Retiredlife

I had a great 8-night stay at the Dolphin in late January-early February - one of countless stays over many years. I had booked one of their larger rooms, but was upgraded to a grand suite - a happy, complimentary surprise, and a first suite upgrade here for me. Breakfast is now being served in Rosa Mexicano (which replaced the former Fresh restaurant), and I liked it better than ever. My husband enjoyed the avocado toast and granola parfait on the continental breakfast, while I enjoyed the full buffet, especially the Mickey Waffles and good maple syrup. The hot buffet is done differently now - the eggs, bacon, waffles, etc. are kept warm in very hot pans still sitting on stove burners (a chef serves you from them - the pans are too far way, and too hot, for you to serve yourself), and this method seems to keep the food hot and in better condition than standard buffet pans. The eggs stay hot, and the waffles stay warm and crisp, and not dried out. The elite breakfast benefit covered the continental buffet (which otherwise costs $21), but if applied to other items was worth $15 (bringing the cost of the full breakfast buffet from roughly $30 to $15). We were told that if we wanted to apply the breakfast benefit to a la carte items, we both had to choose that option - one person could not use it for the buffet while the other ordered a la carte. We really enjoyed our breakfasts. Lunch at the poolside Cabana Grill was as good as ever - a great option even when too cool for swimming. Housekeeping was back to everyday service, staffing seemed to be good and back to pre-pandemic levels, while convention business was booming. It is helpful to download the Swan/Dolphin’s own app - using the chat feature on the app gets you a much faster response to questions or requests than attempting to call.

lbbzman

Just to close the loop on this, calling was the right answer. The first telephone agent, who seemed to be a Swan or Dolphin employee, wasn't able to help me. But she transferred me to the onsite Disney planning desk, and the Disney cast member was able to help. I'm not sure exactly what she did, but I got the impression that she created a "dummy" reservation in My Disney Experience for my dates of stay. From there, I was able to add my guest and book WDW experiences.