Hi,
We recently returned from a 7 day/8 night stay at the hotel. I thought the hotel was nice, clean and a good value. It is NOT a luxury hotel, but it is a good value hotel. Our room was very clean and I believe bigger than on-site value rooms. There is also a large fridge and a safe in the room. The bathrooms are small, but there is a curtain to section off the sink area from the room. We had a king bed room and the bed was quite large, much bigger than the 4* Marriott in Downtown Chicago. The grounds could have been kept a little better, but it was easy to tell the staff was trying hard to keep the property looking good. I truly believe that with a little more attention to detail this hotel could easily be a 3* hotel rather than 2.5*. The staff was great, we checked in at 1:00 p.m. and we were not asked to pay the $3.50 per day resort fee because we had pre-paid for the room through Hotwire.com. We asked for a quiet room otherwise they would have put us in a pool view room. We ended up in a quiet room facing the "lake/pond". It was a a bit far away from the lobby but I was happy with the location. The only part I didn't care for was the timeshare people at the front desk after check-in, but just tell them no and it won't take too long to get rid of them.
We had a rental car for the trip. We drove to WDW daily and it was a short, quick trip to the parks, straight down the road. Sometimes I think it took us longer to park and ride the tram from the lot than it did to actually drive from the hotel to the parks.
Overall, I would recommend the hotel, especially if you're getting discount.
Iheoma
P.S. We did have the breakfast buffet once and we were not impressed. We could have gone to Shoney's for better food. We did have Pizza Hut as a snack one night and it was quite good. Be sure to use the coupons they give you at check-in.