Beckie1983
October 10, 2024
If Epcot is your favorite park, I’d highly recommend Disney’s Beach Club Resort and Disney Beach Club Villas. The main selling point for us is the resort is only steps away from the entrance to Epcot. The walk into the lobby offers an enchanting ocean scent. The villas are modern, decorated in a nautical/beach theme, and were very clean. The beds are relatively firm; however, the pillows were soft. We benefited from having a washer/dryer in our unit, along with a full kitchen - especially since it rained almost every day of our vacation which was then topped off with Hurricane Milton in the middle of our stay. It was nice of the resort to offer activities for the kids, as well as free arcade play for the day the parks were closed. Some of the less desirable aspects of this resort tended to revolve around the mixed and confusing messages provided by cast members about expectations for guests to follow as a result of the approaching hurricane. For example, guests were told to place mobile orders for the next day’s breakfast and lunch the day prior to the hurricane making landfall. The problem with this plan was 1.) the villas aren’t connected to the resort so walking outside to physically go to the restaurant to get a mobile order was not going to be an option during a hurricane event 2.) how was one supposed to pick up a mobile order for the next day if the villas building was going to be on lockdown? We were finally told by a cast member that we should have placed our order for food boxes to be picked up the same day (for the next day). Okay, clearly not the initial instructions given. By the time we received clarification, it was 8:25 PM and the building was going to be locked at 8:30 PM. My husband asked the cast member what we were supposed to do because the instructions were not clearly or concisely stated, and we had no food in our room outside of a few snacks and beverages. We were met with no response other than, “Well this building is going to be locked.” Um, yeah, we established that fact already. Our question was about dining for the next day. Thankfully, the hurricane did not cause substantial damage to the resorts and parks as everyone had anticipated. Guests were allowed out of their rooms the next morning even though the parks were closed. Where things got tricky fast is guests of The Beach and Yacht Club Resort, Boardwalk, and the Swan/Dolphin were now descending on very limited dining offerings, with little to no guarantee of available seating at the few options offered. One could not rely on basically anything posted on the app. None of the restaurants were further taking ANY online reservations, so you could walk around aimlessly for hours looking for somewhere to sit down and eat a meal with no success. Cast members were themselves confused as to their own offerings and hours of operation (which honestly seemed to be arbitrary and/or based on the whim of the staff/mgt.). For lunch, we walked over to the boardwalk area in