sgtdisney
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2001
- Messages
- 3,770
Returned the other day from an extended trip to Orlando. For part of our stay, we were in a Deluxe Studio at the Polynesian. Here are some of my thoughts on our visit.
I absolutely love the Polynesian Resort. It is beautiful there, and without a lot of effort, you can suspend reality and really feel like you are 1000s of miles away from Florida in some Pacific Island resort. Loved that. This was our family's first visit to WDW since they redid the Polynesian, and my first stay in the Polynesian since my honeymoon back in the early 90s. We really missed the waterfall in the lobby. Don't get me wrong, what they did there looks nice, but when we walked in the first time we just kind of went, awww no.. I understand why they did it, and it's interesting to see Cinderella's castle when you walk into the lobby, but we missed the tropical plants both in the lobby and out the back lobby doors. I guess, maybe I just don't like change. If you'd never been to the Poly before, I am sure you'd never miss it as it's really done nicely.
Check-in was just OK. We had somewhat of a slightly surly cast member. She was OK, until I asked, nicely, if they may have had a different room than what was texted to me available. Then she started rolling her eyes. I had originally request a third floor room preferably in Tokelau, with a third request for a pool view. We ended up in a 2nd floor room in Tokelau on the southwest side of the building. I have been around long enough to know a request is a request, but when I asked if there was any pool view, preferably third floor room available, she kind of got a little short with me, and said we had a pool view room. I knew already from reading other posts on these boards, that on the southern side of Tokelau, on the 2nd floor, I would not view the pool, but she was adamant our room was a pool view. She did offer to get me a third floor room in Pago Pago, but I decided to stay put. So, as I knew before we walked in the door, we had a pool service building view, with constant humming from the pool equipment. Luckily we were a couple rooms in from the far southern end of Tokelau, so we could also look over the walkways around the pool to the south. Overall we did enjoy thew view, the humming outside kind of disrupted the tropical vibe, but we still enjoyed the balcony. You win some and you lose some, we had our perfect view room on the first part of the trip at our home resort, OKW. I just don't think the cast member should call this side of Tokelau a pool view. Maybe before the Oasis pool and it's support buildings were built, it was, but I couldn't see the pool, at all. Enough of that. Just be aware the southwestern side of Tokelau has primarily pool outbuildings to look at when you request your rooms.
The room was really nice. We loved the decor and the bathrooms. I would agree with others, two toilets would be nice, but it was really nice to have two places to shower. I also agree with others there was a LOT of wasted space in the main bathroom, to the point we though of storing our luggage in there. We were in Florida for over two weeks, so we had a bunch of suitcases. If they had put some extra thought into it, I am sure they could have made the bedroom area a little bigger, or had space in the 2nd bath for a 2nd toilet. The beds were comfortable and my 14 year old loved the Stitch bed. The TV was fantastic, we wanted to take it home with us, Ha Ha! As others have mentioned with recent decor in DVC rooms, the room had a few banged up pieces of furniture, not bad, but makes you wonder if people are really that rough on things in the room, or are the furnishings a little more "delicate" than they should be. People are also right, there is almost no storage space at all. The drawers are so low, and sort of hard to use. We ended up living out of the suitcases the entire time we there.
One thing was troublesome that we only found out about at check in. We had a planned 4 hour power outage from 11-3 one day we were there. Wouldn't you know that was the one day we had planned out as our "sleep in and enjoy the resort" day. I cranked the air down as low as it would go about an hour before the power was to go out, and we did our best. Around 130 we had to leave as the room was getting very hot and stuffy and ended up going to the Disney outlet store at the nearby outlet mall.
We ate at all three restaurants, Kona, Captain Cooks and Ohana and had good meals at all three. Ohana was the character meal, as even though my kids are older, they loved the Stitch breakfast. It was fun, but that was the day after the little boy went missing at the GF. It felt sad for us to be enjoying breakfast and seeing all the helicopters and boats out on Seven Seas Lagoon. We felt a little guilty about it, knowing how terrible things were for that family. The next day we enjoyed a late evening with Spiky Pineapples at Trader Sam's outside. That was fantastic. We loved the Oasis pool, the water was so warm and with the salt water, just felt fantastic. The main pool was nice and the kids enjoyed the slide. We walked out and watched Wishes our last night there from between Tokelau and Hawaii. That was a lot of fun too.
I am happy we went. I hope to go back some day as the resort just has a magical feel about, quintessential Disney to me. The studio setup is nice for a 3-4 day stay with 5 in the room. I could see staying there much longer if it was just two.
One can only imagine how a 1 bedroom there would have been, but alas that was not meant to be.
Sorry for the long thread, but it's nice to relive some of the fun, if even for the time it just took me to write my thoughts down.
I absolutely love the Polynesian Resort. It is beautiful there, and without a lot of effort, you can suspend reality and really feel like you are 1000s of miles away from Florida in some Pacific Island resort. Loved that. This was our family's first visit to WDW since they redid the Polynesian, and my first stay in the Polynesian since my honeymoon back in the early 90s. We really missed the waterfall in the lobby. Don't get me wrong, what they did there looks nice, but when we walked in the first time we just kind of went, awww no.. I understand why they did it, and it's interesting to see Cinderella's castle when you walk into the lobby, but we missed the tropical plants both in the lobby and out the back lobby doors. I guess, maybe I just don't like change. If you'd never been to the Poly before, I am sure you'd never miss it as it's really done nicely.
Check-in was just OK. We had somewhat of a slightly surly cast member. She was OK, until I asked, nicely, if they may have had a different room than what was texted to me available. Then she started rolling her eyes. I had originally request a third floor room preferably in Tokelau, with a third request for a pool view. We ended up in a 2nd floor room in Tokelau on the southwest side of the building. I have been around long enough to know a request is a request, but when I asked if there was any pool view, preferably third floor room available, she kind of got a little short with me, and said we had a pool view room. I knew already from reading other posts on these boards, that on the southern side of Tokelau, on the 2nd floor, I would not view the pool, but she was adamant our room was a pool view. She did offer to get me a third floor room in Pago Pago, but I decided to stay put. So, as I knew before we walked in the door, we had a pool service building view, with constant humming from the pool equipment. Luckily we were a couple rooms in from the far southern end of Tokelau, so we could also look over the walkways around the pool to the south. Overall we did enjoy thew view, the humming outside kind of disrupted the tropical vibe, but we still enjoyed the balcony. You win some and you lose some, we had our perfect view room on the first part of the trip at our home resort, OKW. I just don't think the cast member should call this side of Tokelau a pool view. Maybe before the Oasis pool and it's support buildings were built, it was, but I couldn't see the pool, at all. Enough of that. Just be aware the southwestern side of Tokelau has primarily pool outbuildings to look at when you request your rooms.
The room was really nice. We loved the decor and the bathrooms. I would agree with others, two toilets would be nice, but it was really nice to have two places to shower. I also agree with others there was a LOT of wasted space in the main bathroom, to the point we though of storing our luggage in there. We were in Florida for over two weeks, so we had a bunch of suitcases. If they had put some extra thought into it, I am sure they could have made the bedroom area a little bigger, or had space in the 2nd bath for a 2nd toilet. The beds were comfortable and my 14 year old loved the Stitch bed. The TV was fantastic, we wanted to take it home with us, Ha Ha! As others have mentioned with recent decor in DVC rooms, the room had a few banged up pieces of furniture, not bad, but makes you wonder if people are really that rough on things in the room, or are the furnishings a little more "delicate" than they should be. People are also right, there is almost no storage space at all. The drawers are so low, and sort of hard to use. We ended up living out of the suitcases the entire time we there.
One thing was troublesome that we only found out about at check in. We had a planned 4 hour power outage from 11-3 one day we were there. Wouldn't you know that was the one day we had planned out as our "sleep in and enjoy the resort" day. I cranked the air down as low as it would go about an hour before the power was to go out, and we did our best. Around 130 we had to leave as the room was getting very hot and stuffy and ended up going to the Disney outlet store at the nearby outlet mall.
We ate at all three restaurants, Kona, Captain Cooks and Ohana and had good meals at all three. Ohana was the character meal, as even though my kids are older, they loved the Stitch breakfast. It was fun, but that was the day after the little boy went missing at the GF. It felt sad for us to be enjoying breakfast and seeing all the helicopters and boats out on Seven Seas Lagoon. We felt a little guilty about it, knowing how terrible things were for that family. The next day we enjoyed a late evening with Spiky Pineapples at Trader Sam's outside. That was fantastic. We loved the Oasis pool, the water was so warm and with the salt water, just felt fantastic. The main pool was nice and the kids enjoyed the slide. We walked out and watched Wishes our last night there from between Tokelau and Hawaii. That was a lot of fun too.
I am happy we went. I hope to go back some day as the resort just has a magical feel about, quintessential Disney to me. The studio setup is nice for a 3-4 day stay with 5 in the room. I could see staying there much longer if it was just two.
One can only imagine how a 1 bedroom there would have been, but alas that was not meant to be. Sorry for the long thread, but it's nice to relive some of the fun, if even for the time it just took me to write my thoughts down.
