Mystic330i
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2009
- Messages
- 4
Just got back and thought I'd give my $.02 for those doing research (I know the board helped me tremendously!! 
)
This was the 8th time at the World, and I gotta say it just wasn't as magical as I remembered it.
Resort: Coronado Springs - We will NOT be staying here again. The place is SO spread out that it is exhausting getting anywhere especially the main lobby/restaurants. When booking, I was told that Golf carts were avail to take you do other parts of the resort, but we NEVER saw anybody riding in the MANY stretch carts we saw and when we stopped one several times for a ride, the answer was "NO" followed by an abrupt power take off...
Just a bunch of empty carts running around all week.... 
The bus transportation was lacking as well. The bus stop was fairly close to the room, but we waited between 20-30 minutes for EVERY bus. Sometimes we would see 2 buses go by to other parks before the one going the park we wanted showed up! Very frustrating and time consuming.
The rooms were just ok - The doors were made of balsa wood so you could plainly hear the family of 5 leaving at 6am for rope drop AND the family of 6 getting back in a 1am from a MNSSHP
The rooms did have ceiling fans in them which was cool No animal-towel creations, no bounce-back offer, no frills of any kind....
Also, the Marina was NEVER open. We saw lots of other resort maria's (boat rentals) open, but not CSR.... The pool was really nice, however!! Nice size and nice slide
The Pepper market was just ok food-wise, but as mentioned in other posts, the service was sub-par. There was also NEVER any clean tables at the Rix cafe or outside on the deck - I wasn't expecting to have to clean tables on my vacation
As mentioned here as well, this is a convention resort and seemed to have a hussle and bustle feel with rudeness everywhere - not at all what I was looking for in a vacation resort.
Magical Express: This was a Great service and worked well. The only issue was in returning - they did not communicate well as to what they were doing or what you needed to do. They will check you in on your airline and print boarding passes (which is cool) and will take your check-in luggage from the resort directly to the plane (which is also cool). The morning we departed the airline check-in area was jam packed, and after waiting in line for 30mins, a cast member came by and said their "system was down" and that we would have to take our bags on the bus and check them in at the airport (which I thought we were doing anyhow). But then when I asked another cast member if we could leave out bags somewhere while we hit the pool, he looked at our bags and said you have tags and are good to go, and took them over to a white truck. I ask him if the "system" had come back up, and he said no but you are good to go.... I was completely confused but our bags showed up on the carousel when we got home, so that's cool.
Dinning Plan: This was very mixed for me - I know we saved a lot of $$ but unfortunately at the expense of a relaxing vacation. Because of all the reservations and feeling the need to use them all to make it worth while, we were in rush mode all week and it just really took away from the magic for us. Because of the transportation times, I was looking at my watch ALL week (and I didn't even want to wear a watch!!), and we always had that "hurry up or we're gonna miss our dinner res." feeling. All of the Table service joints were packed all week, and if you didn't have res. (thankfully I made them 90-days out) you simply weren't eating. I overheard one couple saying they had ordered room service 4 times because they couldn't get in anywhere. Most seatings were 5-20mins past our res. time, but Tues at Hollywood and Vine it was over an hr!!! - which completely blew our plans for the evening to see Fantasmic.... We would've like to squeeze it in another night, but because of the travel times/waits, it would be a 3hr ordeal which just didn't fit into anything.
Crowds: This was absolutely the strangest crowd week I've ever experienced. It seemed to be REALLY crowded - buses were standing room only, monorails were packed, boats were packed, had to fight strollers all week, bumping into people, etc.... BUT there were NO lines for anything all week!!! The most we waited was 30mins for Peter pan. Everything else was 10mins - walk on including toy story mania, pirates, buzz lightyear, Soarin, test track, etc.... very strange - but it did allow us to ride almost everything multiple times! That was magical.
Cast Members: We didn't notice any cleanliness issues - The only issue I noticed was that rides that typically had an army of CMs running it (smoothly) now only had 1 or 2 running it. So getting on/loading/pre-show timing was really off.
MNSSHP: This was an absolute BLAST!!! A must do!! The crowd was low, EVERYTHING was a walk on, CMs seemed to be even happier and willing to play. Hallowishes was the best thing I've ever seen!!! Completely different from Wishes!! Upbeat and very cool. We got a center stage spot in front of the castle and is was like fireworks in the round!!
All in all it was a pretty good trip - but just the timing, crowds, transportation, and resort were a downer...
(next time it'll be a monorail resort where "popping over" to the magic kingdom is actually popping over!)
)This was the 8th time at the World, and I gotta say it just wasn't as magical as I remembered it.
Resort: Coronado Springs - We will NOT be staying here again. The place is SO spread out that it is exhausting getting anywhere especially the main lobby/restaurants. When booking, I was told that Golf carts were avail to take you do other parts of the resort, but we NEVER saw anybody riding in the MANY stretch carts we saw and when we stopped one several times for a ride, the answer was "NO" followed by an abrupt power take off...
Just a bunch of empty carts running around all week.... The bus transportation was lacking as well. The bus stop was fairly close to the room, but we waited between 20-30 minutes for EVERY bus. Sometimes we would see 2 buses go by to other parks before the one going the park we wanted showed up! Very frustrating and time consuming.
The rooms were just ok - The doors were made of balsa wood so you could plainly hear the family of 5 leaving at 6am for rope drop AND the family of 6 getting back in a 1am from a MNSSHP
The rooms did have ceiling fans in them which was cool No animal-towel creations, no bounce-back offer, no frills of any kind....Also, the Marina was NEVER open. We saw lots of other resort maria's (boat rentals) open, but not CSR.... The pool was really nice, however!! Nice size and nice slide
The Pepper market was just ok food-wise, but as mentioned in other posts, the service was sub-par. There was also NEVER any clean tables at the Rix cafe or outside on the deck - I wasn't expecting to have to clean tables on my vacation
As mentioned here as well, this is a convention resort and seemed to have a hussle and bustle feel with rudeness everywhere - not at all what I was looking for in a vacation resort.
Magical Express: This was a Great service and worked well. The only issue was in returning - they did not communicate well as to what they were doing or what you needed to do. They will check you in on your airline and print boarding passes (which is cool) and will take your check-in luggage from the resort directly to the plane (which is also cool). The morning we departed the airline check-in area was jam packed, and after waiting in line for 30mins, a cast member came by and said their "system was down" and that we would have to take our bags on the bus and check them in at the airport (which I thought we were doing anyhow). But then when I asked another cast member if we could leave out bags somewhere while we hit the pool, he looked at our bags and said you have tags and are good to go, and took them over to a white truck. I ask him if the "system" had come back up, and he said no but you are good to go.... I was completely confused but our bags showed up on the carousel when we got home, so that's cool.
Dinning Plan: This was very mixed for me - I know we saved a lot of $$ but unfortunately at the expense of a relaxing vacation. Because of all the reservations and feeling the need to use them all to make it worth while, we were in rush mode all week and it just really took away from the magic for us. Because of the transportation times, I was looking at my watch ALL week (and I didn't even want to wear a watch!!), and we always had that "hurry up or we're gonna miss our dinner res." feeling. All of the Table service joints were packed all week, and if you didn't have res. (thankfully I made them 90-days out) you simply weren't eating. I overheard one couple saying they had ordered room service 4 times because they couldn't get in anywhere. Most seatings were 5-20mins past our res. time, but Tues at Hollywood and Vine it was over an hr!!! - which completely blew our plans for the evening to see Fantasmic.... We would've like to squeeze it in another night, but because of the travel times/waits, it would be a 3hr ordeal which just didn't fit into anything.
Crowds: This was absolutely the strangest crowd week I've ever experienced. It seemed to be REALLY crowded - buses were standing room only, monorails were packed, boats were packed, had to fight strollers all week, bumping into people, etc.... BUT there were NO lines for anything all week!!! The most we waited was 30mins for Peter pan. Everything else was 10mins - walk on including toy story mania, pirates, buzz lightyear, Soarin, test track, etc.... very strange - but it did allow us to ride almost everything multiple times! That was magical.
Cast Members: We didn't notice any cleanliness issues - The only issue I noticed was that rides that typically had an army of CMs running it (smoothly) now only had 1 or 2 running it. So getting on/loading/pre-show timing was really off.
MNSSHP: This was an absolute BLAST!!! A must do!! The crowd was low, EVERYTHING was a walk on, CMs seemed to be even happier and willing to play. Hallowishes was the best thing I've ever seen!!! Completely different from Wishes!! Upbeat and very cool. We got a center stage spot in front of the castle and is was like fireworks in the round!!
All in all it was a pretty good trip - but just the timing, crowds, transportation, and resort were a downer...
(next time it'll be a monorail resort where "popping over" to the magic kingdom is actually popping over!)
