Disney World Stay Report: Our New #1
We head back to the Villas at Grand Floridian for a Christmas stay. In this Walt Disney World hotel report, we’ll share our recent holiday time experience, including a look at new decorations in the main lobby and DVC wing, how the walkway enhanced our stay, and why this is our new #1 resort.
What we won’t be doing is focusing on any of the health safety protocol, enhanced cleaning, or anything else unique to Walt Disney World’s phased reopening. This is for two reasons: we’ve already done it several times (notably here and here) so it’s redundant at this point and, really, not a ton feels different from normal on the resort side of things.
Instead, we’ll focus on the seasonal aspects of our stay and recent upgrade to the Grand Floridian. If you saw the latest version of our Disney Vacation Club Resort Rankings, you already know that the Villas at Grand Floridian jumped a couple of spots to #1. Not a huge surprise there. What we’ll do here is better contextualize that, look at some of the pros and cons, and more…
The first caveat I want to offer is that Villas at Grand Floridian is our “compromise” top resort at Walt Disney World. It’s our shared choice, arrived at through a subjective lens but while trying to be reasonably objective. By that, I mean we factor in the variables we think will be most important to other guests, but the weight we give each might differ from others’ assessments. It’s our attempt at being reasonably objective about something inherently subjective…if that makes any sense.
If I could only stay at one Walt Disney World hotel ever again, I’d choose Wilderness Lodge without a second thought or hesitation. It’s my personal favorite by a decent margin–there are few things in all of Walt Disney World that I enjoy more than late nights in that lobby at Christmas. So that’s the more “biased” view. (Animal Kingdom Lodge would be right behind it.)
Speaking of Christmas, the Villas at Grand Floridian are not decked out in spectacular fashion.
To the contrary, it’s probably among the weaker Disney Vacation Club resorts in terms of holiday decor.
While many of the villa wings are more reliant on the hotel side to decorate for Christmas, they also usually do garland, wreaths, and moderately-sized Christmas trees.
For instance, both the Beach Club Villas and Boulder Ridge at Wilderness Lodge have memorable Christmas trees in their atriums. With its own sizable tree, Kidani Village is an even more extreme example–but it’s also a much larger resort.
The problem here might be that the centerpiece of the Villas at Grand Floridian is the Mary Poppins penguin fountain, which can’t exactly be relocated for a Christmas tree.
As a work around, perhaps next year Walt Disney World’s Holiday Services team can dress these penguins up as Santa Clauses. It’s well known that penguins love playing Santa. Or Disney could buy Warner Bros. and give these fellas a Batman Returns overlay. Everyone loves that great Christmas film, and it’d be excellent synergy!
Joking aside (the Batman Forever part is only a joke if it doesn’t happen–I’m totally on board), there are sufficient wreaths and garland to give the lobby a festive feel.
Failing that, the real lobby is a 5-minute walk away…
As usual, we spent a lot of time in the Grand Floridian’s lobby, just soaking up the holiday atmosphere. We also enjoyed the lack of crowds.
Unsurprisingly, the lower occupancy rate plus the lack of a gingerbread house plus three popular table service restaurants still closed has resulted in significantly fewer guests at the Grand Floridian this Christmas season.
If ever there were a year to book a stay in the main building for the holidays, this would’ve been it. I sort of regretted that we hadn’t…until pricing a night out.
Even with the Half-Off Hotels Disney Visa Discount, we were disabused of that idea pretty quickly. Guess we’ve grown too accustomed to DVC “pricing” at the Grand Floridian!
For the last couple of years, Holiday Services has quietly been refreshing Christmas decoration packages around Walt Disney World. This has received almost zero fanfare, despite having a bigger impact than something like a new roadway arch. (With a few exceptions–likely fueled by nostalgia–we’ve been fans of almost all of these changes.)
One of the most recent changes is the Grand Floridian receiving new ornaments along with a “12 Days of Christmas” motif, plus a few other decor changes. In our view, this is a nice enhancement. It’s every bit as timeless and classy as the prior decor package, but with significant fewer birdcages. Since Christmas is, at its core, a holiday about caging birds, there are thankfully still a few of those in the tree.
Migrating back over to the Villas at Grand Floridian, here’s a look inside our room.
We love these rooms. However, after recent experiences with the innovations and enhancements at both Saratoga Springs and Riviera Resort, we have to say that we prefer those.
This is discussed at length in our Disney’s Riviera Resort Report Highlights, but you can really see the evolution in DVC rooms over the last decade, with each iteration bringing incremental improvements.
The Grand Floridian rooms are most of the way there, but the Riviera does it better in ways big and little. There’s also more attention to detail and the rooms convey theme better.
Obviously, since the Villas at Grand Floridian is #1 and Disney’s Riviera Resort isn’t in the top 5, the former makes up ground on virtually every other front.
Common areas, resort-wide theme, dining, pools, and other amenities are better at the Villas at Grand Floridian.
Speaking of which, one huge addition is the new walkway to Magic Kingdom.
We’ve already breathlessly covered this in “Photos & Video: Meandering the Magnificent Magic Kingdom to Grand Floridian Walkway.” In case you missed that, it’s now possible to walk all the way from the Transportation and Ticket Center to Magic Kingdom.
In that post, we say that this walkway will likely go down as our favorite and most-used Walt Disney World “new attraction” of 2020–ahead of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.
Our enthusiasm for the walkway is not hyperbole. You might recall our pre-closure “Stroll-less Stay at the Grand Floridian,” which was booked due to our “guess” that the walkway would be open by then. We’ve since had a couple of cancelled stays, and were eagerly awaiting this one.
Although the walk from the Villas at Grand Floridian to Magic Kingdom should be longer than from the hotel side, that’s not necessarily true.
The path from the villas goes through the porte-cochere, in front of the main lobby, along the bus stop path, before cutting behind the convention center. It can be a bit tricky due to signage, but those last couple of steps essentially amount to a shortcut over the route hotel guests will use.
Between that and proximity to the Polynesian, the argument could be made that the location of the Villas at Grand Floridian is superior to that of most of the hotel buildings. That would be our perspective–those who regularly use the monorail or Gasparilla Island Grill would likely disagree.
In any case, we took full “advantage” of the new walkway, using it several times…even without visiting Magic Kingdom!
In other “news,” Grand Floridian Cafe is now doing outdoor seating…sometimes.
We debated doing this–I really wanted that Buttermilk-fried Chicken: Hand-breaded Chicken Breast with ‘Loaded’ Smashed Potatoes and Warmed Bacon Vinaigrette again. Maybe my New Year’s Resolution can be to eat that meal at least once per month.
Our stay ended up being split pretty evenly among the main lobby, new walkway, and our room’s patio.
Our balcony v. patio view is normally a toss up, but we discovered during this stay that we prefer the balconies here. On the plus side, the nearby fountain provided lovely ambient noise.
Ultimately, it was another great stay at the Villas at Grand Floridian. We’ve been anxiously awaiting our first “post-path” stay here, and it absolutely lived up to the hype.
The Seven Seas Lagoon resorts have always had a “heart of the action” vibe to them thanks to their views, monorail access, and location near Magic Kingdom…but that walkway really takes that to the next level. It’s not a game-changer, but it’s a really big deal. It essentially renders Bay Lake Tower obsolete for us. Most “normal” people probably won’t understand our effusive praise for a path, but hopefully other Walt Disney World fans will get it!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you stayed at the Grand Floridian since that glorious walkway debuted? Did you use it or the monorail? Think it’s a big addition for the rank of the hotel and DVC villas? What do you think of the Villas at Grand Floridian? Deserving of the #1 ranking? Are you a fan of its rooms, lobby, etc? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Other thoughts or concerns? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I love that new path. I can’t wait for our stay at The Grand Floridian this summer and our Christmas stay at the Polynesian. Being able to walk to the Magic Kingdom is something that’s hard to put a value on until you see the line for the busses and the monorail at night. While I still rank the Polynesian as my sentimental number 1 monorail resort the Grand Floridian wins from an amenity standpoint. They have 1 to 3 bedroom units and much better and bigger pools. But Bay Lake Tower is a winner with the point charts, extra bathrooms, and the walk to the MK is much shorter. You can’t go wrong at any of those 3 resorts.
We stayed at the Beach Club & Boardwalk Villas last week, but you can bet that didn’t stop us from using the MK-GF pathway for the 1st time. Fantastic!
We used it to make a late afternoon trek over to Enchanted Rose, which we also found to be a charming upgrade to the Grand Floridian. I always liked Mizner’s Lounge, but the added seating makes for a nice change.
I just booked the Poly Villas for next July, in part because I’m excited about using that pathway again.
As relatively new DVC owners, we’ve only stayed at the Poly and Animal Kingdom Lodge, but Wilderness Lodge was *going* to be our next trip before having to cancel this year. If you think of both Wilderness Lodge DVC properties as a single resort, and the both Animal Kingdom lodges as one, these three (Wilderness, AKL, and Poly) are easily our top three from a combination of amenities and ambience.
I do have to point out one big advantage for Bay Lake Tower that would potentially cause us to choose BLT over Poly or Grand Floridian in the future: a toilet! Well, to be clearer, a *second* toilet with a one-bedroom. We like to invite my parents to join us on trips and love the idea of a one-bedroom over two studios due to the shared time together and the full kitchen so that we can prepare meals as a family part of the time. While we are happy to share space, somehow the idea of sharing toilets just feels a little too intimate at this point in our lives 🙂 The only WDW DVC resorts to have two full bathrooms with a one-bedroom are Bay Lake Tower and AKL Kidani Village.
We have stayed in the one-bedroom at Kidani together and it was wonderful–and that second bathroom is great! I love Poly for my spouse and kids, but having a second shower isn’t enough to bring in the parents or in-laws!
So, even though now that there is that awesome pathway at Grand Floridian, the bland-and hotel like Bay Lake Tower will get our points before Grand Floridian does 😉
We stayed on the hotel side for a couple nights in October and it was exactly what we needed as a cure to 2020. The resort is so beautiful and without the crowds (quiet lobby, empty pool) it really felt like a retreat from it all. I’ve noticed photos just don’t do GF justice–it is really beautiful. The 35% off discount certainly helped too making it a really good time to stay there–can’t imaging paying rack rate.
Love the freedom of getting places by the power of my own two feet! This walking path has nudged VGF higher on our where to stay next resort list but the 2br villa we’d need eats a lot of points… Hopefully some day the numbers will work out for us.
I first stayed at the Grand Floridian in August, 1989, and found it too pretentious (we were Poly fans prior to that lobby demolition) and haven’t stayed the GF again until last month. Like you, we tried to time the opening of the new ‘running path’ to the MK and we booked Thanksgiving/Black Friday and we hit the path just perfectly within a few days of opening.
I do love the new path for both walking, running. We used the path, the monorail, and the boat to the MK. The path was the best as we just wanted to exercise, although the other two were great options as well. I now love the Grand Floridian so much, I have booked rooms for several days in September and speculatively for Wine & Dine in November. it is now my go-to of the Monorail resorts based on that Thanksgiving stay.
My perspective is a bit different than Bricker’s, though. Since July, I have booked my Disney stays based on exercise options. My local gym does not require masks and it is my goal to keep my muscles toned without catching Covid. (Disney is one of the very few places in the US that requires mask wearing while working out).
With that background, I agree that the Grand Floridian is the best with the new jogging path to the MK. By starting at the DVC building, one can run to the Contemporay and back to the T&TC on paths now. Further, the spa/gym at Grand Floridian is top notch! So the combination of a terrific running path and a great weight room makes this an amazing stay. It too is my number 1.
However, since Covid, I have stayed at other resorts as well. With the primary emphasis of workout room and running paths, I will share my 2 – 4.
#2. Boardwalk. It is pretty easy to get a nice, fun 3 – 4 miles from the Boardwalk. Run to HS and loop around the plaza in front of the Skyliner, then cross one of the three bridges into the Swan/Dolphin Complex and loop around Crescent Lake a few times. The Boardwalk Spa (Muscles & Bustles) is awesome and EVERYONE wears a mask there.
# 3 – Copper Creek/Boulder Ridge. I have never stayed at Boulder Ridge, but like Bricker, I love the vibe in Wilderness Lodge. While he raves about the beautiful lobby, my #1 is Geyser Point. The wings, the sandwiches, and the adult beverages while taking in the view of Bay Lake – is simply perfection.
The gym is also one of the best at Boulder Ridge. I focus on leg machines as i had a knee operation in early 2020 and have not had the ability to work on my legs. The spa is big, clean and has great work out machines there.
However, the big issue is the running path. The running path from Wilderness Lodge to Fort Wilderness It is still marked as a construction zone (due to the abandoned ‘Reflections’ Construction”.) What was once one of the best running/walking trails is no more, And if you attempt to walk/jog/run from Wilderness Lodge to Fort Wilderness, you risk a felony trespassing charge! (Per the signs that were up when I was last there in August).
And – Wilderness Lodge is the only WDW hotel with an electric vehicle charging station (which is a wonderful amenity (I drive a plug-in hybrid). Still, that ‘felony trespassing’ sign scares me away.
# 4Riveria. I love Riviera – mostly. The vibe, the views, nad especially the chicken wings at Bar Riva are pure joy for me. (The wings are really fantastic – the best wings I have ever had – anywhere).
The running path encompasses the entire Carribean Beach resort, so a few laps can get several miles in . And the quick Skyliner ride can get you to the Crescent Lake/HS/Epcot path for more variety. But – the gym at the Rivieria – is clearly 2nd (3rd?) rate. I love EVERYTHING about the Riv – except the substandard gym. I don’t know why they even bothered to build it. It is tiny and they have NO machines for the lower body. Last week, I stayed at the Boardwalk. Ran to HS, took the skyline to Riv for the wings and then Skylined back to the Boardwalk Via the Epcot Skyliner. I had Riv reservations at the last minute but changed them BW in deference to Muscles & Bustles.
One more note – the Grand Floridian path to the MK is much easier to find if you walk to the east of the pool and play area (Lake Side along the sandy beach) from the DVC building and stay to the at of the main building. Then the signs to the path are pretty clear. Taking the main covered path to the GF entrance is more confusing.
Thanks so much for your input/assessment of running trails and gyms in And around WDW. We had a lovely stay in October at the Grand Floridian villas. They spoiled us and upgraded us to a one bedroom villa when we had only expected and paid for a studio, so by the pictures I’ve seen Of the studios in comparison I’m not sure I can ever go back. It was a practically perfect stay in every way. (Sorry).
I have a question for you regarding running trails though, we are returning in February with my grandson and he is doing his first RunDisney 5K. We decided to do the Princess even though this year it is virtual. So are planning an early morning run with him, then a park afterwards. I know security is a bit tighter at the resorts now, and wanted your opinion on if we should or could even attempt a run on the Grand Floridian pathway if we are not staying there. We may only do a mile or so since we will have already finished the virtual 5K and will bring medals for a pic with the grandson. What do you suggest? Thanks.
We have booked a stay in Art of Animation thinking he would like the cars theming, so have that area as an option also.
Thats too bad about Wilderness Lodge to Fort Wilderness path issues. I always enjoyed walk plus there is some nice wildlife along the trail. Hopefully it reopens in the future.
So enjoyed our stay in the Grand Floridian villa room the first week of December…two nights was all our budget allowed, but we loved it. Our main focus was the Christmas decorations in the Magic Kingdom. We did the monorail in each day and loved the walkway back. And…one night we had that amazing fried chicken. We are recent retirees and love a few random days at a relaxed pace. Our Monday-Friday annual passes plus the 40% room discount has us trying lots of Disney hotels. Next up…a focus on Animal Kingdom and a stay at Kindani village. Just wish more restaurants would open! When things get back to normal can’t wait to have our grandson back again…because that is when the very best magic happens!
We’ve stayed at GFV twice in a one bedroom. But it sure eats up our points. We don’t do studios without two real beds.
Merry Christmas from your fellow Michiganders and Disney Addicts here in the mitten state! Cheers to 2021!
What was the better “attraction” then…the Skyliner in 2019 or the path in 2020?
Easier to split a bottle of wine while riding the Skyliner, so that gets my vote.
Skyliner, hands down. That was a true game-changer for several resorts–a truly ambitious infrastructure/transportation project. This is a key addition for GF/Poly guests…but also a no-brainer that should’ve happened decades ago.
Skyliner changed my opinion of CBR. It was an “Okay” resort before (beautiful grounds, great pool, but exterior room access is undesirable). CBR used to be a headache to navigate, especially at the end of a long day in the parks. Now I can gladly book a room here if I want Epcot or Hollywood Studios access. Skyliner changed the appeal level for CBR and AoA.
Thanks for the report. Merry Christmas to you guys!