eyeheartgoofy
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2006
Just got back from 6 nights at OKW in a one bedroom. This was our first visit to OKW - we own at VWL and, until this week, VWL was the only DVC we had tried.
Let me say, that the trip was not bad at all. I still prefer VWL, but OKW was nice.
THE GOOD
Check in was a breeze - we arrived around 1:00pm on Saturday and found our room ready. It took my husband 10 minutes (I timed him with my new stopwatch!) to check in (this was the time it took him from the moment he left our car until he came back to our car with room keys!). I had requested an upper floor in buildings 62,63 or 64 - we were assigned another building, but DH asked if they had anything in our first choice area and they re-assigned us to building 64 during check in.
Our room was on the second floor 6424, I believe was the number. We had a view of a pond with a fountain and some portion of a golf course being re-seeded. We could see the bridge entering OKW to the right. We were about a 3-5 minute walk from the Hospitality House. Good location.
I LOVED the size of our room! I was amazed to see the laundry room - WOW! And I really liked the table with four chairs for dining. We are a family of 4 and had plenty of space to spread out and relax (okay, 2 of us are under 6, but we had plenty of room for My Little Pony and all of her accessories!).
The bus service was much better than I expected. I will go so far as to call the bus service "good"! I had prepared myself for LONG waits and slow service. We had one afternoon when it took us an hour to return to our room from MK - we waited for 25 minutes at the MK bus stop before an OKW bus FINALLY pulled up. We watched 2 Yacht and Beach Club busses come and go before OKW finally showed up. Other than that, the bus service was a pleasant surprise. Seems like buses were always coming and going - we rarely waited more than 5 minutes at the Hospitality House bus stop. And I think we waited for 10 minutes at Epcot one night. Now the boat to Downtown Disney was another story - one trip was plenty for us!
We tried the quiet pool located by building 19 and the main pool. We enjoyed both pools, although the main pool was closer.
My kids both loved the community hall - my 5 year old loved the air hockey table and my 3 year old loved the box full o' toys (2 broken baby alive's without pants or bottles in somebody else's toy box trump one fully operational baby alive with accessories at home!).
THE NOT BAD, BUT NOT THE GREATEST
The room itself seemed fine overall - I noticed mildew in the bathroom shower area and LOTS of bugs in the ceiling light fixtures (I am not squeamish, but happened to look up at the bathroom lights and noticed a LOT of little bug corpses in the light fixtures - not 3 or 4 dead bugs - LOTS!). OKW just seemed "buggier" than VWL - I'm assuming that has to do with the room opening to the great outdoors and not an interior hallway and the fact that it was July and not January. The shower had a continual parade of drowned bugs - I picked a couple out every night.
Really, I did not notice any maintenance issues. The room seemed about the same in terms of housekeeping as our VWL rooms did in Jan 2006 and Jan 2007 (I'm not a big fan of the DVC mousekeeping I've seen so far - it seems that too much gets neglected - yes, I AM picky, but I paid a lot of money and feel that I have a right to a squeaky clean room. It irks me that DVC seems to have inferior cleaning standards when compared to comparable HOTEL rooms on Disney property.) Anway, OKW mousekeeping seemed to be the same as VWL.
We found the food choices at OKW to be kind of limited. We did not care for Olivia's on the night we ate there - service was slow and nobody really enjoyed the food. We had the dining plan, but skipped dessert that night because dinner just seemed so off. We had plans to eat there another night, but cancelled. Good's Food to Go was fine for the burgers we had.
I was bummed that the gift shop did not have any OKW postcards! My Dad is big on postcards, so I was all set to send him an OKW postcard on our first day - but they didn't have any! I asked - twice!
Anyway, we had a good trip. Everybody liked OKW well enough, but we can't wait to return "home" to VWL in 2008!
Let me say, that the trip was not bad at all. I still prefer VWL, but OKW was nice.
THE GOOD
Check in was a breeze - we arrived around 1:00pm on Saturday and found our room ready. It took my husband 10 minutes (I timed him with my new stopwatch!) to check in (this was the time it took him from the moment he left our car until he came back to our car with room keys!). I had requested an upper floor in buildings 62,63 or 64 - we were assigned another building, but DH asked if they had anything in our first choice area and they re-assigned us to building 64 during check in.
Our room was on the second floor 6424, I believe was the number. We had a view of a pond with a fountain and some portion of a golf course being re-seeded. We could see the bridge entering OKW to the right. We were about a 3-5 minute walk from the Hospitality House. Good location.
I LOVED the size of our room! I was amazed to see the laundry room - WOW! And I really liked the table with four chairs for dining. We are a family of 4 and had plenty of space to spread out and relax (okay, 2 of us are under 6, but we had plenty of room for My Little Pony and all of her accessories!).
The bus service was much better than I expected. I will go so far as to call the bus service "good"! I had prepared myself for LONG waits and slow service. We had one afternoon when it took us an hour to return to our room from MK - we waited for 25 minutes at the MK bus stop before an OKW bus FINALLY pulled up. We watched 2 Yacht and Beach Club busses come and go before OKW finally showed up. Other than that, the bus service was a pleasant surprise. Seems like buses were always coming and going - we rarely waited more than 5 minutes at the Hospitality House bus stop. And I think we waited for 10 minutes at Epcot one night. Now the boat to Downtown Disney was another story - one trip was plenty for us!
We tried the quiet pool located by building 19 and the main pool. We enjoyed both pools, although the main pool was closer.
My kids both loved the community hall - my 5 year old loved the air hockey table and my 3 year old loved the box full o' toys (2 broken baby alive's without pants or bottles in somebody else's toy box trump one fully operational baby alive with accessories at home!).
THE NOT BAD, BUT NOT THE GREATEST
The room itself seemed fine overall - I noticed mildew in the bathroom shower area and LOTS of bugs in the ceiling light fixtures (I am not squeamish, but happened to look up at the bathroom lights and noticed a LOT of little bug corpses in the light fixtures - not 3 or 4 dead bugs - LOTS!). OKW just seemed "buggier" than VWL - I'm assuming that has to do with the room opening to the great outdoors and not an interior hallway and the fact that it was July and not January. The shower had a continual parade of drowned bugs - I picked a couple out every night.
Really, I did not notice any maintenance issues. The room seemed about the same in terms of housekeeping as our VWL rooms did in Jan 2006 and Jan 2007 (I'm not a big fan of the DVC mousekeeping I've seen so far - it seems that too much gets neglected - yes, I AM picky, but I paid a lot of money and feel that I have a right to a squeaky clean room. It irks me that DVC seems to have inferior cleaning standards when compared to comparable HOTEL rooms on Disney property.) Anway, OKW mousekeeping seemed to be the same as VWL.
We found the food choices at OKW to be kind of limited. We did not care for Olivia's on the night we ate there - service was slow and nobody really enjoyed the food. We had the dining plan, but skipped dessert that night because dinner just seemed so off. We had plans to eat there another night, but cancelled. Good's Food to Go was fine for the burgers we had.
I was bummed that the gift shop did not have any OKW postcards! My Dad is big on postcards, so I was all set to send him an OKW postcard on our first day - but they didn't have any! I asked - twice!
Anyway, we had a good trip. Everybody liked OKW well enough, but we can't wait to return "home" to VWL in 2008!