DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando Hotel Review

DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando is a Disney Springs Resort Area Hotel on Walt Disney World property. This review covers our stay at the hotel, featuring room photos, thoughts on the DoubleTrees’s amenities, and how it compares with other hotels in the area.

As with other Disney Springs Resort Area Hotels, the DoubleTree has a solid slate of amenities (pictures of these are interspersed among the transportation discussion below). It’s a full service hotel with a pool, fitness center, laundry, bar, and restaurant. Depending upon how you book your stay, you might get free breakfast at the restaurant–it’s fine, but I wouldn’t pay out of pocket for it. I wouldn’t say that any of these amenities are stand-outs as compared to other hotels in the area. One thing that is a stand-out is the addictively-delicious cookies they hand out at check-in.

We don’t focus on in our earlier Disney Springs Resort Area Hotel reviews is the walking distance from Disney Springs. In large part, that’s because those reviews were written prior to the pedestrian bridges being added, along with the host of worthwhile dining options that we’ve come to love, so we never really made an effort to walk over to Disney Springs. Now, the location of these hotels near Disney Springs is a much bigger selling point…

During this trip, we stayed at several of these hotels, and walked to Disney Springs at least once–usually twice–per day. All of these hotels are walk-able, but the DoubleTree is the farthest from Disney Springs, and is just under a 15-minute walk.

For our off-season visit, this worked really well for us, as it allowed us to close out the parks each night, and then go to Disney Springs for a late night meal before walking back to Disney Springs. We also did early lunches at Disney Springs on several occasions before heading to the parks.

Driving or taking the bus to Disney Springs would also be an alternative, but both also come with downsides. While the drive is short, driving means parking at the DoubleTree, and that comes at a $22/night (!!!) cost. This still might be a worthwhile expense for some of you, as the Disney Springs hotels don’t offer Disney’s Magical Express, and the bus service leaves a lot to be desired.

That bus service is probably the biggest downside of any of the Disney Springs hotels. It’s advertised as running once every 30 minutes to the parks, but it doesn’t operate on a consistent/published time schedule so you could be waiting close to that long for a bus. Once you’re on the bus, it’s stopping at other hotels in the area, before continuing on to the parks. Yes, parks–plural.

In some cases, we used this bus transportation and it was a smooth process. We got picked up right away, made a quick stop at one other hotel, continued on to the park, and were there just as quickly as we would’ve been had we taken a bus from a Disney-owned hotel. In other cases, we waited 20+ minutes, stopped at a few hotels, and went to two parks (or got dropped off at the Ticket & Transportation Center when going to Magic Kingdom).

We ended up trying to avoid this bus service to the greatest extent possible. We’d often use Uber/Lyft if we wanted to be somewhere in a hurry, or walked to Disney Springs to have a meal before then continuing on via Disney transportation. In part, I can understand why this transportation system is not more efficient–in many cases, even after stopping at multiple hotels, the bus was only 25% full.

The good news here is that the DoubleTree and all of these Disney Springs Resort Area Hotels are already becoming more popular with Walt Disney World guests thanks to them now offering Extra Magic Hours and the 60-day FastPass+ booking window. (We used Extra Magic Hours multiple times without issue during our stay.)

Walt Disney World hotels continue to experience high occupancy, with rates likely to max out with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and the 50th Anniversary. Because of this, even more guests are going to be pushed to options like these Disney Springs hotels.

As these Disney Springs Resort Area Hotels grow in popularity with Walt Disney World guests, I hope that this bus transportation is re-evaluated and improved. The cost in time of using this “free” shuttle service is often too high.

Anyway, enough about transportation, let’s take a look at the rooms…

The biggest selling point of the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando is unquestionably its spacious rooms, all of which are suites. These guest rooms start at 540 square feet in size, which is over double the size of a Value Resort room.

It’s also larger than standard Deluxe Resort rooms, with 100 square feet more than the largest (Grand Floridian). You can see how this size compares to Disney hotels in our Hotel Room Sizes at Walt Disney World post.

Each suite features a living room with a queen-sized sofa bed and LCD HDTV, dining room that seats four with an adjacent kitchenette, and private balcony. These include Keurig coffeemakers, microwave, mini-refrigerator, sink, and in-room safe.

The bedroom is likewise spacious, and features either two queen-sized beds or one king-sized bed, plus another LCD HDTV. All told, this room will sleep up to six guests comfortably. If you need something larger, two-bedroom suites sleeping up to eight are also available.

While it was just the two of us, we liked the space that this room provided. I tend to get up really early, and with this room I was able to get up and take my laptop out to the living room to work and watch TV while waiting for Sarah to get up.

For us, this was nice convenience, but not a strike necessity. If we were choosing the ideal hotel for us at Walt Disney World–or even in the Disney Springs area–this would not be it. I’d rather have something with a more convenient location or better transportation. For parents with kids or larger parties, I could see the large size of these suites being a much bigger selling point.

My only criticism of the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando’s rooms is that they were pretty bland in terms of style. It was tough to tell whether they were dated or just had a really vanilla style, but there was nothing memorable about them. I know with some hotels, this is exactly the point–choose a generic style that will age well so it doesn’t need to be updated too frequently. On the plus side, the room was excellently maintained, and the style choices are only a minor quibble. The huge size of the room is a much bigger deal.

The DoubleTree advertises rates starting at $109/night, but based on what I saw when pricing out nights, you should probably expect to pay between $160/night and $200/night for most dates. I’d recommend mentally adding another $20/night to that cost, with the expectation that you’ll end up using Uber or Lyft once or twice per day. (Full disclosure: our stay at the DoubleTree was comped for the purposes of this review.)

Overall, we really enjoyed our stay at the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando, but it’s not going to be the right or best option for everyone. Whether this is the ideal hotel for your Walt Disney World vacation is going to come down to one simple question: do you want or need the extra space? If so, this is by far the least expensive option on Walt Disney World property. If you don’t need a suite, there are better options for you, including within the Disney Springs Resort Area.

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

Your Thoughts

Have you stayed at the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando – Disney Springs? What did you think of the experience? Is this a hotel at which you’d consider staying? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!

26 Responses to “DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Orlando Hotel Review”
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