Just got back from staying in a 1BR for 4 nights. Here's my not-a-trip-report resort/room report, from the perspective of someone whose last ~10 trips to DL have been at VGC.
Arrival
- Got room text on the drive down, at around 2:20PM. During online check-in I said we'd arrive at 5PM but the plan was more like 7:30PM.
- GPS navigation (my car's built-in nav uses Google Maps) was set to Villas at Disneyland Hotel and last-mile directions were all sorts of crazy, I just followed posted navigation signs to DL Hotel.
- When I arrived on the grounds of DL Hotel, nav lost its mind and had me doubling back/forth multiple times but never reaching the resort porte cochere. This will come up again later.
- Porte cochere was busy, but was able to get bell services to take our bags quickly.
- Self-parked, huge parking lots but not detached/across the street! An improvement over VGC, in our opinion.
- A good number of electric plug-in spots, too. I didn't have a need to charge on arrival, so just parked in a normal spot.
- Went to front desk to get room keys, got the blue "Disneyland Resort" cards, which desperately need to be improved.
- The wishing star on the walk to the lobby of VDH comes across better in video/pictures. Needs iridescence or something.
- Lobby of VDH is definitely something less than a lobby. Maybe a large foyer with a great mural and a side room? More than VGC has on its own, though. Easy to find the elevators.
- Looked around, took a bunch of pictures of the interior. Really liked the room!
- Called bell services for our luggage. Two things of note:
- They really wanted to know if 622 was a 1BR or a 2BR. We didn't press why it mattered, but it sounded like they were filling out a form?
- They said they'd be there in 5 minutes, and were! VGC bell services could never...
The Room
- The 1BR is fantastic. Spacious layout, tons of usable space, great fit/finish.
- Everything was new and still in great shape. I can see how some corners might not wear great, maybe.
- Loved the green/purple theme from the Princess and the Frog, just works great. The art is great, especially the art over the bed.
- Except the giant portrait of Tiana. All portraits kinda creep me out (aren't they supposed to?), but a life-size portrait of a Disney Princess is especially bizarre and creepy to me. Would have loved something like Fantasia's Sorcerer Mickey on the pinnacle from the 2BR. Anyway, mostly tuned out the portrait.
- Thermostat is next to the fridge, near the front entrance. It's an INCOMM model
- Instructions to override:
- But we didn't need to override! Could set it down to 65.
- There's a motion detector in the bedroom, too.
- Coffee brewer is a combo drip/K-cup brewer by Keurig that looked decent. I brought my own electric travel kettle and Cometeer capsules, though.
- The view was very good!
- Fridge is kinda short? I'm not used to see the top of a fridge. Worked well and held all of our stuff though, no complaints.
- WARNING: all the opaque cabinets aren't hinged and are not meant to be opened despite the handles! Ask me how I know!
- Didn't use the range, dishwasher, or washer/dryer, or the foyer storage area.
- Murphy bed stayed in couch mode the entire trip and was firm but comfortable. I definitely prefer firm sofas, so I liked it.
- The ottoman portion is movable, and there's two hybrid stools/ottomans, too.
- Living room and kitchen area is laminate flooring with a rug under the murphy bed.
- TV in the living room has bias lighting and was a decent 65in Samsung LCD.
- It took a few restarts and a TV software update for it to show the typical "WELCOME HOME EHH FAMILY!" messaging? Made me wonder when the last time someone had been in this room.
- There's another individual-sized pullout bed under the TV, I know basically nothing about it, sorry. I only opened it to look for an ethernet port (inconclusive).
- The bathroom off the living area is nice. We used it as our #2 bathroom.
- The patio was a good size and the furniture was fine, though kinda dirty.
- The bedroom is kinda small? It fits a king bed with drawers, a wardrobe-ish, and large end tables just fine though.
- Bedroom TV I think was the same size and model as the living room TV. It also had bias lighting.
- The main bathroom is top notch. The layout is wonderful and the fit/finish is nearly as good as Disney can do. The tile art over the tub was beautiful.
- I am a little concerned about the metal corner pieces and how they'll look in 14 years. I predict: dated.
- The shower is a good size, but ever so slightly claustrophobic as it's a solid wall on 3 sides and the door is very frosted glass except for the eye-line and above, where the frosting fades.
- The shower cannot run the rainfall shower head and the handheld at the same time, we tried.
- Shower temperature got pretty hot, but we could not get it to scalding temps (I guess that's a good thing).
- The Throne Room, with a similar frosted glass door, is actually less claustrophobic compared to ones at other resorts as the door at least lets light in vs. usually solid doors.
- The tub is nice, but tall people may find it lacks enough length. Everyone will find it lacks jets.
- The mirrors are very nice, really like the edge lighting.
- The only DVC bathroom we've been in that we thought was better was the VGF GV's main bathroom. It's a tiny bit better than the main bathroom from the CCV Cabins.
- There's USB-A and USB-C plugs everywhere. But we didn't use them.
- I couldn't find a usable ethernet port anywhere, for the bring-your-own-access point crowd.
- But it didn't matter, the Wi-Fi was the best Disney Resort Wi-Fi I've ever had, 140mbps+ in both directions on my phone, <10ms ping, reliable.
- This is SO MUCH better than VGC, which has always had borderline unusable Wi-Fi for me.
- The bedroom blinds opened from the same side of the room as the head of the bed, so you could open it a little bit and still see out while maintaining privacy.
- Body lotion bottles were still in both bathrooms.
- Electrical outlets weren't upside down, like they are at VGC (and everywhere at Grand Cali).
The Oddities and Broken Stuff
- 2nd bathroom sink faucet leaked slightly when turned to full cold.
- Odd construction noises on Thursday and Friday during the day. Sounded like air compressor-driven power tools? I guess other rooms still need work.
- Throne Room door didn't shut properly, the latch plate in the frame stuck out by just ~0.5mm too much and made closing it really difficult.
- DW insists the toilet in main bathroom was shorter than the one in the #2 bathroom.
- There aren't enough light switches. As in, one switch controls a lot at once...which sounds great but we had a tough time dialing in the room to be dark-with-just-a-bit-of-light for sleeping. We eventually left the overhead light on in the #2 bathroom and closed the door 75% of the way.
- Casting to the living room TV broke a couple hours before checkout, turning off/on did not resolve. Turns out what we wanted to watch while eating breakfast and packing was on TV anyway.
- The microwave clock was not set when we got to the room. We set it but didn't update it after Daylight Saving change.
- The walk to almost everything is a lot worse than VGC. We focused on maximizing DL Hotel grounds and Downtown Disney.
- The car chargers in the parking lot are Chargepoint, but the Chargepoint app was oddly inaccurate about their usage? It also didn't charge my account when I charged before leaving.
- My car's nav (again, using Google Maps) could not deal with the DL Hotel parking lot. We kept trying to set Home as our destination from the porte cochere and the 20min parking and it couldn't figure out a route out of the parking lot. Worked fine once we started nav from the road.
Anyway, I'm sure I've forgotten interesting stuff, AMA!
