Crowne Plaza Orlando - Lake Buena Vista by IHG

We stayed here for a couple of nights while we visited Disney. The staff were all very friendly & the location is close to the Parks, lots of shopping, & a number of eateries. The room was clean & very nice. The beds were comfortable & the pillows were nice & puffy. There was a minifridge, but no microwave so I couldn't heat up my tea :( While they do have a shuttle to Disney, SeaWorld, & Universal, it's a ridiculous schedule, so don't plan on using it. I had planned on using it to go to Hollywood Studios one morning, but it doesn't go there until 11:15 am. Then it picks you up for the return trip at 4 pm. That's not even 5 hrs!! The Magic Kingdom shuttle drops you off at 8:35 am, but never comes back. Oh no!! I guess you have to make your way over to Epcot for the 10:15 pm return shuttle. So, this is a very nice hotel to stay in if you have your own car!

The exterior of the building looks dated but not horrible. Upon entering you can tell the building has been renovated which was expected but nice to see none the less. It took us about 20 minutes to check in with only 2 people ahead of us which was unfortunate. The lady checking us in was nice but in the middle of checking us in she said she had to make a call, which I thought was to figure out what the status of our room was but she was actually calling a shuttle service for presumably someone else. I’m not sure why she stopped what she was doing in the middle of checking us in but it prolonged the check in time by about double what it would have been and I found it very unprofessional. As we headed to the room you can start to tell that there were many cut corners regarding the renovations that took place. The room was decent but the bathroom didn’t feel very clean and the shower curtain was just a fabric liner. The sheets on our king size bed were very small, to the point where they were falling off the corners. I believe they put queen size sheets on a king sized bed. The pillows were comfy but they’re like half the size of standard sized pillows which is odd and the same goes for the towels provided. The couch in the room was full of nasty looking stains which was unpleasant to see but at least it was easy to just not sit on the couch. We love balcony’s so that was a nice touch to the rooms but unfortunately when sitting out on the balcony you’re very likely to get water splashed on you from above as every room has an AC drain pipe that run off the rooms balcony. So all of the rooms above you are dripping water that ends up splashing on you. When we got home from dinner we noticed the TV was not working due to a cable issue, we called the front desk to ask if there was an outage or if there was any solution. The gentleman at the front desk told me he would call me back with an answer but never called back. Lastly, you can hear everything from the hallway and the room next door we were woken up at 6 am from what sounded like a loud congregation. Shortly after that we heard the room service vacuuming and cleaning. The doors are so poor at absorbing the sound that it sounds like the door was left open. We knew this hotel wasn’t up to our standards as we walked into the room but the service made the experience even worse than it should have. Overall, I would say to be careful when booking because the pictures are slightly misleading.