Would you recommend Clarion Suites Maingate??

[klwdisney]

I am desperately trying to plan a weekend to WDW in early Nov. that won't break the bank! After MUCH searching, I may have found a price I can manage but it's offsite. Which makes me a little nervous. It will just be me & a 10 year old travelling so I want to make sure it's a convenient, clean and SAFE hotel.

What can you all tell me about Clarion Suites Maingate? We will not be renting a car so will probably book a round trip with Mears for airport transportation I suppose. What can you tell me about that experience (as someone who's used to Magic Express)? Is this a good hotel? Shuttle service works well to/from the parks?

If this is not a good idea, then can you recommend another? The Disney Springs resorts didn't seem to have any better deals. We're going 11/3-11/6. And I do have AAA if there are discounts available. The deal I found was thru Jet Blue vacations.

Thanks in Advance!!

 

[Gr8t Fan]

Never stayed there but when I looked it up I noticed they have a $10 nightly resort fee. Be sure you're factoring that into your final price.

 

[momto4obkids]

We stayed there for 2 nights in July before we moved to our on site room.The breakfast was a bit confusing because they give you punch card, there's a woman that lets you in to the breakfast area. I am guessing they have had issues with non hotel guests helping themselves to their free breakfast. The room was old but clean. But, I felt much safer in the hotels I suggest below.

We have stayed at the Red Lion just down the road and liked that better. The rooms were refurbed in the the last few years and they take very good care of the grounds/pools. The front desk people were very nice also.
www.lastminutetravel.com has it for $44 plus $8 resort fee for your dates.

There's also Baymont by Wyndham Celebration that I would go to over the Clarion. hotels.com has it for $50 a night plus $8 resort fee.

That being said, I would highly recommend renting a car if possible and not relying on hotel shuttle services.

 

[cdurham1]

I am single dad traveling with my 7 year old DD. We are checking in for a week at Clarion Suites Maingate starting next Saturday. I will let you know what our experience is.

I would not trust any offsite shuttle service. We are driving and I can't imagine being able to get around efficiently without a car. By the time you factor in renting a car and paying for parking, it probably is not as great of a deal as you are hoping.

 

[jeff_h]

I am single dad traveling with my 7 year old DD. We are checking in for a week at Clarion Suites Maingate starting next Saturday. I will let you know what our experience is.

...same here - we are checking in on Friday Oct 5th for 3 nights for a long weekend. Will also post some feedback here.

 

[cdurham1]

...same here - we are checking in on Friday Oct 5th for 3 nights for a long weekend. Will also post some feedback here.

This is our 3rd night here and have absolutely no complaints. Room is very clean, check in was easy, maid service fine. I booked it because it looked like a good value. So far, I would have given it a good review at twice the price. If the rest of the week goes smoothly, we will almost certainly be back.

 

[jeff_h]

This is our 3rd night here and have absolutely no complaints. Room is very clean, check in was easy, maid service fine. I booked it because it looked like a good value. So far, I would have given it a good review at twice the price. If the rest of the week goes smoothly, we will almost certainly be back.

We just got home from spending 3 nights and the room was fine, the only downside was that the hot breakfast area was very crowded. But I've seen that comment from many reviews of other hotels, that they have 200 rooms and breakfast seating for 20... no idea how many rooms the Clarion Maingate has but breakfast was crowded - we went there the first couple mornings then the last morning we skipped it and went to CFA across the street.

There was a question about restaurants in the immediate area, may not have been in this thread and was posted somewhere else. But for anyone interested, I took a pic of the map diagram that they gave to us during check-in.

So all-in-all things were fine, which is good as we've got another weekend booked there in March!