We just returned from our first stay at CSR. We were there over a very busy holiday weekend - Columbus Day weekend. We booked a standard room with an AP discount. I thought it was a very reasonable rate for this beautiful resort.
Room/Room Request
Made the general room request of high floor and non-connecting room. Did not make any other location or building requests. We got a 3rd floor room at Ranchos 7B overlooking the quiet pool. It was connecting, but thankfully, the family next door were also very quiet. The room was great - remodeled, fantastic location, only 1 minute to the main pool (Dig Site), 2 minutes to the Cabanas bus stop, 3 minutes to the Tower and 5 minutes to the Centro. The Ranchos area was very peaceful and beautiful, with gorgeous landscaping.
My only criticism is that the thermostat was really bright and right next to the bed. Would love ideas for covers for next trip. Also, we checked-in at the desk and they offered the gift card for declining housekeeping. We opted to have housekeeping. It was great. They made the beds, swept the floor, replenished the coffee supplies and the toiletries. And we did not have any annoying security checks since housekeeping did our room. We were not up early any days and they cleaned the room while we were at the parks.
Food/Restaurants
We had breakfast at El Mercado. The Vegan pizza was fantastic, as were the Mickey waffles. The omelettes took a LOOOOONG time to make (slow line, I think they only make 1 at a time), and they were rather tasteless. The menu online looked like it wasn't recently updated. There were different items and prices, especially the room service menu. Prices online were a lot lower than the menu in the room. I had planned on ordering room service until I realized that 2 omelettes would be more than $50.
We also had "dinner" at the Three Bridges. It was a little awkward because they were closing it for a private event and we could only get seating at the sofa. Eating a salad at the sofa wasn't the easiest thing in the world, LOL. On the good news side, the salad was great and the place is very pretty. They are now taking the TiW card, so that is 20% off your food and drinks!
Buses/Transportation
This was really great/hit or miss/bad. Seemed to us that the service from the parks was better than the service to the parks. We wound up Ubering 4 times in our 4 day trip. The first night we got to the bus stop at 7 pm to go to Epcot. None of the bus stops in the app were showing an Epcot bus time, so we should have just hopped on an Uber immediately. But, our previous experiences in other resorts is that if you wait 20 minutes you will see a bus. Long story short, we eventually got a bus at 7:44. There were 3 other times when we got to the stop and no buses were showing for either Epcot or DHS. We waited 5-10 minutes and since bus times were not showing, we called Uber. Sometimes the app didn't match the sign in the bus stop.
From the parks, the service was much better. I was impressed at MK closing on Friday (after
MNSSHP) and Sunday (after fireworks) that they sent 2 buses. The wait was only about 10 minutes. Really great service at that time.
All, in all, we enjoyed our trip and thought it was good value with the AP discount.