staying at Wyndham Palace resort and spa, lake buana vista

[plutomad]

Has anyone stayed at the Wynham Palace resort and spa hotel? (NOT the wyndham orland resort in international drive) what was it like? In the brochure it states that it is 5 mins walk away from downtown disney is anything else near it? as i cannot decide either to go here or back to asmv? :wink:

[Sarah84]

I have never stayed there, but we are also planning on staying there when we go Orlando next year and I too would love some opinions of it from people who have stayed there

[clio]

I stayed there in August and I would stay there again. It is a short walk to Downtown Disney and it has very good transportation to the parks. The rooms were fine - clean and comfortable. I liked the gym. I didn't use the spa or pool or eat at the restaurants.

The only real negative point was that the self-parking was a bit of a walk from the hotel - not much fun if you have a lot of shopping to carry. :D

You could probably walk to the Crossroads Shopping Center which has lots of restaurants. I don't think there is anything else nearby.

[Vikki]

Keith would probably be a good person for this one.......I believe he's stayed there

[Scoootch]

I didn't actually stay there but...my little cousin who is 10yrs old had her Nationals competition there this past June and stayed there. I stayed at FQ and went over there to see her compete:) I also got to go up to her room (she stayed there of course with her parents) which was very nice. They had an awesome view of DTD ~ could see the Rain Forest Cafe' quite nicely from their balcony which I don't remember what floor but was up there a ways lol. Anyway, very nice rooms. We also got to swim together for an afternoon at there pool. They had an okay pool with 2 hot tubs underneith the covering ~ the pool was kind of half underneith a breezeway type thing and half completely outside. And then they had another small pool not far from that one. It had a small snack/pool bar. and a playground nearby too. Not nearly the theming of the WDW resort pools but nice. A bit small I thought for the capacity of guests though. I totally agree about the parking too ~ that was just awful. But the resort itself for being non Disney but on Disney property was nice.

Just an FYI though, they paid around $129 plus tax for just a basic room with 2 queen beds and a bathroom w/balcony. It was nice. I paid $79 per night with an AP code for POFQ. No balcony but room just as nice and much better pool.

For the lesser amount if you can get a code, I'd much rather actually stay at the Disney resort.

HTH's :wave:

[Keith]

I did! stayed there for two weeks and loved it actually.

First thing to say was we got a very good price by simply emailing them and asking for their best price. It was less expensive than all star movies from what I remember (or about the same).

Visually the hotel is a nice, businessy looking hotel... thats a positive in my book. I've often thought that the Disney hotels lack some of the nicer little features of business hotels.

Checkin was pretty fast and efficient but sadly they'd allocated us a room out in the outer section of the hotel. I hadn't realised there were any rooms not "in the tower" but there were. When we got there, I could kinda see why they'd put us there. It felt a lot less business like, less convention traffic etc and more tourists.. it was also a minute or so closer to downtown disney. The room was spacious, clean and well decorated but I was secretly feeling a bit miffed I wasn't in the main building because I prefer that. Anyway, Helen said she could smell paint from outside where they'd been refurbing... so being the really good dutiful husband that I am :) I said "oh sigh.. I'm perfectly happy here but if you insist on moving then you can go and complain" :) To which she said "well I'm only saying that because you obviously prefer the main building and I dont want you grumpy for 2 weeks. I'll go get a room change". Should know better than to underestimate women by now I guess.

Anyway, they were super about room change.. didn't argue just said sure, main building no problem and they moved us. If you had kids and wanted to feel a bit more disney and less businessy as well as being closer to the disney busses/DTD (slightly) then the annex may be a good place to stay.

Room in the main tower was a bit smaller but still large IMHO... broadband internet available for extra charge (although if you sign up for free to their wyndham frequent guest thing which I did before we left home, you seem to get the internet for free).

There are 2 restaurants... the outback (not the chain one) which is perhaps our favourite.. so much so that we go back to it even when not staying there and a more expensive one, arthurs27 at the top of the tower overlooking downtown disney. Also every evening at sunset you get free champagne in the lounge there.

There's a gym, a spa thingy, a jewellery shop, a small electronics shop selling cameras etc.... and a general store that stays open late and has milk, food etc... very useful!

There's also a cafe place which is rather large in fact and overlooks the lake around the hotel. You can get a nice buffet breakfast there and they have charater meals there too which are very good!

There are a few bars... and the place is wifi enabled so you can sit in the lobby listening to the piano, have a few drinks and surf wirelessly if you're as sad as I am and like to do that kinda thing on holiday :) There's a kinda nightclub place there too for the conventioneers to let their hair down... it was ok but nothing special.ear show up through their clothes

Location/transport.
Location is excellent... it's literally 1 or 2 mins across the road to downtown disney. Perfect! and since it's on the bus side of DTD, getting disney busses from there is SO easy. In fact, we had more meals and visits to other disney resorts on that trip because it was perfect to hop across the road and visit any disney resort using the disney busses.

Now the downside.. and the only downside really in my humble opinion.... transport to the parks. This is via a shared bus system (shared with the other hotels along that road). Now, the busses were nice, large, well fitted and in our experience, always came exactly on time... the problem was, they stopped at every other hotel so to get from hotel to park could take ooooo 30mins before we'd even collected everyone from the other hotels.. then about 10mins to the parks. Sometimes, I didn't care... other times I could've screamed. However... weird though it seems, we dont do the parks as much as others do.. so it worked out ok for us.

If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them! People say there's no disney magic... well *HMMMM*! I don't know that I agree with that really. Ok it's true that you see more people in suits going to meetings then you do at all star movies but that doesn't bother me. The decor of the grand floridian or yacht club isn't full of Disneyesque things in my opinion either. You're a couple of mins from downtown disney.. how much more disney can you get :)

Oh I guess I should say a bit about the pools even though we tend not to use them.. they're big, not full, well mantained etc... there are also tennis courts and so on.

All in all... I think when I tried booking it on the internet it was 200 odd $ per night. I wouldn't pay that for it... but at $40 -> $100 I still think it's a bit of a bargain :)

[Sarah84]

:thumbs: Keith, thanks for all the information on the hotel has helped me decide that I deffo will be staying there, I'm now hugely looking forward to my stay there next september, by what you said the only downful of the hotel is the transport to the parks though we will be having a car which means we have the walk from the carpark but I suppose we can't have everything perfect :banana:

[plutomad]

Hi there and thanks for the info on the hotel, i feel i will be staying there (april2006!) so the annex is better for families, someone on another thread stated that the crossroad mall was within walking distance that has shops and resterants, is this correct? regarding the transport picking up from every hotel, what about going across to dtd and catching the transport from there to the park or to another resort and hop on the bus? or is that a bit long winded?? :confused: :D :D I want to take my kids to the wyndham, their ages will be then 16,14 and 5years, even though this hotel caters for the business will the kids enjoy themsleves here? so many questions!!

[Keith]

You CAN walk to crossroads but it's a fair distance because it's at the other end of the LONG road from crossroads. It's doable, but IMHO it's a bit far for me to want to do <G>

You CAN get busses from dtd to another resort and then from there to a park but, and this is the killer, you can't get a bus direct from DTD to the parks :( if you could, it'd be perfect.

I think the kids will be as fine there as anywhere!

[Scoootch]

Hmm...just a thought but, the new DVC resort, SSR is within walking distance to DTD (you can actually see it from the Wyndam as it's pretty much accross the street from it) anyway, there is suppossed to be a walking path, not sure if it's been opened yet or still under construction but the walk would be fairly short. You could always just walk across to DTD and take the walking path over to SSR and hop a bus to a park I would think? They have a boat from DTD to SSR too and since it's so close may be the closest option for going to a resort first and then grabbing a bus to a park.

Haven't stayed at SSR yet to say of first hand experience but it could be a possibility.