to work it.

Pat

 

[DisneyMomJen]

Pattymouse,

Thanks so much for your reply! I think you have made our decision for this December and we will be doing the Polynesian Concierge. Thanks again!