So I am here to give an update on how my stay was at the Wyndham Garden Resort. I will start off saying that generally speaking the hotel is nice. The lobby and the rooms are nicely setup and fairly new, so no outdated stuff. I will put below a list of pros and cons:
PROS:
- decent size rooms if you are only using them to sleep. I would say they are comparable with Disney's Value resorts (if not maybe a little bigger)
-Literally a 5 minute walk to Disney Springs. A plus is that I didn't realize there is a bridge to get you across the street, so that made me feel safer walking back to my hotel later in the night.
- Clean rooms. Eventhough I hung up my towels so they wouldn't need to launder them, yet we had fresh towels every night.
CONS:
-Their transportation to the parks is not the most reliable. Its only every 30 minutes, and each bus route drops off at two parks. So you either gotta make sure you are there WAY ahead of the time you expect to be to the park, or just take a Lyft. We took a Lyft to MK after we over-slept because we had just missed the bus. If we waited for the next one, we would've missed our FP window for sure.
-The staff wasn't the most pleasant either, although not particularly difficult
-No airport shuttle
-The Bonnett Creek Resort desk. They pressured us into going to a time-share demonstration despite us telling them we weren't interested and we also couldn't afford it. He said we couldn't opt out of it because we were "already registered". His promise was we would get $100 cash (since we already had park tickets). What made me even more angry is that as a result, the manager at Bonnett Creek upon realizing we couldn't afford it had to apologize and then we stood in a line for over 40 minutes to get a refund on our deposit (oh because they make you pay $40 to "secure your spot"). This was AFTER we waited for them to pick us up for an HOUR. This experience alone kind of soured my overall perception of the hotel.
In conclusion, would I stay there again? If staying at Disney resort is not an option then yes, but a Disney Resort is always going to be option #1. The transportation is much more reliable and easy than at this resort for sure, but to be fair, hiring a Lyft, while its not free like using the bus, is alot more inexpensive than if you were to rent a car and the most reliable mode of transportation especially if venturing out of the Disney area.
EDIT to add: When I asked the front desk I was told that there would be a bus to take me back to my hotel after the Christmas party, since the buses ran up to an hour (or 1/2 hour?) after the park closes period, no matter if its regular closing or a special event. I didn't get to verify this claim though since we left the party at 12 and of course the monorail and ferry were jam-packed, so we opted to walk to Contemporary and catch a Lyft there instead to get to the hotel quicker.