TheMouseForLess Resort Reviews

TheMouseForLess members review off-property resorts.

DoubleTree Club Lake Buena Vista

Submitted by: MS 51 Show Choir

Resort: DoubleTree Club Lake Buena Vista
12490 Apopka Vineland Road
Orlando, FL 32836
Tel: 407-239-4646 or 1-800-521-3297

Date of Stay: February 7 -11, 2005

Type of Resort: Disney Preferred Neighbor Hotel in DTD

Rate Paid During Your Stay: I believe that the rooms were about $125+ a night plus tax (School handled booking through Board of Ed travel agency), we were originally scheduled to stay at Pop Century, but since Pop is a motel type resort (the choral director asked for a different hotel, he wanted a hotel type resort, where the rooms open to the inside of the hotel, not to pathways outside)

Room sleeps : 5 (two queen size beds and folding bed)

Please Rate the Following on a scale from 1-10 (10 being the best):

Theming: 5
Room Size: 8
Amenities: 4 (only because they had nice shampoo/conditioner and soap).
Quality: 4
Cleanliness: 4
Transportation: NA we used chartered buses that were arranged separately.
Recreation: 1
Value: 3

Over all rating: 4

Don't miss: Keep driving, do not stop here for a nights stay. Our group was very displeased with the quality and service of this hotel.

Room Location Suggestion: We occupied almost the entire 2nd floor.

The Mouse For Less Tip: Best dollarless tip, skip this hotel!

Comments: When we arrived to check in, one adult obtained the card keys for the 21 rooms, we than began to go through the room arrangements, and assigned a room to each group, once a group was complied and we had finalized a room, we sent that group of kids upstairs (which ranged from 4 to 5 kids to a room). Two adults were stationed on the second floor to assist the kids with settling in. Every single card key was coded incorrectly, we discovered this after we had sent up about four to five groups of kids. We were trying to avoid sending up to many kids at once to avoid too much noise in the hallways. It took us two hours to get all the kids settled into their rooms and another hour or so to get all the correctly coded card keys.

Note that a few rooms were missing shower curtains, which took three phone calls and about a 45 minute wait from the last phone call to clear up and than I personally had to hang most of the curtains. Some of the rooms did not contain proper amount of bedding mind you these rooms all had two queen size beds, and most room only had two pillows (I feel there should have been four, since it slept four). Same thing with the towels, there were only two towels per room, we had to order extra towels for all the rooms (Neutrogena (not sure of spelling) was the brand of toiletries (which I loved)).

We were set up with a package that included breakfast for three of our four mornings, the first, third and final morning. Breakfast consisted of one type of generic sweet cereal (generic frosted flakes, which tasted stale), some sort of powder egg in the shape of a pancake (completely inedible and I do not believe anybody touched them after the first morning), greasy sausage (which was partially undercooked), no bacon, some sort of miniature hash brown (frozen type, and they were nasty as well), orange juice (the little round containers you get from either school or hospitals, I believe it was a juice drink and not actually a real orange juice). Croissants (not sure of spelling) these were old, hard and stale, a pot of regular and a pot of decaf coffee, a container with milk for the cereal. When we asked for fruit, they said in order to provide fruit they would need to remove one of the above items (the choral director upon this statement, just gave up, and left it alone).

The first morning, we noted that there were no newspapers and assumed that they did not want the kids to make a mess with the newspapers, when the choral director went to the front desk to obtain a paper, he was told that they had ran out. It clearly stated that the hotel provided newspapers for every guest, well they give newspapers to every guest who request one, until they run out. They do not order enough for every guest. He had to buy a paper elsewhere each day.

We had contracted the use of a room for the first night for a rehearsal, and were informed the day we arrived that the room was no longer available and had to make last minute arrangements, and ended up using the parking lot of Kennedy Space Center for our rehearsal.

We did however after two days of mixed information, get to use this room for our pizza party, up until the morning of the pizza party we were not sure where it was going to be held because they kept saying that they did not have a room big enough to accommodate the group. They did, they had a room that contained a partitioned wall and when that was opened it was plenty big enough for the kids to sit and eat pizza.

The hotel had a workout facility, which I did not get to see or use, there was also a pool (but we did not use the pool, as there is no swimming permitted on New York City Board of Education trips).

Many of the showers had very poor water pressure, and the toilets were backing up constantly. There was one room of boys who were not able to use their toilet for the entire stay, they had to share a toilet with the room of boys next door.

There was also a strange smell in all the rooms, in some rooms the smell was worse than others, it was a musty, basement type smell, we noted this odor upon checking in.

I have written a note to Disney, regarding the fact that this hotel is Preferred Neighbor Hotel and I can not figure how or why it is one. Since the service and quality were just not what one would expect from a Disney resort.

Return to WDW Resort Reviews Index