Disney's Coronado Springs Resort

My partner and I visited DisneyWorld in September 2018 and it was a holiday I will never ever forgot. I want to go back every year!! We chose to stay at Disney’s Coronado Spring as it was on special at the time with free dining and we felt it would be filled with more adults than families with small children when compared to a resort with more children focused rooms and entertainment and we were right. It was just after the rooms were refurbished so it was stunning. The rooms were a great size and the king bed was amazing to crawl into after a long day of park hopping. The grounds were beautiful to wander in and now with the new boardwalk through the lake, would make it so much easier. The hotel and therefore food is Mexican themed. So if you don’t want Mexican style breakfast, lunch or dinner this may not be the best resort for you or you can plan to have breakfast out more. This is a great place for couples who don’t want to be in a resort that is too kid themed. We booked a Preferred King Room to be close to a bus stop and El Centro and it was great! So quiet yet close to everything. Read less

We recently stayed at the new Destino tower and our stay was amazing! I love the fact the rooms are indoors and don’t have the motel feel where you open your room to outdoor open air. The lobby is beautifully decorated and the bar on the lower lobby floor is great for coffee in the morning and drinks in the evening! Our room was brand new and still smelled it which was pretty neat. The service started off a bit rocky at the front desk but eventually we met Corky who put us in touch with Anette who made everything much better. Both of them were a pleasure to work with and even upgraded our party to the presidential suite for the last night of our stay! The restaurants in the tower are great and have a nice selection of better quality foods than the cafe and sports bar offer. The rooftop bar offers great views of the sunset and even the fireworks from the parks at night! All in all, we enjoyed our stay and think we found our go to hotel when we visit Orlando. Destino tower is well worth it! I would have given 5 stars but the short heavyset team lead that works the front desk ruined it with her horrible attitude and lack of care to help my wife and I. You work at the happiest place on earth and you’re in the hospitality business. If you don’t like what you do... find another job! Wish I would have remembered her name, she was short with brown hair and Hispanic. If you see her... ask to work with someone else! Read less

This hotel has zero character which means it fails at its basic purpose of being a Disney hotel. I didn’t have a billing issue or a rude clerk or anything most 1 star reviews had but what an absolute waste of a Disney hotel. It is completely devoid of any Disney “magic”. The employees are definitely hotel employees not cast members. None of them go out of their way to be friendly or helpful. They are civil. But it’s Disney! Seriously, every other Disney Resort is just so abundant with theme and music and friendly faces and LIFE. Cast members at other Disney Hotels are incredibly kind and do a phenomenal job of service. They want you to have a Disney experience. So what an absolute disappointment this hotel is. I have kids and I would not recommend it (not for nothing, the Gran Destino rooms are hard wooden floors with very high beds). I also wouldn’t recommend to couples - Disney Port Orleans is cheaper and 100x more romantic and again, magical. Plus most of this hotel is business people so ... I guess I would recommend it to convention goers but honestly, why? Seriously conference bookers, for the money you’re spending, get your points and go to the Westin or Hilton or Marriot instead and your attendees also get points. The hotel is massive so the lines for this bus (which was frequent so plus!) were always the longest of any of the Disney Resorts. The check in lines are long. The concierge line is the same line so is also long. They don’t deliver bags to your room anymore. I mean, I just cannot understand the why of this hotel. There are so many better Disney ones for either the same price or cheaper so I guess it’s competing with the Hilton’s and Marriotts and Hyatts but those are also much cheaper with better service. The Coronado is not memorable, pretty soulless, it could be any basic chain hotel in the world - absolutely nothing about this place says Disney - and in my opinion, just isn’t a good fit for anyone. Read less

We recently stayed at Coronado in the new Gran Destino Tower, Water View room. We were there for 5 days and had a great time, we enjoyed all aspects of the resort: the new tower and rooms, efficient elevator system, and the variety of restaurant options on property. Upon arrival around 10:30am by Magical Express there was a long line in the lobby, the wait was about 20 mins, but when it was finally our turn to check-in we were pleasantly surprised that our room was ready for us! Our Water View room on the 7th floor was amazing. We were in the middle of the tower (the windows that have the curved design around them). We could see the entire resort grounds and looking sharply to the left could see the Tree of Life, Everest, and one floating mountain in Pandora at Animal Kingdom. The room was perfect and I swear the mirror in the bathroom has disney magic built in as now matter how hot we showered only the top 1/3 of the mirror would fog up. There was a speaker on the wall in our room that had a very slight noise coming out of it at all times...sort of like a very subtle white noise / sound machine? In the evening it sounded like crickets. Sort of odd...but it didn't really bother us so we didn't inquire about it. Upon check-in, you can opt out of Mousekeeping and you'll receive a Disney gift card - $10 for each night of your stay, but they do not count your arrival day! During our stay we ate at all of the restaurants on site. We started in the dinning hall (El Mercado) but quickly got tired of the food offerings and didn't find there to be enough variety. We had breakfast in the sports bar (Rix) one morning and it was delicious. We had enough leftovers for breakfast the next morning and luckily there's a microwave in Cafe Rix - a small cafe/store next to Panchitos, so we reheated our breakfast there and ate outside as they have a bunch of tables outside as well. We had a late dinner at Maya Grill one night; the service was quick and the food was perfect. We had dinner at Three Bridges later one evening and enjoyed it very much. We saw the fireworks from Fantasmic and Epcot just over the tree line on either side of the Tower and that was great as we weren't expecting it. For our last night we made a reservation at the restaurant on the top floor of the tower, Toldeo. I asked for a table along the windows so we could see the fireworks at Epcot & Hollywood Studios. Unfortunately I wasn't specific enough and we were seated on the opposite side with the same water view we had had from our room all week. We were quite disappointed as our table was also in a back corner by the wine room, so we couldn't even see into the middle of the restaurant or the other side at all. The only slight perk to the table we were seated at is you can see Cinderella's castle from this side of the restaurant - however it's very tiny and very far in the distance. Our meal at Toldeo was delicious. Buses & transport: Unfortunately we grew quite frustrated with the bus service after our 2nd day. The resort has 4 bus stops and the Tower is the last stop to get picked up; often this means the buses may fill before even making it to the stop, or if they arrive there's no guarantee of getting on. At certain times of day there is a Cast Member at the bus stop who can radio if more buses are needed. An example was one morning heading to Magic Kingdom, when we got to the bus stop the next arrival was estimated for 8:04am, I looked a few minutes later and it was up to 8:06am, and it went all the way up to 8:12am. The same can be said for leaving the parks; one evening the line for Coronado took up 2 entire bus stops (#29 & 30) at Magic Kingdom; it took us over an hour to get back to the resort from leaving the park. I'm really not sure why more buses aren't running for the larger resorts. It's incredibly frustrating. We used Lyft for the final 3 days of our trip and absolutely loved it; in the time it took us to request a Lyft and arrive at our destination, more often than not we were sure that we would've still been waiting for a bus if we had gone that route. You can definitely save 30+ minutes by using Uber or Lyft. All of our rides were in the $8 - $12 range and all took about 10 minutes. Minnie Vans are available through Lyft as well but were often 3x the cost of a standard Lyft. The Lyft/Uber pick up & drop off points are often closer than the bus stops at most parks as well - Hollywood Studios & Animal Kingdom are about as close as you can get to the gate!! Overall we had a great stay and enjoyed the resort & new tower immensely. We will definitely be back! Read less