It just started out badly, when we arrived at the guard shack and gave over our ID the security guard said we weren't on the reservations list, which is confusing to me as I made all three of our room reservations (and the other two room reservations were listed, just not us the first room I actually booked). So the guard sent us on through and told us to go to the front desk and they will straighten it out. We weren't greeted at the front like we've always been before, no one seemed to know we were even expected at the resort so that was crazy to begin with. Once we got to speak to someone at the front desk they found our reservation thankfully and seemed to have no idea why the guard shack didn't have us listed. So fine, we were checked it so that's all that matters. We arrived early so I knew our rooms (again we had 3 booked for our whole party) wouldn't be ready but I also found out that our rooms were not connecting and no even near by each other. When I made our initial reservations I was told our rooms would be linked together to help us get connect or at least rooms near each other. That didn't work out for us, but since it was just a request I let it go.
We waited around until 3 and never received a text that any of our 3 rooms were ready, when I went back to the front desk I was told check in was at 4 o'clock so try back then. After waiting around until almost 5 I went back and asked again about the rooms, still nothing. Eventually we got a text about one of the rooms finally coming available so our whole party just piled into that room waiting on text messages for the other rooms. Those messages never came and I had to go back to the front desk to check on them once again after another hour or so and the front desk seemed like the rooms had been ready and when I questioned why I only received the text about one room I was told I must have been out of service range (funny as I was in the lobby and/or one of the hotel rooms the whole time).
So after we finally got the rest of our rooms, two of them were fine, but the third the room I was staying in, had an awful smell a combo between bleach and mold/mildew so back to the front desk we go, since I have serve asthma and being in that room was impossible for me. The front desk said they'd have the room re-cleaned and sent us away to a complimentary dinner (which was very nice of them). So we left and had dinner and then came back to the room and it still had the same smell and I felt like I could feel water under the carpet in the room (squishy like wet feeling) so we went back to the front desk and was told that the hotel was full and they could not change our room. We even asked if they had any rooms at YC and we'd change over to there, but they said no they were at capacity and there wasn't anywhere for us to go. That was a problem because I could not stand the smell of the room and would have been extremely sick if I stayed in that room. The other problem with the room, which we would have dealt with if it wasn't for the smell was that the room was a standard (roof top view with a tree in the far distance) and we paid for a garden view. I didn't consider the view since the main view was a roof top to be garden view so that wasn't great.
Since they had nothing they could do for us that night, I had to stay in my sisters room until the next day when they could try to find somewhere else for us to stay, but the rest of my family stayed in the smelly room. The next day they finally got us another room without any smell and with the view we paid for, but we didn't get it until late in the evening.
In the end, they did comp us a meal and they did get us a room that we could stay in and enjoy, but it was a really rough start to the trip. In the end they made it right and we did enjoy our stay after the first couple of hard days. I really think the first room we had should have never been given to anyone with the mold/mildew smell that wouldn't go away so I hope they took it out of rotation until they could deal with the problem.
All I can say is if you have a problem deal with it right that minute and get it taken care of, which is what we did, it didn't get worked out right away but it did after a day and a half and after we put that behind us we had a great time.
For the poster who asked if we liked the walks/boats, the walk to Epcot was easy and we enjoyed that, we used the boat for getting to HS and I thought that was nice, it didn't take to long but we weren't in a rush to get places so we enjoyed a leisurely pace to/from the parks.
We also took the boat to the BW and then walked back, and the walk back was quicker than the boat for that but like I said we were pretty leisurely so both were great for us!
The drive back home will be straight through.
