Pool-hopping to Cabana Bay -- our experience

KatieCharlotte

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jan 3, 2010
We stayed recently at the Royal Pacific -- excellent in every way -- and decided to try out Cabana Bay's pools and food court. Our experience might be helpful for others considering a trip to Cabana Bay either for pool-hopping or to stay.

(1) It's a completely walkable trip from Royal Pacific to Cabana Bay. (And between those resorts and Sapphire Falls, which is between RPR and CB.) There's a walkway over the road. BUT, you need to know where you're going. We followed the walkway marked on the posted maps at RPR and ended up going the long way through Sapphire Falls. As we learned on the way back, it's better to go out the front entrance and go down the sidewalk to your left, which connects to the Garden walkway, and then follow the signs for the resorts instead of branching off toward the parks/Citywalk. That will lead you directly to the crosswalk over the road to Cabana Bay. On the other side of the road, there are blue circles on the sidewalk leading to the pools.

(2) The gates to the pool area did require a room card from Cabana Bay. I went to guest services in the lobby. This was a bit odd -- the woman who helped me said that the standard practice was to give me a room card after I showed her my RPR card, but she wasn't sure how to do that. Another employee told her to give me a duplicate for a random room. She didn't tell me the room number, so there was no real security problem, but still a bit unusual. Meanwhile, my kids had gotten into the pool area by waiting for someone to hold the gate open for them. :)

(3) The best way to walk between the pool with the slide and the pool with the lazy river is to follow the blue circles, which lead you up a ramp and through the building on the second story, passed the bowling alley. The food court is just below.

(4) The food court was a highlight for my kids. Lots of kid-friendly choices, with retro ads playing on big screens.

(5) If you want to purchase a tube for the lazy river and pool, be prepared for a ridiculously slow line, at least in the late afternoon. At one point, there was only one employee working, and the process was still slow with two employees. The employee/s had to unwrap each tube from its packaging after it was purchased and then blow it up. You could only pay with credit card or room charge, and most people charged to their room. That required the employee to call the desk and get authorization for EACH TUBE. Sometimes, people reached a per-card charging limit that they didn't know about and had to get a different card from the same room to use. If you used a credit card, they didn't have a pen and handed you the sharpie that was used to write names on the tubes. When I said that my kids would be wondering why I was gone for 45 minutes, the employee laughed.

(6) Yes, we were spoiled by the service, attention to detail, and cozy atmosphere at the RPR. I heard that the lazy river and slide at CB were fun -- I spent too much time in line to enjoy them. I recommend bringing your own tube or trying a different time of the day. The line wasn't even long, just painfully slow.
 
:thanks:

For sharing all this info to the readers!

It’s valuable info and will help homies that want to pool and hotel hop during their stay
 
Thanks for sharing this. I'd like to stay at CB sometime, and I thought pool hopping there first would be a good way to check out the resort! Nice to know what's involved to do so!:thumbsup2
 
Thank you for this. If at RPR, may try to do this one day. Otherwise, I'll just use the bus to VB.
 


I did a similar pool hop from RPR, but took the bus to VB, then walked the VB path that leads to CB.

I also did a pool hop to SF, HRH, and PBR via the boats. You have to transfer between boats at Citywalk, which was a minor nuisance, but was much better than walking in a wet suit and sandals. We loved all the pools.
 
Thanks for sharing! We tried to do this two weeks ago but we thought it would take too long to walk there and we were trying to make it in time before breakfast was finished so we could eat at the food court. We ended up taking a car from RPR that cost $12.50. We were prepared with our own tubes but by the time we were finished with breakfast it started to storm so the pools were closed. We wandered through the gift shop a little but it was a long storm and we didn't want to waste the time waiting it out when there was no way for us to know how long the pools would remain closed for. We didn't want to pay the car again so we took the shuttle to City Walk and then back to RPR. I guess it wasn't in the cards for us, maybe next time!!
 


We've stayed at Cabana Bay and going to be staying there again. We'd like to pool hop to RPR, SF, etc Do those resorts have a "locked gate" at the pools like CB does? I would think as long as we have our room keys, we should have any issues. Just curious.
 
I booked CB for our upcoming trip because the pool areas looked like a lot of fun!

How would you compare it to the other resorts pools? Should we consider hopping a bit ourselves or just stick with CB? We will be travelling with our DS7 so the main emphasis on what he would like.
 
I booked CB for our upcoming trip because the pool areas looked like a lot of fun!

How would you compare it to the other resorts pools? Should we consider hopping a bit ourselves or just stick with CB? We will be travelling with our DS7 so the main emphasis on what he would like.
We’ve stayed at RPR, Portinfino and Cabana Bay. While we loved all of the pools for different reasons, when we stay at Cabana Bay we stick to their pools. My kids like them best. As an adult I find the RPR pool more relaxing but not enough to pool hop.
 
Great idea to bring your own inflatables. Do they have rules about sizes/shapes? I'm guessing anything ring-shaped will be OK.
 
Great idea to bring your own inflatables. Do they have rules about sizes/shapes? I'm guessing anything ring-shaped will be OK.

Don't try to bring one of those giant swan shaped floats. It does not fit in the lazy river. Somebody tried this when I was there once. And the lifeguard had some words with them. A ring shaped float is perfect. We purchase ours when they go on sale at Target for cheap
 

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