Thank you for the tips! Our first trip to WBC is coming up soon! Do you bring your own towels to the pool? What's the advantage?
There are pool towels available at the pools. (The exception being Tower 6, where you get them from the Activities desk inside the Tower)
hello! Newbie here and really considering staying here for our upcoming trip in 2013. The above poster gave me a few things to think about. I hadn't realized that there isn't any housekeeping here. Good to know! I'm fine with washing towels on vacation if its going to save $$ from not staying on site. Is there laundry detergent available or do you have to make a trip to
walmart or another store? Are trash bags to change out the garbage made available or is that something else?
What do most people do as far as buying food to cook in the suite? do you do an online order or just go to walmart? Is the walmart close to the resort?
I think we are leaning towards also renting a car so I'm curious if taking a quick trip out when we first get there to stock up. this will be our first trip with our kids, 4 and 2....and will be a much slower pace than we're used too before kids but I worry that taking time out to cook meals, grocery shop, laundry...does that take away too much time out for vacation time? My parents are also coming along too, so there will be 6 of us. Flying as well.
There are a couple "single serve" bags of detergent on the washer/dryer when you first arrive. I've heard you can request more. Extra Trash Bags are often located in the trashcan under the current bag.
Personally I like to run to the grocery store. The nice thing is that the Walmart also has a liquor store attached, so I can get some tasty adult beverages while shopping for my groceries so that I can enjoy relaxing at the resort and pool. You can also buy Wine at the Walmart as well if you are someone who might enjoy a glass of wine after a long day at the parks and putting the kids to bed.
As for cooking taking too much time off from vacation time.... Not really... but I often don't do a lot of cooking. The great thing about having the full kitchen is that it's really easy to have breakfast in the room before hitting the parks (Bowl of Cereal? something "quick and easy" like Eggs/ toast/ etc.). The great thing about breakfast is that it's so quick and simple that it's really easy to work putting breakfast together and eating into the morning "get ready for the parks" routine of getting everyone up, showered, and dressed. for Example, While one adult is showering, the other puts together breakfast. If it's cereal, even easier to do. then while the other adult is showering, the first shower people (2 showers in a 2/3bdrm also greatly speeds up the morning shower/bathroom tango) can eat breakfast and finish getting ready. Beyond that, with the fridge and full kitchen, Leftovers actually become useful if you eat out but can't eat everything. It makes it really easy to just throw it in a fridge and reheat later instead of worrying about it going bad or is it nuke-able.
With Younger kids, If you take a mid-day break for swimming or a nap, You can also multitask and put together a quick lunch while they do their thing. The extra space means you don't have to worry about being as quiet so they take their nap (or go to bed early) as if you were sharing a room at a regular hotel.
As for the other stuff of making the shopping trip (either swing by on your way to the resort from the airport.... or have one adult do the shopping while the other keeps the kids entertained at the pool or after they go to bed), Doing Laundry (No reason you can't start a load or drying it before heading to the pool, or bed, or the parks), Dishes (Same thing.... start them before heading to the park or bed) etc.... It really isn't that hard to adjust to the condo vacationing style while not slowing down your vacation. You don't run into issues of needing to keep an eye on your stuff while you wait like if you had to utilize a common laundry room.
Thanks for your objective review, Caspar jj11.
We'll be staying there next month and you've given me some insight.
Do you happen to remember how many towels were in the condo? We're a group of 8 & if it takes so long to dry the towels, I just may bring some threadbare ones from home for use at the pools then just get rid of them at the end of our stay.
Thanks again!
Gretchen
In general, I believe each room is stocked with the number of towel sets for it's max occupancy rating. (4 for a 1bdrm, 8 for a 2bdrm, 10/12 for a 3bdrm, etc) And as for taking so long for towels to dry, I've found it varies depending on the unit I've stayed in. Generally I've never had any issues when I remember to clean out the lint trap, and by throwing them into the dryer before heading out to the parks for the day or going to bed at night, they are usually dry by the time I get back at the end of the day or wake up in the morning.
Pool towels I can just swap out if I need a fresh one when I get down to the pool.
Thanks for your advice everyone! We are booking with Ken Price per everyone's recommendations on here and we have requested either tower 2 or 5 so hopefully we will get one of the two. If not then we are still super excited to stay here. We usually stay at POR and we just love it there but we have outgrown it with 6 of us and getting two rooms is just too expensive. I hope that I can get my Disney fix by being on property and having a few ADR's even though we are doing Universal this time instead of the Disney parks.
You should have a blast. Just to let you know, rather than specifically requesting a tower if it's a particular view you would like, It's often better to actually request the view. Maybe something like "I'd like a fireworks view if at all possible, with Tower 2 being my preferred location.". Considering all buildings have rooms on both sides, if you request just a tower you may get a room on the other side from what you want (Fireworks or water view for example), or even too low to see fireworks past an obstruction like another building or trees. Since requests are just that (no guarantees you'll get what you want), you might as well increase your odds of getting what you want by giving the people who assign the rooms the most flexibility.
I do the same thing...buy the gift cards here and there and by the time we go..we have a couple hundred bucks in gift cards for those "must haves" 
