ZZUB
Roll Tide, Mean It
- Joined
- May 9, 2003
- Messages
- 947
For whatever our recommendations mean to you, we offer our full-throated endorsement of the CR. Like Sean Hannity interviewing Donald Trump, Don Lemmon interviewing Hillary Clinton. Or Paul Finebaum talking about Alabama. With less fawning praise of course.
We stayed for a week at the Contemporary over the summer. It's been three years since we've been to WDW, six since we stayed at the CR. It most ways, it was better than we remembered. In one way, it was exactly the same.
We used online check in and that was fantastic! We got the room ready text while we were on the Magic Express bus (making stops at every other MK resort first). It was very cool to get off the bus and walk straight to our room! Best possible use of the Magic Bands. We arrived around 12:00.
I think our only room request was odd numbered room. I hate to encourage more people to do this because I don't want to compete with more people for these rooms, but here is the view from our bed:
Not too shabby!
We were on the 9th floor right above Chef Mickey's. We always try to avoid being on that side of the tower. But I don't know why. Can you hear Chef Mickey's? Yes. But only in the late afternoon, around 5:00 when they open for dinner. That's it. Otherwise, it was a dull din, no louder than Stacey urging us to do the must dos you must do to do the must dos (that's an exact quote by the way).
We also watched Illuminations from the landing of the staircase outside. But be advised, the door will lock behind you. So don't let it close.
And because everyone else seems to take this picture, here's ours:
We had the upsized shampoo and the bonus toothing brush/dental kit. A bottle of water or two each day. Pretty sure they're setting us up for a resort fee. Upsized toiletries, water. Dental kits. Mouthwash. It's so obvious.
We flat out love the CR and would stay there every time but for our love for variety. We spent a ton of time on the balcony especially in the early morning watching the MK wake up. And every evening we watched Wishes from there. Nothing better than sitting in a chair, eating sugar free Disney gummy mice, watching Wishes and then going back into our air conditioned room. There was no standing around for an hour to get a good spot, no pushing and shoving, no sweaty people rubbing their sweaty arms against you, no under-deoderized people standing up wind of you, no kids on shoulders blocking your view, and best of all, no swimming in a sea of cranky humanity to stand in line for a bus, a boat, or monorail. We were able to listen to the music through the TV.
Walking to the MK in the morning is a great bonus. We took great advantage of that. Plus, it's an easy Monorail ride to Epcot. Or Ohana (which means family) for bread pudding!
Food options are also good, although we're pretty rednecky. We didn't eat at California Grill or the Wave of American Flavors (maybe the worst name of any WDW restaurant). But we did eat at Chef Mickey's and Contempo Cafe and the snack bar by the pool. Chef Mickey's is fair to middling. You're paying for the show. And I don't mean the characters. I mean the people at the table next to you filling up their refillable mugs with ice cream and shoveling desserts into their suspiciously large purses.
The food was a notch above Crystal Palace, which is hardly a compliment, and a little like saying a stomach virus is preferable to food poisoning. But the desserts were good and the characters were fun. Even so, if Crystal Palace has the distinction of the worst meal we had, Chef Mickey's was the worst service.
Our first meal on property was at Contempo Cafe. My favorite part of a Disney trip is arrival day, and I love the first meal. Because everything is ahead of you and everything is wonderful and everything tastes good. I don't eat a lot of sugar in the real world (cresting 40something sucks!). So vacation is an orgy of carbohydrates, sugar (both processed and natural, but mainly processed), bread, potatoes, cake, pie, ice-cream, and sugar free gummy bears shaped like Mickey Mouse. The first meal on the first day is when I get to dive head on into a cupcake. A blessed, delicious cupcake! Our first meal on the first day, we eat dessert first.
FYI: that was NOT a good cupcake. But ZZUBY was eating a pistachio cherry one that was pretty, pretty good.
As good rednecks (and cheap ones at that) we loved us some Contempo Cafe. Indeed, if given the choice to eat lunch in the MK or go back to the resort, we opted for Contempo Cafe. Mainly because we had refillable mugs from our trip in 2005 and since they were good forever, and we still had them, it's our right to still use them. But also because we liked the food and there was good variety.
Just kidding about the mugs, by the way. Don't get the vapors.
Don't be hating on the tuna! Insider tip: they serve it on a pita, but they'll put it on bread if you ask. Which I did. We ate there for lunch 3 times. Maybe 4. Each time is was on a different kind of bread! It was a fun surprise.
One afternoon at the pool we grabbed a snack from the Sand Bar. No one got sick afterwards, but otherwise, I wouldn't endorse it.
The room is, in case you didn't know, quite large. We're a family of four, and the separate water closet (nice term for toilet room) is always welcomed. The beds are super comfortable.
The pool won't set your hair on fire, and except for the hulking Contemporary standing next to it, you wouldn't know you're at WDW. And yet. It's never crowded! The slide is fun and there's plenty of shaded chairs. A few times, there were CMs walking around handing out watermelon. 5 bills a night, thanks for the free fruit!
They keep the pool luke. Which seems odd in the Florida hot. Or maybe that's why it's luke? What do I know about science? I'm a Republican.
FYI, if you're in the pool with your kids and you want to play catch, but forgot to bring a ball, your magic band makes a good toy to throw and catch. And we had a lot of fun imagining Disney's information services trying to figure out where we were. "They're here! No wait, now there over here! Wait, they've moved again!!"
Magic Bands in general are fun. It's obviously a marketing ploy, an easy way to make us spend more money. And it works, so there's that. But we were amused by where they'll take it next. There's a scene on Voyage of the Little Mermaid where Ariel is holding something, maybe a music box. It looks all the world like she's displaying it for you to buy. Which evoked this response from me, "Hey kids! Do you like this, it's available at the gift shop at the exit of this ride. Tell you mom and dad to scan their Magic Bands now and it'll be waiting for you at the end." Of course, there are plenty of other possible Magic Band uses. At a buffet, "would you like more mashed potatoes? Scan your Magic Band here." And when they decide you've had enough, the Mickey head turns blue and a message appears on a screen letting you know you have to wait another 5 minutes before you can put any more food on your plate. They'll call it a Rapid Fill Buffet.
Back to the CR. Because we had not been to WDW in three years, we decided to use a travel agent from Fairy Trip Mothers to help us plan the trip. (They actually started from the Disboards which is pretty cool). We were very glad we did because so much had changed in three years. We booked the trip back in January and our travel agent watched the discount codes pretty closely. We're on the left coast and she's in Georgia. The morning the new discounts came out, I awoke to 37 texts from her with our options. She was that on top of things! She took great pains to explain what was new in the world, how to use FP+, and when to use it. But here's where she was exceptional. The CR doesn't have the best housekeeping. Our prior stays have been marred with bad housekeeping and I've spent more than a few minutes at the front desk talking with managers about it. It's not a deal breaker, of course, but at 5 bills a night, you'd kind of like a clean room.
Our TA told us ahead of time that if there were any issues, to call her. "Don't waste your precious vacation time at the front desk." I thought she was nuts, but as my daughter says, "whatevs."
The room was clean when we got there, but on our second day, we came back from the MK and it had not been serviced. We went to the pool and came back at 4:00 and although the beds were made, nothing else had been done. No towels. Full garbage cans. I stood there in my damp suit with my impressively large guns and remarkably flat abs, trying to decide what to do. I was about to change clothes and head downstairs, but then remembered the prophetic words of our TA. So I called her. I don't know what she did, but I know that when we came back from dinner, our room was spotless, and for the rest of our trip, it stayed that way. I've never been a guy to use a TA, but it didn't cost us any additional money, and our TA was a HUGE help. Can't say enough about Fairy Trip Mothers.
Housekeeping is the only negative about the CR in our experience. By comparison, our stay at AKL the following week didn't have any housekeeping issues. Our stay three years ago at the Polynesian didn't have any housekeeping issues. But there's something about the CR. Again, not a deal breaker, but be prepared, it may happen to you as well.
For us, we can't beat the location, the room size, or any other aspect. The CR is classic WDW.
I hope you found this useful.
If not, scan your Magic Band now, and we'll give you a full refund.
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