Walt Disney World Dolphin

Weekend trip to celebrate a family member’s birthday and we had a great time! The room was clean and so was the entire hotel. The first morning I woke up late and had breakfast at the swan because the restaurants at the Dolphin were already closed for breakfast. The food was ok, except for the pancakes were not fully cooked. Fast forward to dinner at night. Good food on property at Dolphin and later we went to the bar. Cuddos to Dolphin for hiring Angel as their bartender. He is the best!!! If you owned a bar, you would definitely want him to run it!!! He is fun, easy going and not pushy, knowledgeable, and so personable that you wanted to keep drinking just to hang out with him! His drink suggestions based on the liquor I liked were great and mixed to perfection. Gimlets the first night because I like Gin and Sidecars the next night because I like cognac. He even managed to calmly convert a retired bartender on his version of a ole fashion. Thanks Angel! Another nice surprise at the Dolphin was the food at the pool. When you order food at a pool restaurant, you expect it to be meh… and subpar…. But you order anyway, because you are at the pool and hungry. Well the food at their pool restaurant was great!!! We each had something different and everything tasted good! I had the fish tacos and it was yummy! Stick with the waitress suggestion and have it blackened and you will not be disappointed! Overall a nice weekend and I would recommend it! Don’t forget to try the hot tub by the pool area! Super relaxing for your tired muscles! Read less

Paid the price of a moderate level Disney resort, and the resort was value resort level at most. Transportation to the parks was horrendous, and they are no longer using Disney bus transportation. We were dropped off next to a city bus at Disney Springs. We then had to walk 1.66 miles to get to where the Disney buses drop off. They do still utilize the friendship boats on crescent lake. Our stay was in October 2021, and the room tv still said that there was going to be something until spring of 2019 showing that it has not been updated for at least 3 years. The hotel was pretty, but there was still plenty of construction going on. If you want to be on Disney property, and don’t mind using your own transportation then this would be a fine stay. Read less

I was absolutely amazed at how the staff treated and interacted with their guests. I had the pleasure of meeting and checking- in with Carlos at the front desk. From the moment I stepped up to his counter, he showed compassion, knowledge, friendliness and charisma. He portrayed such a warm welcome that I truly felt right at home. The resort is clean, active and houses some fantastic restaurants. I will most certainly visit again! Read less

The main reason to stay here is for the location if you're going to Epcot or Hollywood Studios. It's super convenient for those parks, and a lot cheaper than the nearby Disney-branded hotels. They also used to get Disney Resort perks like early/extended hours but not sure if this is still the case (this wasn't available for anyone when I stayed this time). I've stayed here (and at the WDW Swan) a couple times before, but I'd really forgotten how dated everything is. It's way overdue for a renovation (or a much better one if it has had one recently). It took them like 10 minutes at the computer to check me in, with no apparent explanation. It took about an hour to get my bags delivered from the bellhops. Some of the rooms are VERY far from the main elevators. The default for housekeeping when I went was every 4 days?? No one informed me at check-in so I had to request service. As much as I love the location, I'd rather deal with shuttles etc from much nicer, newer, similarly-priced resorts that aren't quite as close to the parks (e.g. Bonnet Creek hotels like the Hilton), and I don't really plan to return. Read less

I would suggest anyone to completely avoid the Sheraton Dolphin (and the Westin Swan) in Orlando. Over the years, my expectations of what a Sheraton branded hotel in the US should be, have gotten quite low. While internationally, there are fantastic Sheraton branded hotels, this is not the case in the US. Sadly, the Sheraton Dolphin just lowered that bar even further. First, let me start by saying don’t be fooled by the hotel claiming to be a ‘Disney’ resort. THE HOTEL IS NOT A DISNEY RESORT in the fullest extent. 1. Systems are not integrated at all with Disney (ie. you cannot use a Disney MagicBand to open your room, buy at shops, restaurants, or hold your park tickets). So you still have to carry a full wallet and risk losing your credit cards, id, etc… at the park as opposed to having a wristband. 2. Transportation to Magic Kingdom / Animal Kingdom is terrible: Buses run every 30 minutes or so (without a fixed schedule), so your travel time is hit or miss…. It can be short if you happen to find the bus waiting when you arrive or long if the bus just left. This in contrast with Disney buses that run far more frequently. In addition, the buses at Magic Kingdom this means the Ticket and Transportation Center, so still need to take a ferry or the monorail to get to Magic Kingdom. To sum it up: you lose anywhere between 40 minutes up to 2 hours of your day depending on how bad your timing is by not running with the same schedule / convenience that ‘true’ Disney resorts have. 3. Transportation to EPCOT is a joke too. You can walk in 15 – 20 minutes. The boat runs every 20 – 30, and takes as long as walking to get there! Now onto why the hotel per-se is disappointing. 1. More than 18 months after the pandemic started, hotel is still trying to cut corners and not performing house keeping daily in the rooms (only done every 4 days). The hotel tells you ‘it’s for your safety’ instead of being upfront and letting you know they are simply trying to save money. Rooms are tiny and get messed up quite quickly (even for the most orderly family). So for $300 / night I do expect top notch service and that includes a clean room every day of my stay. 2. The hotel claims to have a ‘Commitment to Clean’. Just a look at the hallways on the room floors quickly debunks the myth of any commitment of sorts. Carpets are dirty all the time, guests leave trash bags / take out food order trash outside their rooms that take up to 20 hours to get picked up. 3. Poor execution of guest requests: As a Bonvoy Ambassador member I did leverage this to try to get my room cleaned. I requested cleaning at 7:00 AM on the first morning. First the person on the phone fought me and told me they wouldn’t do it. I went to front desk and they said they had noted and would be performed for every day of my stay. I returned to my room at 9:00 PM only to find out they hadn’t cleaned it. The next day, exactly the same thing happened again. 4. Rooms are very old and tiny. The restroom is very small, almost as small a Japanese hotel. 5. Rooms are very noisy: You can hear EVERYTHING! From everything that happens above, below, and next to you. As an added bonus you also get to hear the horns from the Disney boats that start early in the morning and finish late at night, so good luck getting quality sleep. 6. Terrible welcome. No one explains to you how the hotel / transportation / etc… works. When I asked the person helping actually had to pull out a piece of paper to try to explain to me. 7. If you are a Bonvoy Elite, forget about any of your elite perks. a. No welcome amenity offered in the room b. Even though hotel is a Sheraton, there is no lounge c. Breakfast is a joke: They give you a miserable $10 / day coupon that doesn’t buy you anything at the restaurant. A breakfast for 2 one morning was $50. So you can guess how far the $10 takes you. d. No elite recognition whatsoever (ie. thank you for being a Bonvoy XXX member) e. You have to beg for late checkout, even then 3:00 PM was all I could get after complaining (bear in mind, this was for a Sunday departure… when the hotel was clearly selling every room type in the app). I was excited to stay here because I was thinking I was going to get the perks of my elite status + integration with Disney, only to stay at an overpriced hotel, with no seamlessness whatsoever and clearly not truly a ‘Disney Hotel’. In this day in age where everything can be integrated through simple technology, I can’t understand how the hotel chooses to pass it’s complexity with it’s own Disney relationship to the guest as opposed to solving it and making things seamless. So if I were you, do yourself a favor and stay at a proper Disney Hotel or save some money and simply stay slightly outside, many hotels will have comparable shuttle service to the parks anyway. You’ll save $100+ per night, for a better hotel and get very similar experience. The only good things about the place are: - Ability to walk to Epcot - The food at the restaurants was decent and the staff was kind Read less