WDWPartyof5
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2004
- Messages
- 55
We arrived Friday from our Spring Break trip at WDW. Thirteen of us stayed at the Pop Century Resort. I had read fairly mixed reviews about this resort here and in other forums, but had an open mind as to what our experience would be like.
Our group had a total of five rooms, four rooms connecting, and one room seperated from our group. All of our rooms were ground floor. All of our special requests were granted. We requested connecting rooms, one handicap room (we got two), non-smoking and informed them that in two of the rooms that would be connecting we had asthmatics. We also got our building request, which was the 50s. Two of our rooms were pool side, two of our rooms were on the backside (very quiet) and one room was lake side with a perfect view of the fireworks from Epcot.
*I* personally did not like the themeing of the resort, I also did not like their kid area in the main building where you checked in. While the gift shop was nice and roomy, it was right next to the food court which was often a distraction to the smaller children in our group. The food court in my opinion was laid our poorly, and the food was HORRIBLE. The Pizza was not too bad, but everything else we ate, from breakfast to salads was nastee. One day for lunch I ordered a quick bite or chili cheese fries and it took everything in me to hold them down. It was beyond gross. No one in our group was impressed with the food court, except my children who at Pizza there three times.
Our rooms were very nice. Clean and roomy. I liked the furnishings in the rooms and I also liked the fact that the handicap rooms came with little fridges. Iron and iron board were provided and if we needed anything from housekeeping they brought it right away. I tipped the cleaning person everyday, but not one time did they do anything cute or special with our children's toys, towels, etc in the room. This was disappointing as we had four children between our two rooms. It was also very obvious that we had children in our group and we had several Disney themed souveniers in our rooms. My children however didn't know any different and decorated our window sills themselves during our afternoon breaks. (they had seen other rooms with decorated windows)
Transportation. Well everything I read here about transportation being slow with long waits was true. I was really disappointed at how long it took to get from place to place. One night we had to wait for three busses (a total of an hour) to get to DTD. In the morning your wait time for a bus could vary depending on the park you went too. Sometimes you could easily get on a bus, and then sometimes you would have to wait as long as 20 minutes for one. Going back to the resort from Magic Kingdom was a nightmare. Pop has the farthest bus drop pickup. In fact it was aggravating to me that three sections were for drop off and pick up of non resort guests before the Pops Pickup. Not cool at all. On Friday, April 1st, we waited 25 minutes to be picked up for a POP bus back to Magic Kingdom, while the All Star Busses came every 10 minutes to pick up guests. This was not the first time this had happened either for us. At Animal Kingdom we waited 20 minutes for a bust to take us back to Magic Kingdom the night before. Also we had a mixture of bus drivers -- one man was an a$$ and thought he was comedian, we had one woman driver who treated the handicap people like they were a waste of breathe, and then others drove like it was the wizarding bus on Harry Potter 3.
Pools. Some days pools were crowded, but they were nice and warm. I really did like the pools there and the Goofy water play area for the kids.
Food and bus service was the biggest issues for me and even though we had nice clean rooms we would not stay there again. The food I could look over but the bus service I could not. The resort is nice but just not our style either. If we are going to stay in a value resort we would definitely go with an All Stars over the Pop.
Our group had a total of five rooms, four rooms connecting, and one room seperated from our group. All of our rooms were ground floor. All of our special requests were granted. We requested connecting rooms, one handicap room (we got two), non-smoking and informed them that in two of the rooms that would be connecting we had asthmatics. We also got our building request, which was the 50s. Two of our rooms were pool side, two of our rooms were on the backside (very quiet) and one room was lake side with a perfect view of the fireworks from Epcot.
*I* personally did not like the themeing of the resort, I also did not like their kid area in the main building where you checked in. While the gift shop was nice and roomy, it was right next to the food court which was often a distraction to the smaller children in our group. The food court in my opinion was laid our poorly, and the food was HORRIBLE. The Pizza was not too bad, but everything else we ate, from breakfast to salads was nastee. One day for lunch I ordered a quick bite or chili cheese fries and it took everything in me to hold them down. It was beyond gross. No one in our group was impressed with the food court, except my children who at Pizza there three times.
Our rooms were very nice. Clean and roomy. I liked the furnishings in the rooms and I also liked the fact that the handicap rooms came with little fridges. Iron and iron board were provided and if we needed anything from housekeeping they brought it right away. I tipped the cleaning person everyday, but not one time did they do anything cute or special with our children's toys, towels, etc in the room. This was disappointing as we had four children between our two rooms. It was also very obvious that we had children in our group and we had several Disney themed souveniers in our rooms. My children however didn't know any different and decorated our window sills themselves during our afternoon breaks. (they had seen other rooms with decorated windows)
Transportation. Well everything I read here about transportation being slow with long waits was true. I was really disappointed at how long it took to get from place to place. One night we had to wait for three busses (a total of an hour) to get to DTD. In the morning your wait time for a bus could vary depending on the park you went too. Sometimes you could easily get on a bus, and then sometimes you would have to wait as long as 20 minutes for one. Going back to the resort from Magic Kingdom was a nightmare. Pop has the farthest bus drop pickup. In fact it was aggravating to me that three sections were for drop off and pick up of non resort guests before the Pops Pickup. Not cool at all. On Friday, April 1st, we waited 25 minutes to be picked up for a POP bus back to Magic Kingdom, while the All Star Busses came every 10 minutes to pick up guests. This was not the first time this had happened either for us. At Animal Kingdom we waited 20 minutes for a bust to take us back to Magic Kingdom the night before. Also we had a mixture of bus drivers -- one man was an a$$ and thought he was comedian, we had one woman driver who treated the handicap people like they were a waste of breathe, and then others drove like it was the wizarding bus on Harry Potter 3.
Pools. Some days pools were crowded, but they were nice and warm. I really did like the pools there and the Goofy water play area for the kids.
Food and bus service was the biggest issues for me and even though we had nice clean rooms we would not stay there again. The food I could look over but the bus service I could not. The resort is nice but just not our style either. If we are going to stay in a value resort we would definitely go with an All Stars over the Pop.
) POP is definitely a step (or two!) up from All Stars. 
