Mixed stays at Cabins at Fort Wilderness

[ehh]

Might be an unorthodox trip report here: it’s actually a report of 3 separate stays for a combined 10 nights at Cabins at Fort Wilderness around Thanksgiving.

We traveled with friends to WDW for Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving week, we stayed in a 1BR at VGF while our friends stayed at CFW. We then went on a cruise together and for the final night of our trip we each had CFW cabin stays.

All told, we stayed at CFW for one night and our friends stayed for nine nights across two stays (an eight-night stay and a one-night stay).

During their initial eight-night stay, I nearly had to talk our friends out of buying at CFW. They’re Copper Creek and VDH owners who have only stayed in Studios during their entire DVC ownership (and have had so many challenges booking CCV Studios). They had a cabin in the 2300 loop.

According to them, the separate living room was transformative for their ability to relax. The full kitchen was great, and they actually used it. The lack of wall-sharing neighbors and the immediate parking were also big hits. They were also fans of the cabins themselves.

But there were some downsides, too. The toilet wouldn’t make even a little bit of toilet paper disappear and needed a call to maintenance. Their neighbors, while not wall-sharing, were chaotic and disruptive. They also chose not to rent a golf cart and ended up walking a lot.

At this point, they’re extremely interested in trying a proper 1BR for a future stay, and won’t be buying at CFW due to the dues…and the second stay.

Our post-cruise one-night stays went poorly, in short.

We planned to maximize our lone night at the Cabins:

• Arrive early, hope for an early check-in
• Rent a golf cart and explore FW during the day
• Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue for dinner
• At night, tour the grounds in our golf cart and look at all the decorations
• Check out as late as possible

In honesty, the non-Cabin parts went great! Touring all the campgrounds on a golf cart was a lot of fun, HDDR was a blast, and the golf cart was a fun novelty.

The actual stay part had problems, though:

• Check-in was not a good experience, with a cast member issue. This was addressed during our stay.
• Our Cabin had a weird smell: part wet dog, part rotting wood, part peanut butter
• Our friends’ Cabin had a similar smell, plus cigarette smoke (their first Cabin had no such odors)
• Our friends were assigned a wheelchair accessible Cabin and did not enjoy the differences
• Our toilet’s flush was set to ‘stun’, not ‘kill’. Even #1 took multiple flushes.
• We are 1BR folk and did not enjoy the Cabin layout as much, though didn’t hate it. We wish some Cabins were ‘King Cabins’ with a king bed and no bunks in the bedroom.
• We were in the early 2500s and either our neighbors or the pool were so loud at night, with more ‘night party’ noise than we’ve had at any other stay at any other DVC resort
• We put a very small number of clothes in drawers and when we got home the few clothes we put into drawers smelled of cigarette smoke (despite our Cabin having no overt smoke smell)
• We are becoming concerned we brought fleas home

So, would we do it again? Well, we’re very glad we experienced it as it’s important to us to try all the DVC resorts. No regrets for trying it.

Will we book CFW again in the future? Actually, maybe! The points chart is so low compared to the rest of our stays that future one-night stays could actually be booked as 2/3-night stays with bumper nights and still be fewer points than what we would have booked as a 1BR or bigger for just the single night. It’ll have to be around the holidays, though, to tour the decorations.

We’re not prioritizing another stay there, though.

 

[zavandor]

I am interested in trying them, but I wish they had dog friendly cabins as a booking category.

 

[eticketplease]

I agree it would have been nice to have a separate booking category for dogs.

 

[ehh]

I am interested in trying them, but I wish they had dog friendly cabins as a booking category.

I agree it would have been nice to have a separate booking category for dogs.

Reflecting on it more, I don't think the wet dog smell that two of our cabins had was from a dog.

I think it was a housekeeping product used meant to smell "woodsy" but missed the mark, badly. I now think it was used to cover up cigarette smoke odors.

This is based on one of the cabins also smelling like cigarette smoke and another making clothes smell like it after a half-day of drawer exposure. The wet dog + rotting wood + peanut butter smell was too consistent across the two cabins to be a coincidence from actual dogs.

Also, we think the flea scare was a false alarm.