PurdueFlyer

just returned from a 3-night stay here at the Sheraton Lake Buena Vista. My parents / siblings / grandkids were staying on Disney Property at the Disney Beach Club, and I was aiming for a reasonable Bonvoy property in Lake Buena Vista to be close to them. I had my own car.

I snagged a Cyber Monday rate for $105/ night at the Sheraton LBV and threw down 3 SNAs that were expiring. The upgrade cleared into the 1-bedroom Palm Suite, which had more space than we knew what to do with. I had called the hotel prior to booking and asked about parking fees and resort fees. The agent on the phone stated parking fees were waived for Titanium guests, but not the resort fees. The website also mentions the resort fee "includes Disney Shuttle," (vague) so I asked the phone agent to elaborate on this. The shuttle goes to various Disney parks / resorts, and its complimentary. I figured this would be worth the resort fee alone, since parking at the parks is expensive, and I could just leave my car at the hotel & take the shuttle instead.

Upon checking in at the front desk, the agent asked if I was parking a car and I replied yes, and she said "the parking fee is waved because of your status. I just need a credit card for the security deposit. Do you want to use the card on file?" She didn't mention anything about a resort fee. I decided to just play dumb, and not ask about it. At the end of the stay, I received the final statement and ... what do you know ... no resort fee was charged! What a pleasant surprise.

Now, what I didn't know RE: the Disney shuttle, is that they have a posted schedule at the front desk to a handful of parks, and the frequencies are NOT good. I think the EPCOT shuttle only ran once per day, going over there around 10am and coming back around 1030pm. I think the park opens at 9:00am so you're getting a late start to begin with. I asked her "so you're basically stuck there for 12 hours if you want to use the shuttle roundtrip?" and she said yes. I'm not sure how many people stay at a park for almost 12 hours. I was spent after half a day. The alternative is to take an Uber one way if the times don't match your desires. If you are looking to fully utilize this "perk" that comes with the resort fee I would encourage you to phone the hotel prior to booking and dig down to make sure its going to be convenient for you.

Brekkie was served daily in the ZEST restaurant from 7am until 11am. Since most of the parks open at 9am, the restaurant is super crowded between about 730-830am. I would advise going right at 7am when it opens, or else after 9am. There was a mention upthread about only the continental breakfast being gratis with your Elite perks, and that you had to upgrade for an additional price to get the full buffet. There was no mention of this; it appears the whole buffet is included. You got your breakfast voucher from the front desk and handed it to the server and that was it. Nothing to sign for. the spread was decent ... eggs, potatoes with peppers / onions, bacon, sausage, turkey sausage, pancakes and / or french toast / biscuits & gravy. plus the continental fare. There was also a chef with an omelet station on the first day, but I didn't see him again on Day Two. Day Three we departed early to drive home.

There is a Dunkin across the street for a quick coffee & plenty of other restaurants within walking distance, although the roads are intersections are very busy. I highly recommend El Patron if you like Mexican, in a little plaza next to the Fairfield Inn. <5 minutes walk.

Overall no real issues with the stay. Yes the hotel is dated, but this is mostly noticeable in the external building façade and in those awful spackled ceilings. Not a deal breaker. Elevators are S-L-O-W. Pool area was nice, jacuzzi was piping hot. open until 10pm. There was some noise from the pool area that you could hear in the room, but nighttime was quiet. The Palm Suite is adjacent to the elevators, and the floors are tiled. You can hear noise from that, but once you are away from the elevators, the hallways are carpeted and seemed quiet. Not sure how a room facing the road would be.

Nazdoom

Titanium welcome gift today was being asked to wait for check-in at 1pm because housekeeping was not done, then finally at 3pm being called over and assigned a room that was (surprise!) not yet touched by housekeeping. Previous guest's garbage and used towels and sheets everywhere. When I called front desk from the room, she said "sir you must have gone to the wrong room!" then came back after looking it up and seeing my name attached to the room number. Had to push to get them to even send up a corrected key assignment rather than return back to front desk with all my luggage after a 11 hour flight + 2 hour room wait. Not a great first impression with this property.

Marriott Bonvoy Lurker II

Hi Nazdoom,

Sorry to learn about your unpleasant experience.

If you may provide your stay details to us via private mail or by email below, we would like to forward your feedback to the hotel management team to review. Please include your Flyertalk username if you choose to send information via email.

Best Regards,

Christina Z
Specialist, Social Media
Marriott International

[email protected]

jtwiz

How was your stay other than the less than impressive start? Booked here for a couple nights at the end of the month.

Nazdoom

It's a large property with different towers encircling an outdoor central pool area (with a hot tub, water slide, fire pit, lots of lounging chairs, etc) so it can be a bit of a walk, but the central area is nice and gives good vacation vibes. My room was quite dated (though I had read in reviews some are renovated, so I think I might have just been unlucky) and my titanium upgrade was only to a pool-facing room (so standard room size just inwards facing rather than outwards). I didn't really care for the pool-view room though since it makes your room fairly visible to everyone else in the property and you could see the silhouettes of people running around outside while laying in bed. The room itself was pretty similar to a Courtyard I stayed at in Miami once, carpeted floors, tiny bathroom with external sink because the sink can't fit in the bathroom, some obvious stains, etc, so that should help set expectations. That said, breakfast was above average. They also gave me a voucher for a free cocktail by the pool, which was a nice touch.

When I was looking at hotels this one was on the cheaper end of the spectrum priced around the same as the limited service properties. Other than breakfast, that's basically what it is: limited service. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: if you're going here as part of a Disney or Universal trip, you probably want to eat a decent breakfast but not spend much time in the room until you return back late at night to sleep. If you're coming for work or a staycation, this is probably the wrong place.

There are a ton of sit-down restaurants and bars in the surrounding area easily accessible by foot (<3 mins), including a Chilli's, Olive Garden, a deep dish pizza place, a burger place, a local bar, a gas station, as well as at least 3 discount souvenir places.

It offers a couple free shuttles to specific parks operated by a third-party but the times were quite limited (e.g., once in the morning, once at night) so we just used Uber/Lyft. Both Disney World and Universal were around ~$15 one-way in the morning but obviously surge pricing took effect at night when the parks were closing with prices going up like 5x. We waited out surge pricing refreshing the apps for 10-20 minutes to get home for under $25 each night. Uber from airport was around $35.

I was really hesitant to book based on (I think 3.5 star?) rating on the Marriott website, and my experience definitely started with a bad first impression, but if you know what you're getting with this property it can be a reasonable deal.

jtwiz

Thanks Nazdoom, this was very informative and I've set my expectations to meet the price point!

jtwiz

After our 5-night stay, I don't have too much to add beyond what Nazdoom and PurdueFlyer already stated. I had booked a pool view room, so was pretty persistent at check-in for a suite upgrade. There were several different types of suites available throughout our stay, which I pointed out to the FDC. In the end, we were upgraded to a suite with 2 double beds. All suites are in the Palm 4 building, and unlike the other buildings, all rooms are pool view. It was spacious and clean, including daily housekeeping which is a nice perk in this day and age. Yes, the furnishings are dated and the A/C is loud (we turned it off at night). Many of the suite rooms are in the process of being renovated, although we didn't hear any construction noise.

The pools, hot tubs, firepit areas were very nice. Plenty of chairs in sun and shade. Pool towels replenished often throughout the day. There is an outside pool bar, which was convenient but also pricey. Lots of signs indicating No Outside Food and Beverage at the pool, although we noticed that some people clearly snuck stuff in.

We took the breakfast as my Titanium welcome gift. The entire buffet is included, and you can get eggs or an omelet to order from the kitchen at no extra cost. As we weren't doing the parks, we didn't eat breakfast until later (usually 10 AMish, after doing lengthy morning walks.) It was never crowded.

On Thursday, they have a Bonvoy elite Happy Hour from 4:30 to 5:30 at Zest (the lobby bar). One free drink for the elite member and guest, some light snacks and there was a winery rep doing tastings. It was a nice touch.

For local eats, I recommend Sofrito Latin Cafe, El Patron (they have a Taco buffet on Tuesday including a DJ) and Millers Ale House. There is a Winn Dixie, Wawa, 7-11 and Walgreens within 2 blocks.