Our First Stay At Saratoga Springs - My Review

[dianeschlicht]

Thank you for giving an honest "positive" report! We don't see enough of those on this board. Usually folks only comment when it's negetive.

 

["Got Disney"]

I am sooo glad to hear all the positive remarks about SSR...we just purchased 400 pts at $86 a point...brocken down into 200 + 200 =400

We love the BCR and always stay there and have not even seen SSR yet. We were at WDW for 5 days in Dec than 10 day Christmas cruise followed so no time to visit the resort and did not even think about purchasing at that point.

we decided to sign up on the cruise.

 

[alldiz]

thanks for the great report....

looking forward to staying there one day.
Kerri

 

[JMLBrats]

Our first trip to our home resort, SSR was this past Octrober and overall, we gave it a big thumbs up. We stayed at the Springs and thought the location was ideal....a very short walk to everything and I mean everything: the main swimming pool, the cafeteria, gift shop, the arcade, community hall and the bus stop all were a 5 minute walk from our room.
The room was a 2BR and we had plenty of "elbow room" for a family of 6. The quality of the room - furniture, sleeper sofa, kitchen,etc.. was all very, very nice.

The one place for improvement: I think they need to upgrade the setup of the cafeteria and gift shop - they share the same checkout registers and its not condusive for moving hungry people through the maze so to speak. Example: one morning I was in line behind a man who requested alcohol (yes, at 8:00AM), the cashier had to find a supervisor in order to unlock the liquor cabinet...once this was done, the supervisor then told the customer that they could not sell alcohol until later in the day. Meanwhile I'm still standing in line with my breakfast.
Clearly, they need to reconfigure the checkout for dedicated caferteria customers vs dedicated gift shop customers. A small complaint though; I would highly recommend SSR !!

Joe

I would agree w/all of this!

 

[JMLBrats]

Our first trip to our home resort, SSR was this past Octrober and overall, we gave it a big thumbs up. We stayed at the Springs and thought the location was ideal....a very short walk to everything and I mean everything: the main swimming pool, the cafeteria, gift shop, the arcade, community hall and the bus stop all were a 5 minute walk from our room.
The room was a 2BR and we had plenty of "elbow room" for a family of 6. The quality of the room - furniture, sleeper sofa, kitchen,etc.. was all very, very nice.

The one place for improvement: I think they need to upgrade the setup of the cafeteria and gift shop - they share the same checkout registers and its not condusive for moving hungry people through the maze so to speak. Example: one morning I was in line behind a man who requested alcohol (yes, at 8:00AM), the cashier had to find a supervisor in order to unlock the liquor cabinet...once this was done, the supervisor then told the customer that they could not sell alcohol until later in the day. Meanwhile I'm still standing in line with my breakfast.
Clearly, they need to reconfigure the checkout for dedicated caferteria customers vs dedicated gift shop customers. A small complaint though; I would highly recommend SSR !!

Joe

I agree w/pretty much everything said above! opps sorry to double post!!!!! I just tried to stop it and say it different the second time around

 

[london1973]

Hi every one the family (wife & 2 boys) and I stayed for the first time two weeks at the begining of December and we thouhght it was great. Read a lot of negative things previous about it and living in England with costs of flights kinda expensive thought oh no what have we done, But no really happy how it turned out.
We were in a studio room 7112 in The carousel ground floor nice patio no great view (by the way can you request what location room you want at check-in? And do they oblige?) directly opposite the bus stop, and that was a stroke of luck with a two year old as the bus picks up first from there so at least my wife can get a seat with him and of course you get dropped off first.
It was only a ten minute walk maximum to the shop area made a nice walk for coffee in the morning. Not having a car to go grocery shopping and relying on the choices in the grocery shop (artists palette) were pretty poor i thought though. Beer was pretty expensive in the shop (evening tipple heineken) but we ate out mostly with an exchange rate of $1.96 to the UK pound we had to!!
SSR seemed pretty central to the parks AK the longest i think,DTD a bonus being so close a nice walk again, would like to stay at BWV one year but SSR will defiently survice for now. Just booked flights today for October 16th-28th 2007 can't wait, got my insurance sorted , annual passes already bought from December trip plenty of time for our spending money so BRING IT ON!!!

Goodbye from England

 

[BroganMc]

Count us as another positive owner. We stayed at SSR for the first time earlier this month. (In an accessible 1 bedroom in the Springs... same building as the preview units.) I had wanted to reserve VWL when we bought in May and then to get a Congress Park room, but we ended up in SSR at the Springs. I'm glad we didn't get our first choices.

When we visited VWL for lunch I was struck with how noisy the resort is, and it was far too cold to stroll to DTD at any length. But we really enjoyed being near the hub of everything. We had a view of one of the lakes (complete with giant swans), were right next to the bus stop, and visited Artist Palette daily for our free refills.

I like the laid back quality of the resort. It's removed enough from the bustle of the parks you can just relax, yet close enough to DTD you can head over for movies, shopping or dining. We spent our time Christmas shopping, going to the movies and hitting Pleasure Island. We still did the parks for a few days, but our Disney part of the trip was much more relaxing. (Our first week we were at our Marriott timeshare doing 6 full park days with a newbie friend.)

We'll be back in May for another two week trip: one week at Marriott and the other at SSR. And we're planning a third trip in October with my sister's family. We could have just invited them to stay at our Marriott timeshare (comes with a two bedroom unit), but we so wanted them to have the Disney experience we opted to spent the points on a two bedroom SSR unit. My sister is most looking forward to mornings at DTD and trips to Typhoon Lagoon... and the MNSSHP.

After having stayed at SSR I really don't get why so many DISers were complaining about it. Staying there has spoiled me for the smaller resorts I think. Now they just seem so busy and noisy. SSR is my kind of resort, close enough and yet removed so you can have some peace and quiet. I can't wait to try the ferry rides up the river to POR and OKW.

 

[CRSNDSNY]

What a nice surprise for you Nicole! I'm so glad you were more than pleased with SSR and your overall purchase. SSR definitely has its advantages.

 

[DisDaydreamer]

Nice to see a BWV owner "returning the favor."

SSR is really coming into it's own. Glad you had such a good trip. Sounds as if you might be using all of your points at your "home."

Agreed... seeing all the good postings for SSR... we BWV owners just might have to make this one our next stays.