Here is my review! Hope this helps some future *POPPERS*
Hi all! Just back from a 7 day stay at POP and thought I would share some thoughts!
It was myself, DH, DD7 & DS6. We typically travel in Sept/Oct and love to stay at the Poly or AKL. The 4/3 promo tempted us into a *bonus* trip this year. Based on our budget we decided it had to be a value. Having never been to POP and never been in June, I was very nervous! So...what did we think? We absolutely LOVED it! Here are some of the reasons why it worked so well for us.
#1 Transportation: I was unsure of the heat/crowds in June so the first time in all our trips we rented a car. HELLO! What have we been thinking all these years?!? The freedom, flexibility and time savings is amazing! Yikes! DH & I quickly realized that we will never again stay at WDW and depend on the bus system. Park hopping was sooo much quicker..getting in and out of the parks was a breeze! and we were able to go to DTD 3 times over the course of the week..(can't imaging doing that using the bus system)..once for lunch at TRex (which was awesome), once for some shopping at night, and once to stop by and pick up an ornament that I had personalized before heading to the airport. I didn't really *notice* the lines at the bus stops at POP...but i do remember thinking "thank godness we are not standing there in the sun/heat" when we drove by(it was BRUTALLY hot this past week).
#2 POP. We did the online check in before we left home. When we got to POP at about 11:00am, check in literally took 5 minutes AND our room was ready! (not sure if it had anything to do with the online checkin or if we were just lucky).We did not put in a room request previous to arriving. We stayed in 90's, second floor, facing the parking lot. It was a great location for us. I would never pay for a preferred location as they can face the main pool. Those pools are *lively* at all hours. We came back from MK one night at midnight and the pool was as crowded as it was at 2:00 in the afternoon.
The room was absolutely immaculate. I noticed how clean it looked and smelled the minute I walked in. The room was in FAR better condition than our previous stays at POFQ and CSR (before the renovations). I was also surprised at the size of the room...it was bigger than I thought it would be. I didn't see a HUGE size difference between POP and the mods...maybe I just expected them to be the size of closets so I was pleasantly surprised?
Mousekeeping was fantastic the entire week. We came back each day to a clean room..plenty of fresh towels.
Noise was not an issue for us at ALL. (except for the flipping thunder/lightening storm one morning when I thought the world was ending) Sure we heard an occasional toilet flushing or shower running...but definately no more so than any of the resorts we have stayed at on Disney property.
We never ventured to the main pool as we were literally steps away from the computer pool. I thought our kids would *miss* having a slide...they couldn't have cared less. They played with the beach balls and noodles in the pool. They were just as happy swimming there .
The food court was crazy during peak hours (no surprise)...we only ate lunch there once and breakfast a couple of times. People move in and out of there quickly so we never had trouble finding a table. They had lots of choices and everything we had was great. We bought the refillable mugs and loved them. We did buy 4 which was a mistake...the kids didn't need them. I should have just purchased 2. I did notice that there were many people using all sorts of refillable mugs (some from last year, some from other resorts , some from the Cruise line..some were empty water bottles...i think I saw a man filling his shoe with Powerade (kidding) ... . Not saying it is right or wrong...just commenting on what I saw.
#3: Our kids are 6 & 7 so we have officially become one of those families who literally uses our room to shower and sleep. When they were younger we spent a LOT more time at our resort so deluxes really worked beautifully for us. (especially the Poly when our kids were in strollers). But POP is such a perfect fit for our families needs right now. We originally had a deluxe booked for our first holiday trip in Dec....but we were offered a bounceback rate for $66/$108 a night for the week before Christmas! Instead of 7 days at the deluxe, we are staying 10 days at POP and still saving quite a bit of money!
Will I stay at a deluxe again? Absolutely...someday I will for sure! But for now we are perfectly happy staying at POP and putting that extra $$ into our pockets. There is a good chance that we can now go twice a year (pending a great deal/discount) and stay at POP rather than once a year at a deluxe.
So in the end...we absolutely loved our first stay at POP!! Please feel free to ask any questions and I will be happy to answer!
