First DVC stay - Boulder Ridge Villas

ClaraOswald

Blue Dot Energy
Joined
Feb 12, 2014
Messages
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I plan to add to this later with a lot more details about our trip but wanted to get it started anyway and just talk about my resort observations.

Background:
Me - 42 years old
Husband - 45 years old
Son - 10 years old

I went to WDW 3 times as a kid (staying offsite and once at All Star Sports) and then my husband and I went in 2008 (Port Orleans Riverside), 2010 and 2012 (both Pop Century.)

So this trip was not only our first DVC stay but also our first Deluxe WDW stay! We still haven't stayed at our home resort of GCV though we did stay on the hotel 'side' last year so I found myself comparing the two resorts a bit during our stay.

First - our room location. I can't recall the order I put in our room requests but I know I requested lake side and 1st floor. We did end up on the first floor, which I was happy with. But we were not on lake side. And we were in the room at the very end of the hall. 1558.

BRVroom.jpg

We were on our bus to the hotel when I got our room assignment so instead of going straight there, we stopped at the front desk to see if they had any other options. Sadly....no. They said they would have a different room available if we wanted to switch the next night. But with our son being autistic, we didn't think that would work for him at all. I'd heard these rooms at the end could be super noisy so that was my main concern. Thankfully, with our multiple white noise machines, we had no problem with noise.

But I will admit, the long walk down the hall at the end of the night was kind of a bummer. Not a huge deal by any means. We did laugh a bit because it reminded us of our hotel room location at the Grand Californian last year.....

GCroom.jpg
Anyway....some thoughts on BRV and Wilderness Lodge....

We LOVED the theme, lobbies, landscaping, etc. It's such a beautiful resort. And it really was super quiet when wandering around. The boat ride to MK was fantastic. I also loved the decor in the new studio villa. Very cozy and nice.

Though I do have a couple room complaints - the mattress on the queen bed was NOT comfortable, at all. And all of the pillows were terrible. Now, these are all just personal preferences, of course. But for me, I had a horrible first night sleep on that bed. So the rest of the nights, I moved to the murphy bed and found that to be much better. Pillows were all terrible though. Appear fluffy but then when you lay on them they are completely flat with no support. Our next vacation is to Disneyland this summer and since it's a road trip, I'm considering bringing my own pillow, just in case.

Another room complaint is the shower water temp was totally inconsistent. I don't know if I was just unlucky or what but every single shower I took...the water would go back and forth between scalding hot and freezing cold. Reminded me of one of the Harbor hotels we used to stay at for Disneyland trips years ago.

And this isn't really a complaint just an observation....the faucet in the kitchenette was too big for the sink. It looked like poor planning or something. The faucet was meant for a full-sized sink so the water ends up flowing at the very front edge of the sink and made it hard to wash hands/mugs without making a huge mess. Plus, it just looked weird to me. Again, this isn't a big deal. It's just something I noticed and found odd.

The staff we encountered at the front desk, bell service, gift shop, and on the hotel grounds were all super friendly and helpful.

The buses to the parks weren't too bad. Overall, waits were tolerable. We had 1 wait at the hotel that was on the longer side and 1 wait coming back from HS that was long. But most were about what we expected. I'd say on average, we waited 10 minutes, give or take at the hotel. Maybe a little longer leaving the parks. But not bad. I didn't realize that we shared buses with other resorts though. (Or if I did know, I must have forgotten?) I guess I figured since it's a Deluxe Resort, we'd get our own transportation. But we stopped at the Contemporary or Fort Wilderness each time so that was kind of a bummer.

We had 1 dinner at Roaring Fork and had breakfast there each day. Dinner was fine. We sat outside and it was chilly was nice. For our first breakfast, we ate at one of the tables in the hallway area because it was fairly crowded inside and too cold outside for us. We did mobile order and hit the "we're here" button on our way and it was immediately ready. We had ordered the breakfast platters and I'm guessing they had them pre-boxed up maybe. They were very underwhelming. I like my scrambled eggs less wet. I couldn't handle the texture. And the potatoes were try and shriveled. Needless to say, I didn't order this again. (I just had cereal and a pastry each day after that.)

We also decided to take our breakfast back to our room to eat on all other mornings. That was much more relaxing, even with the longer walk back to our far away room. We also bought refillable mugs and used those for coffee each day. And we stopped at got hot chocolate some evenings (but it was a bit too chocolately for my taste.)

Overall though, we really liked this resort. And when we make future plans (probably 2026 or 2027), I'll be crossing my fingers that there will be availability for us here! I feel like we'd be happy at most any resort but would probably be happiest here.

(I'll be back at some point to add pictures and talk more about our time in the parks as well. Congrats if you've made it this far!)
 
I plan to add to this later with a lot more details about our trip but wanted to get it started anyway and just talk about my resort observations.

Background:
Me - 42 years old
Husband - 45 years old
Son - 10 years old

I went to WDW 3 times as a kid (staying offsite and once at All Star Sports) and then my husband and I went in 2008 (Port Orleans Riverside), 2010 and 2012 (both Pop Century.)

So this trip was not only our first DVC stay but also our first Deluxe WDW stay! We still haven't stayed at our home resort of GCV though we did stay on the hotel 'side' last year so I found myself comparing the two resorts a bit during our stay.

First - our room location. I can't recall the order I put in our room requests but I know I requested lake side and 1st floor. We did end up on the first floor, which I was happy with. But we were not on lake side. And we were in the room at the very end of the hall. 1558.

View attachment 829087

We were on our bus to the hotel when I got our room assignment so instead of going straight there, we stopped at the front desk to see if they had any other options. Sadly....no. They said they would have a different room available if we wanted to switch the next night. But with our son being autistic, we didn't think that would work for him at all. I'd heard these rooms at the end could be super noisy so that was my main concern. Thankfully, with our multiple white noise machines, we had no problem with noise.

But I will admit, the long walk down the hall at the end of the night was kind of a bummer. Not a huge deal by any means. We did laugh a bit because it reminded us of our hotel room location at the Grand Californian last year.....

View attachment 829089
Anyway....some thoughts on BRV and Wilderness Lodge....

We LOVED the theme, lobbies, landscaping, etc. It's such a beautiful resort. And it really was super quiet when wandering around. The boat ride to MK was fantastic. I also loved the decor in the new studio villa. Very cozy and nice.

Though I do have a couple room complaints - the mattress on the queen bed was NOT comfortable, at all. And all of the pillows were terrible. Now, these are all just personal preferences, of course. But for me, I had a horrible first night sleep on that bed. So the rest of the nights, I moved to the murphy bed and found that to be much better. Pillows were all terrible though. Appear fluffy but then when you lay on them they are completely flat with no support. Our next vacation is to Disneyland this summer and since it's a road trip, I'm considering bringing my own pillow, just in case.

Another room complaint is the shower water temp was totally inconsistent. I don't know if I was just unlucky or what but every single shower I took...the water would go back and forth between scalding hot and freezing cold. Reminded me of one of the Harbor hotels we used to stay at for Disneyland trips years ago.

And this isn't really a complaint just an observation....the faucet in the kitchenette was too big for the sink. It looked like poor planning or something. The faucet was meant for a full-sized sink so the water ends up flowing at the very front edge of the sink and made it hard to wash hands/mugs without making a huge mess. Plus, it just looked weird to me. Again, this isn't a big deal. It's just something I noticed and found odd.

The staff we encountered at the front desk, bell service, gift shop, and on the hotel grounds were all super friendly and helpful.

The buses to the parks weren't too bad. Overall, waits were tolerable. We had 1 wait at the hotel that was on the longer side and 1 wait coming back from HS that was long. But most were about what we expected. I'd say on average, we waited 10 minutes, give or take at the hotel. Maybe a little longer leaving the parks. But not bad. I didn't realize that we shared buses with other resorts though. (Or if I did know, I must have forgotten?) I guess I figured since it's a Deluxe Resort, we'd get our own transportation. But we stopped at the Contemporary or Fort Wilderness each time so that was kind of a bummer.

We had 1 dinner at Roaring Fork and had breakfast there each day. Dinner was fine. We sat outside and it was chilly was nice. For our first breakfast, we ate at one of the tables in the hallway area because it was fairly crowded inside and too cold outside for us. We did mobile order and hit the "we're here" button on our way and it was immediately ready. We had ordered the breakfast platters and I'm guessing they had them pre-boxed up maybe. They were very underwhelming. I like my scrambled eggs less wet. I couldn't handle the texture. And the potatoes were try and shriveled. Needless to say, I didn't order this again. (I just had cereal and a pastry each day after that.)

We also decided to take our breakfast back to our room to eat on all other mornings. That was much more relaxing, even with the longer walk back to our far away room. We also bought refillable mugs and used those for coffee each day. And we stopped at got hot chocolate some evenings (but it was a bit too chocolately for my taste.)

Overall though, we really liked this resort. And when we make future plans (probably 2026 or 2027), I'll be crossing my fingers that there will be availability for us here! I feel like we'd be happy at most any resort but would probably be happiest here.

(I'll be back at some point to add pictures and talk more about our time in the parks as well. Congrats if you've made it this far!)
Did you check out CCV?
 


Yay! I’ve been waiting for your thoughts! Bit first of all…. 10? Wow! I remember when we were both planning our Feb 2015 DL trip… aka the one where everything was closed. 🤣

We are staying at BRV for one night before our cruise in May. Thanks for the report! Since its just one night we are kinda fine with whatever, but it’s still fun to read about it.
 
I know! Can you believe how quickly time goes?! I still follow some other Feb 2015 people on Instagram too!

I think you'll like BRV, even if it's just for one day. It has a really nice vibe, in my opinion.
 
Thanks for the report! Glad that BRV/Wilderness Lodge (mostly) worked for you and hope the rest of the trip was fun!
 
We didn't. I mean, we walked by the building but didn't go into that section at all. I've heard it can be loud so I've been hesitant to want to ever stay there.
We own at CCV and have an autistic child as well. The only times we've heard noise are poolside during the day while they play games, and once when we were close to the lobby we heard some of the Whispering Canyon antics from a particularly rowdy party. So not bad at all, don't let that scare you away. At hotels, the thing that concerns me most is actually the noise my son makes, but the floors are solid so he can jump and dance away with no disturbance to the neighbors lol.
 
I was pleasantly surprised that I never heard anyone above us. We heard our neighbors yelling at one point but it didn't last long, thankfully. My son jumps around a lot too!
 
Wife and I explored bolder ridge (haven't stayed) but the resort seeming amazing. Our most recent stay at the Contemporary also had very luke warm water. I am not sure if this is just a consistent theme.
 
Here's our patio and room "view" from all angles. Obviously not ideal but we never sat outside anyway. One day they had a huge truck on the lawn to trim the trees, I think.

03.jpg

04.jpg

05.jpg

Our son loved power-walking ahead of us down the long hallway to our room.

01.jpg

Here's the faucet I talked about. Clearly this faucet was meant for a standard sized kitchen sink and not this tiny sink. Not sure why they did this and I'm wondering if all studios have the same thing.

02.jpg
 
Oh, and if I want to be nit-picky...here are a couple more "issues" we came across.

The side panels in the small murphy were apparently missing. Not sure what that's about but I know it's not supposed to look like this. It was the same on the other side but you can't see it from this angle. Thankfully our son didn't mess with it or anything.

11.jpg

Also, there was a bag of extra bedding in the living area table as well as one in the closet. But neither one was zip-tied closed so I didn't feel comfortable using them without being 100% sure they were clean. We just ordered up extras from housekeeping instead. Not a big deal but still kind of annoying.
 
It looks just like the Pacific Northwest….

Not where we would go because it’s what I see outside my house everyday…. but it’s pretty incredible they can do that in Orlando, FL!

I can't recall, do you own at any of the Florida DVC resorts? Which ones do you like?

I'm in boring Nebraska so I'm jealous you see stuff like this every day. It's definitely the vibe I like for vacation. For moderate, we really liked Port Orleans Riverside which had a similar feel to it.
 
I can't recall, do you own at any of the Florida DVC resorts? Which ones do you like?

I'm in boring Nebraska so I'm jealous you see stuff like this every day. It's definitely the vibe I like for vacation. For moderate, we really liked Port Orleans Riverside which had a similar feel to it.
Right now we don’t in WDW…. but we have a VGF going through ROFR….

VGF reminds my wife of the Hotel Del (Coronado) in San Diego…. which is the city my wife lived in when I met her (I was living in Los Angeles at the time). We also like the boutiques of it, the food options, walking distance to MK and Poly… You can rent a boat and just go out on the water?!? Amazing!

The other properties? I like all of them! I could absolutely make a case for why I would want to stay in every other resort. My wife…. she is more particular….
 
Awesome feedback, makes me want to change my room request to just lake side.

Did you get to all 4 parks? Whats your thoughts? I stayed 2 nights at AKL and spent almost 3 days in the park, absolutely love it!!!
Boardwalk just doesn’t feel as much like vacation, but lt may just take a few nights, and Epcot is amazing as well!!

I’ll update my trip report when I get home with more details. I have yet to get to DHS or MK yet, or to my 3rd resort at BRV.
Also, I’m curious how people store or transfer all their pics? I have hundreds on my phone, but gmail won’t let me upload more than 1 at a time. I sent a bunch to a friend on FB messenger, but that’s not going to work great either… maybe plug my phone in directly to my PC when I get home is my last resort, but would be nice to make some more room on my phone.
 
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Right now we don’t in WDW…. but we have a VGF going through ROFR….

VGF reminds my wife of the Hotel Del (Coronado) in San Diego…. which is the city my wife lived in when I met her (I was living in Los Angeles at the time). We also like the boutiques of it, the food options, walking distance to MK and Poly… You can rent a boat and just go out on the water?!? Amazing!

The other properties? I like all of them! I could absolutely make a case for why I would want to stay in every other resort. My wife…. she is more particular….

As a kid, I was obsessed with the way the Grand Floridian looks on the outside but the inside always seemed "meh" to me. Though the more I see, the more I'm starting to like it. I can find reasons to like/dislike pretty much all of the Disney resorts though and my opinion is constantly changing. The Polynesian, for example....I've always seen it as kind of cheesy and kitchy so I never had any desire to stay there. But looking at the pictures of the current studios...I really like them. If there's a room available at the 7 month mark next time, we might consider trying it out. Though I don't see us liking it over BR, as far as theming goes, anyway. But the monorail to Epcot would be nice since it's our favorite park.

Awesome feedback, makes me want to change my room request to just lake side.

Did you get to all 4 parks? Whats your thoughts? I stayed 2 nights at AKL and spent almost 3 days in the park, absolutely love it!!!
Boardwalk just doesn’t feel as much like vacation, but lt may just take a few nights, and Epcot is amazing as well!!

I’ll update my trip report when I get home with more details. I have yet to get to DHS or MK yet, or to my 3 resort at BRV.
Also, I’m curious how people store or transfer all their pics? I have hundreds on my phone, but gmail won’t let me upload more than 1 at a time. I sent a bunch to a friend on FB messenger, but that’s not going to work great either… maybe plug my phone in directly to my PC when I get home is my last resort, but would be nice to make some more room on my phone.

Next time, I think I'm going to request to be closer to the lobby. Not sure if I'll put other requests or not even though I really did like being on the 1st floor.

Yep, we made it to all 4 parks. I plan to write up more about my thoughts on everything when I get around to it. I took notes so I wouldn't forget what we did each day. We had park hoppers so we started each day at 1 park and then took a break back in the room for a while before hopping to another park. The time was split like this...

Day 1 - Epcot/Hollywood Studios
Day 2 - Magic Kingdom/Epcot
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom/Magic Kingdom
Day 4 - Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Day 5 - Magic Kingdom/Epcot

For pictures/videos - I just clear my phone off before I leave so I have plenty of space. While I'm there, I post to Instagram a lot for the few people who want to follow me...ha! And when I get home, I plug my phone into my laptop to copy all the photos over. (Then I eventually back them up on OneDrive too.)
 
As a kid, I was obsessed with the way the Grand Floridian looks on the outside but the inside always seemed "meh" to me. Though the more I see, the more I'm starting to like it. I can find reasons to like/dislike pretty much all of the Disney resorts though and my opinion is constantly changing. The Polynesian, for example....I've always seen it as kind of cheesy and kitchy so I never had any desire to stay there. But looking at the pictures of the current studios...I really like them. If there's a room available at the 7 month mark next time, we might consider trying it out. Though I don't see us liking it over BR, as far as theming goes, anyway. But the monorail to Epcot would be nice since it's our favorite park.



Next time, I think I'm going to request to be closer to the lobby. Not sure if I'll put other requests or not even though I really did like being on the 1st floor.

Yep, we made it to all 4 parks. I plan to write up more about my thoughts on everything when I get around to it. I took notes so I wouldn't forget what we did each day. We had park hoppers so we started each day at 1 park and then took a break back in the room for a while before hopping to another park. The time was split like this...

Day 1 - Epcot/Hollywood Studios
Day 2 - Magic Kingdom/Epcot
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom/Magic Kingdom
Day 4 - Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Day 5 - Magic Kingdom/Epcot

For pictures/videos - I just clear my phone off before I leave so I have plenty of space. While I'm there, I post to Instagram a lot for the few people who want to follow me...ha! And when I get home, I plug my phone into my laptop to copy all the photos over. (Then I eventually back them up on OneDrive too.)
Yep, I really enjoy taking a break & hopping as well. The opposite of how we do DLR, where we just go hard all day long until jumping in whatever rides we can in the last hour and finally the longest line at 5min to close. lol
Perfect example I left Epcot at 6:30 ish tonight instead of hopping to DHS just because I am tired (not like me to tap out so easy. lol) I know tomorrow is going to be a late one with EEH at MK till 1am, so I’ll start at DHS & at some point make my way over (possibly a break between)
I definitely did like hopping AK to Epcot the same day I transferred from AKV to Boardwalk. I actually would like to plan my trip that way for the future, but I’m not sure you can know the dates that far in advance.
 
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