Checking into our hotel at Disney World was seamless. We didn’t have to go to the front desk or anything – it was all done through the Disney World app. They sent us our hotel room number and we were able to open the door with our magic bands.
The Caribbean Beach Resort is a moderately priced hotel on Disney World property. I can’t remember the exact process of picking this hotel, but I do recall looking at a map of Disney World and appreciating its proximity to some of the parks and the price-point was just. Adam and I hope to stay at all the hotels at some point in our lives, so we this was as good a place to start as any.
Our first impression of the room was something like, “Okay. It’s a little outdated, but this is just perfect for what we need. We won’t be in the room much anyway.”
We liked the fact that the hotel isn’t just one large building with lots of rooms down hallways. It is a large cluster of mini, two-story hotels. Our mini-hotel happened to be close to the main building and swimming pool, which was convenient if we needed anything. Plus, it was toward the front end of the shuttle stops. This made catching the shuttle very easy for us. Toward the last shuttle stops at the resort, the shuttles would get full and people would get skipped. I imagine that was very frustrating for those guests.
Since our Honeymoon, they have opened gondolas at the Caribbean Beach Resort, along with the Beach Club Resort, Yacht Club Resort, Board Walk Inn, Riviera Resort, Pop Century Resort, Art of Animation Resort, that will take guests to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. We definitely would have enjoyed using the Skyliner if it had been functional when we stayed.
The room was nice enough. We loved the complimentary coffee and tea that was restocked every day. Housekeeping was top-notch. One day, we came back to our room and they had displayed a bunch of our souvenirs in a fun way. As I said above, we did find the decorations a little outdated, but that didn’t take away from the experience at all. The bed was comfortable and the room clean, what else could we ask for?
And then the shower situation happened…
The entire week we stayed at the resort, Adam and I could not get a hot shower. It was so frustrating. We called out service technicians and they looked at it and could not figure out the problem. One of them tried to tell us that they kept the water at a lower temperature as not to accidentally burn any children, but I have since asked around and no one else seems to have had this problem. Plus, it made no sense – the water wasn’t getting anywhere close to burning hot. The best we could get it was lukewarm.
We went in the middle of January, and while Florida gets no where near as cold as Colorado, it does get chilly and it’s humid, so it’s a wet chilly. Coming back to a nice, hot shower – especially on the day when it poured and we got soaked – would have been so lovely.
It’s been two years and I am still resentful of this shower situation. We considered switching rooms, but we were already settled and packing everything up just seemed so daunting. Lesson-learned, though. I will never unpack into a Disney resort until we have checked to make sure the showers get a least somewhat steamy.
Aside from that, we were overall satisfied with the resort. Right before we left for the second leg of our vacation at Universal, we tried the food court and were disappointed we hadn’t gone there before. We had the best breakfast on Disney property yet!
We might consider staying at this resort again, especially given the gondolas, but it might be several years down the road. The shower situation definitely soured us on this resort, unfortunately. If you want a more in-depth review, check out our favorite vlog’s – The Dis – breakdown and tour.
We would probably give it 2.5/5 stars.