Cabelle1863
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2007
- Messages
- 318
We stayed at this hotel during our November 2006 trip. The address is 5876 W. Irlo Bronson Memorial Hwy. My father inlaw found a "great deal" on the hotel at hotels.com for about $89/night for a 2 bedroom suite. DH & I read all the negative reviews at Trip Advisor, Expedia & Travelocity and felt very reluctant to stay there but the inlaws insisted. After staying there DH and I don't consider the place such a great deal and won't stay there again.
The suite is large and spacious, plenty of room four our party of 7 (DH's parents, Dh, myself and our three children). The room was in pretty decent condition and the beds were comfortable. Plenty of hot water in the showers. It was super easy to drive to the parks from the hotel. There is a nice Bennigan's and a Denny's across the street. Both restaurants had delicious food and good service. Just a little bit further down the street is the Old Town area. Renting a car from the Budget Car rental a block further down was easy (we flew in and needed transportation, the inlaws drove down from their state). But there were other things that will make stay elsewhere next time.
It seemed as though simple requests were impossible to fullfill. There is a coffemaker in the kitchenette of the room and on the first day the pack of regular coffee, decaffinated coffee, creamer and sugar was provided. The problem was this was not replaced after use by housekeeping as it should have been. After coming back from the parks I'd noticed this and called down to the front desk. We've got family members who need their morning dose of caffeine to get going.
I was told someone would be by immediately but that never happened. The coffee drinkers instead went down to the continental breakfast to get some coffee. For two days straight I requested both in the morning and the evening for the coffee pack to be replaced. I was assured it would happen but it didn't. Finally one time when I asked at the front desk as I was mailing post cards the desk person gave me a bag with some coffee packs in it. I would think that normally these coffee packs are in the housekeeping carts so how come housekeeping can't seem to manage to replace the packs daily as they are used? 
I also asked for two pillows the first night. I was told that they'd be right up. Never happened. Then each morning before we left for the parks I asked again. I was assured housekeeping would drop off the pillows while they cleaned our room. Still didn't happen. I finally received the two pillows the final night of our 4 night stay. I've made my two extra pillow request at a number of different hotels all over the US. Except for this particular hotel I've received the pillows within an hour or so.
The continental breakfast is delicious and filling. There's a wide variety of choices for all tastes. The biggest problem is that there is no place to sit. The little "restaraunt" area for the breakfast has only enough space for about 25% of the actual guests. There are more tables outside near the pool but they are unuseable due to being sopping wet from the sprinklers. We ended up taking multiple trips to get our food back up to our room to eat at the kitchenette. Trays to carry the food would have made this so much easier and cut down on the number of trips.
Sometimes it appeared as though hotel management allows children to stay here alone. The reason being many children were running wild and obnoxiously with no parent in sight and no word from staff to get themselves under control. I understand that is more of a parent problem but I cannot imagine why management doesn't appear to EVER step in to tell someone they must supervise their children. My mother inlaw & DH were slammed into by a young boy (he appeared to be about 10) chasing another child down the hall. He hit my mother inlaw so hard he nearly knocked her down. When my DH told him that he must slow down and watch where he was going the boy whined at him, "But I'm trying to keep up with my sister!"
Where were these kids parents? I would have read my kids the riot act if they acted like this, especially if they hurt someone else.
Along with kids running up and down the halls at all hours unsupervised there was also the "Spring Break" mentality that descended upon us Friday & Saturday night. You would have thought it was a fraternity party with how loud and raucous things got. Luckily all the adults had earplugs and the kids were heavy sleepers.
There was also a scary police pursuit which ended across the street over by Bennigan's Saturday night around 8pm. The suspect shot at the deputy. We saw the whole thing from the bedroom windows. Made us feel like we were in a pretty scary neighborhood. That's not the hotel's fault though, just a general comment on that area of Hwy 192. The hotels right next to us looked pretty scary, like a run down Motel 6. It made both DH and I uncomfortable that anyone could easily walk into our hotel's property. All of the hotel rooms face an inner courtyard and there is no gate or door keeping non-residents from entering that courtyard. Theoretically you could easily be mugged or accosted right outside your room's door.
As we embarked the final morning on the next part of our trip (the 4 night Wonder cruise, awesome
) DH and I decided that we would stay somewhere else next time. All these things were not really awful, they were more annoying than anything else. But DH and I feel like the combined effect of all these annoyances were a detriment to being able to enjoy our vacation. We don't like breaking our budget for accomodations but if a "deal" ends up making us somewhat miserable it's not so much of a deal to us anymore. We'd rather spend a little more to be completely comfortable and enjoy ourselves. We've decided that on our next trip to WDW in 2009 we'll splurge a bit and stay at the Port Orleans Riverside. Staying offsite and having to fly in (we're from CA) we'd need to rent a car again and DH would prefer to let Disney do the driving next time. 
So I hope my review of the Quality Inn & Suites Maingate East will help you when deciding on your offsite accomodations.
The suite is large and spacious, plenty of room four our party of 7 (DH's parents, Dh, myself and our three children). The room was in pretty decent condition and the beds were comfortable. Plenty of hot water in the showers. It was super easy to drive to the parks from the hotel. There is a nice Bennigan's and a Denny's across the street. Both restaurants had delicious food and good service. Just a little bit further down the street is the Old Town area. Renting a car from the Budget Car rental a block further down was easy (we flew in and needed transportation, the inlaws drove down from their state). But there were other things that will make stay elsewhere next time.
It seemed as though simple requests were impossible to fullfill. There is a coffemaker in the kitchenette of the room and on the first day the pack of regular coffee, decaffinated coffee, creamer and sugar was provided. The problem was this was not replaced after use by housekeeping as it should have been. After coming back from the parks I'd noticed this and called down to the front desk. We've got family members who need their morning dose of caffeine to get going.
I was told someone would be by immediately but that never happened. The coffee drinkers instead went down to the continental breakfast to get some coffee. For two days straight I requested both in the morning and the evening for the coffee pack to be replaced. I was assured it would happen but it didn't. Finally one time when I asked at the front desk as I was mailing post cards the desk person gave me a bag with some coffee packs in it. I would think that normally these coffee packs are in the housekeeping carts so how come housekeeping can't seem to manage to replace the packs daily as they are used? I also asked for two pillows the first night. I was told that they'd be right up. Never happened. Then each morning before we left for the parks I asked again. I was assured housekeeping would drop off the pillows while they cleaned our room. Still didn't happen. I finally received the two pillows the final night of our 4 night stay. I've made my two extra pillow request at a number of different hotels all over the US. Except for this particular hotel I've received the pillows within an hour or so.
The continental breakfast is delicious and filling. There's a wide variety of choices for all tastes. The biggest problem is that there is no place to sit. The little "restaraunt" area for the breakfast has only enough space for about 25% of the actual guests. There are more tables outside near the pool but they are unuseable due to being sopping wet from the sprinklers. We ended up taking multiple trips to get our food back up to our room to eat at the kitchenette. Trays to carry the food would have made this so much easier and cut down on the number of trips.
Sometimes it appeared as though hotel management allows children to stay here alone. The reason being many children were running wild and obnoxiously with no parent in sight and no word from staff to get themselves under control. I understand that is more of a parent problem but I cannot imagine why management doesn't appear to EVER step in to tell someone they must supervise their children. My mother inlaw & DH were slammed into by a young boy (he appeared to be about 10) chasing another child down the hall. He hit my mother inlaw so hard he nearly knocked her down. When my DH told him that he must slow down and watch where he was going the boy whined at him, "But I'm trying to keep up with my sister!"
Where were these kids parents? I would have read my kids the riot act if they acted like this, especially if they hurt someone else.Along with kids running up and down the halls at all hours unsupervised there was also the "Spring Break" mentality that descended upon us Friday & Saturday night. You would have thought it was a fraternity party with how loud and raucous things got. Luckily all the adults had earplugs and the kids were heavy sleepers.
There was also a scary police pursuit which ended across the street over by Bennigan's Saturday night around 8pm. The suspect shot at the deputy. We saw the whole thing from the bedroom windows. Made us feel like we were in a pretty scary neighborhood. That's not the hotel's fault though, just a general comment on that area of Hwy 192. The hotels right next to us looked pretty scary, like a run down Motel 6. It made both DH and I uncomfortable that anyone could easily walk into our hotel's property. All of the hotel rooms face an inner courtyard and there is no gate or door keeping non-residents from entering that courtyard. Theoretically you could easily be mugged or accosted right outside your room's door.
As we embarked the final morning on the next part of our trip (the 4 night Wonder cruise, awesome
) DH and I decided that we would stay somewhere else next time. All these things were not really awful, they were more annoying than anything else. But DH and I feel like the combined effect of all these annoyances were a detriment to being able to enjoy our vacation. We don't like breaking our budget for accomodations but if a "deal" ends up making us somewhat miserable it's not so much of a deal to us anymore. We'd rather spend a little more to be completely comfortable and enjoy ourselves. We've decided that on our next trip to WDW in 2009 we'll splurge a bit and stay at the Port Orleans Riverside. Staying offsite and having to fly in (we're from CA) we'd need to rent a car again and DH would prefer to let Disney do the driving next time. So I hope my review of the Quality Inn & Suites Maingate East will help you when deciding on your offsite accomodations.
