- Hey fellow explorers, I just checked in
to Disney's Beach Club Resort in Orlando, Florida,
here at Disney World.
And in this video, I'm gonna show you
everything you need to know
if you're considering staying at this hotel.
We're gonna take a look at the common areas of the hotel,
what's right around the hotel,
the inside of one of the rooms,
this room, a king bedroom on the fourth floor,
and then I'll end with my pros and cons,
my overall assessment as to whether I would stay here again,
and whether you should consider staying here
on your trip to Disney World in Florida.
The Beach Club Resort is one of Disney's deluxe hotels,
located in the Epcot Resorts area.
It is about a five minute walk
from the International Gateway entrance to Epcot,
which means it's on the backside of the Epcot theme park.
It shares a common set of amenities
with the Yacht Club Resort.
The Yacht Club is a little higher ended than the Beach Club.
In this video, I'm gonna show you
all of the common amenities that are shared
between the two hotels.
Now, as you come into the Beach Club Resort,
you come in from the circular drive,
where there's the parking lot if you're driving here.
Now, if you are parking, parking is $25 a day
for self parking in this big lot,
$33 a day if you're valet parking.
Now as you come in these doors,
you come into the two-story lobby,
that has a nautical beach club theme.
The staff working here actually wear sailor outfits.
To the right is the check-in desk.
Just to the other side of the doors is the bell desk
if you need to check your luggage.
To one side of the lobby is the gift shop and market,
where you can get various sundries and food, nice.
It's open until 11:00 PM every night.
On the other side of the lobby
is the Cape May buffet restaurant
that does a buffet breakfast in the morning,
with characters that wander around.
And in the evening, it's a seafood buffet.
Nothing served here for lunchtime.
Going outside the property,
it has three small swimming pools that look like this,
and each of the pools, there's guest laundry,
which nice touch, they don't take quarters,
they take credit cards.
And then one huge swimming pool, called Stormalong Bay,
which looks like this.
And Stormalong Bay is truly impressive,
because it has a sand bottom.
Water slides, there's a bar on the side of it,
there's a sandy beach on the other side of the walkway.
This is a really impressive pool for adults and for kids.
For the little ones,
they had some really neat flotation devices,
and tons of life guards standing by on duty.
Now on the outside of the hotel, but facing Stormalong Bay,
there's little window that serves ice cream,
standard ice cream for kids.
Also adult ice cream, 21 and up.
It is the window of the Soda Shop burger restaurant.
They sell burgers and shakes.
Burgers here cost about $20.
This restaurant was super popular
the whole time I was staying here.
Just next to the Soda Shop burger restaurant
is a little arcade that was nicely appointed,
and had a lot of kids playing games.
Just next to the arcade is a set of restrooms and showers.
This is kind of nice, if you're using the pool,
you can shower out here instead of your room.
Or if you've got a late flight,
you can shower here before you leave back to the airport.
There's a pretty good size and well-appointed fitness center
that has windows to the outside,
that look out on Stormalong Bay.
And now continuing along the property,
we're entering the common amenities
in the Yacht Club section of the hotel.
But again, these are open to all guests.
This is the lobby for the Yacht Club.
You can see similar layout as the Beach Club,
a little bit darker and moodier of a vibe.
Just off the lobby is the Ale & Compass restaurant.
It also has an associated lounge for more casual eats.
The highest end restaurant here is the Steakhouse,
which had some pretty tasty looking steaks.
It's also got its associated lounge next door.
How much is a prime rib gonna cost you at this lounge?
$52, not cheap.
And then just on the other side of the Yacht Club lobby
is their gift shop and market.
Pretty similar items over as the Beach Club,
just a slightly different layout.
And the tee shirts say Yacht Club instead of Beach Club.
Now if you're gonna be staying here
to go to the theme parks,
outside, they have bus transportation
to most of the theme parks.
To Epcot and Hollywood Studios,
they have boat transportation,
from the boat dock that's just in front of the hotel,
although if you're gonna Epcot, you might as well walk.
But to Hollywood Studios,
the boat transportation is convenient.
The boat transportation will also take you
to some of the other Epcot resort hotels,
including the Boardwalk, the Dolphin, and the Swan
that are nearby along the same lake.
The elevators are pretty neat,
because when they get to the guest room floors,
they announce them in a Disney character voice.
- [Mickey Mouse] The fourth floor.
- And heading up to the guest room floors,
it continues that neat old school vibe,
with these old school lights on top,
and arches right here.
Each floor does have ice machines.
And now that we've seen everything around the hotel,
let's check out the inside of one of the rooms.
This is room 4727, a king bedroom on the fourth floor.
Come on in, let me show you around.
As you come into the room, one of the first things you see,
you see a welcome on the television that says Raney Family.
That's what it looked like as soon as I got in here.
That's a really nice touch.
Looking over here at the bed,
you'll see the room just has a very nice,
clean white, tan brown aesthetic,
but what have we got right here?
We have got a Mickey made of towels on the bed,
and well, I put this one right here,
this first visit button,
'cause it's my first visit to this hotel at least,
and I picked that up at the front desk
when they asked if it was my first time here.
Nice little foot stool there at the bottom.
This room has two balconies.
That one has almost no view.
It looks out at the rooftops, and the air conditioner,
but this balcony right here
looks out at the amazing swimming pool that you saw earlier.
And then it looks out at the Boardwalk Hotel,
just off in the distance,
and it's just a, it's a little balcony,
so is the other one.
You're not really gonna sit or do much of anything on there,
other than look out and admire the view.
Here is a little desk in the room,
with a nice mirror on top of it.
There is power for your laptop, USB chargers.
Interesting, not the chair,
but what's interesting is there's also
a rollout table in here,
that you could use to maybe eat on,
and then you could use that to work on,
so you don't get it messy.
This is a connecting room,
and they place this little table
in front of the connecting door,
I think not to make it so obvious, look like a door.
There is a small sofa here in the room,
and this looks like it folds out to become a single bed.
And it's even got instructions on it, which is pretty nice.
The headboard's right here, also have power and USB.
By the way, I like that there are no lamps
on the side of the bed, and very little stuff in this room
for kids to get their hands and fingers into.
Obviously as Disney, they know there's a lot of kids,
and they'll be getting into stuff.
Where's stuff they might wanna get into?
The coffee machine, but it's really high up,
so they can't get to it.
There's a Keurig, this is a empty drawer,
you can put some of your stuff in.
Down here is a mini fridge that is empty,
just for you to put your stuff in it.
I've got a few things in there already.
This is the very large bathroom.
I really like this big bathroom.
Two sinks right here, nice and bright, big mirror.
The closet is this kind of white painted thing
that continues the beach theme.
This is the extra pillow and blanket
for the single sofa bed.
And they kind of like, lock it,
you know, that you break it to open it
so you know someone else didn't use it.
I quite like that.
All right, there's a lot of soaps in this room.
I like this, there's facial soap, there's mouthwash,
a vanity kit, cooling aloe gel to restore your moisture,
shower cap, body lotion,
and there's even a shaving kit in the room.
That is nice.
All right, and then this is the toilet part of the room.
I like that it's also in a separate part of it,
so people can be using the sink,
and then the toilet, and the bath.
And it has a bathtub, nice tiled back splash,
just a fixed head,
unfortunate that there's no hand held too.
But then they also have a lot of amenities in here
that all say they are sea salt, and revitalizing,
clearly 'cause of the beach theme of this hotel.
Now in October of 2022, when I filmed this video,
they were only doing housekeeping service every other day.
So all of the trash cans had a little bag on them
that you could use to fill up with more trash, I guess,
in case they haven't taken it out every day,
and it's overflowing for you.
Two more things I wanna point out,
one, above the coffee machine, this neat artwork here,
it's Mickey and Minnie at the the beach flying some kites.
And underneath the television, on top of this dresser,
is the remote control for the TV.
I really like how they've wrapped this thing in Saran wrap.
This should totally be the new standard
for hotel remote controls.
And then when you do turn on the television,
instead of a bunch of local channels first,
it's a bunch of Disney channels first,
'cause of course you're gonna wanna watch Disney Junior,
Disney XD, ABC, all the things that are owned by Disney.
Now if you watch my hotel reviews regularly,
you'll know it is time for the Topher Review,
where I rate hotels on the scale of one to five Topfers.
So, how many Topfers does this hotel get,
as the fireworks are launched in the background?
It gets 4 1/2 Tophers.
So now I'll tell you the pros and the cons
of why this hotel got 4 1/2 Tophers,
and why it didn't get five Topfers.
By the way, I decided to come out to the pool
to Stormalong Bay, to shoot this ending segment,
'cause you've already seen the room.
So this is a little bit more interesting of a background
with the fireworks.
All right, pros, it's a great location,
particularly if you're going to Epcot and Hollywood Studios,
because you can walk to Epcot,
and the transport to Hollywood Studios is super easy.
You can take the boat,
or you can walk and take the gondola to Hollywood Studios.
What I also like, I just like the neighborhood here
that it's in.
You can walk to so many other hotels,
to the Swan, to the Dolphin, to the Boardwalk.
So when you come back to the hotel
at the end of the day in the parks,
there's lots to do right around here,
and eat right around here.
You're not trapped in your hotel,
like you are if you're at some of the other
far-flung Disney resorts.
Now onto the room, the room, really nice, big room,
well-appointed room.
I had a corner room, I think that was kind of special.
I like that they have balconies.
Not all the rooms have such a small balcony.
Some of the rooms have bigger balconies,
and if you wanna make sure you have one
with two chairs, well all of the ones in the Yacht Club
seem to have two chairs.
Then about half of them seem to actually have chairs
here in the Beach Club.
This pool, Stormalong Bay, is also amazing.
It's super neat that it has that sand bottom down on it.
And it's also interesting,
they don't do like key card access to the pool.
Instead there's people that stand at the gates,
check your room card,
and then give you one of these wristbands
to show that you're official to be here
in the public area or in the water.
Now I mentioned it's nice to stay here,
'cause you can walk to other hotels for amenities,
but because this has two hotels,
there's a lot of amenities, restaurants,
markets in this hotel.
I also like that the market was open until 11:00 PM,
so you can get any late night snacks that you want.
Now as a Disney resort property, it's super convenient
if you're going to the other theme parks.
If you're going to the Magic Kingdom,
they provide buses that'll take you there.
Same with Animal Kingdom.
If you have a car, you can drive it
to those two theme parks,
and the parking fee that you pay here, $25,
means you get to park at those other theme parks for free.
You just show your room key to get into the parking lots,
and they let you in.
But if you're going to the Magic Kingdom,
I recommend you don't drive, take the bus,
'cause it'll drop you off right in front.
Otherwise you gotta park in this huge lot,
and still take a monorail to get to the Magic Kingdom.
It's a little bit of a haze, take the bus there.
It's also super neat that you can see
the fireworks from this hotel.
And then the staff, I will say everybody who worked here
was super friendly.
The people who checked me in were super friendly.
The bell desk was super friendly.
So props to the crew, the crew, yeah,
it's a ship, right?
Or a beach club, so props to the crew
here at the Beach Club.
So now onto the cons, why didn't it get five Topfers?
Well, my biggest issue was that my room was kind of noisy.
I mean the room wasn't noisy, my neighbors were noisy.
Oh, I don't know how,
like I don't want to pin it on my neighbors,
but it was a connecting room, and it faces the hallway.
And so you know the thing about staying
in a theme park hotel,
people come back late from theme parks.
They come back at one in the morning.
That's when my neighbors are across the way, I don't know,
came back, and it was just really loud,
and I could hear them as if they were like in my room,
right next door.
It only happened one night, but it was enough
that I was like, "Ah!"
I wished these rooms were insulated a little bit better.
We recently stayed at the Fairmont Chateau in Whistler,
that we gave five Topfers,
and that one I didn't hear a single sound
coming out of the room.
Like they did a really good job soundproofing that.
And so I wish Disney did a little bit better job
on soundproofing this one.
And I also wish the bathroom, although it was big,
I wish that like the tub area had like a bigger soaking tub,
and I wish it also had a handheld shower too.
Oh, just two more quick cons as I was checking out,
one, no clocks in the room, kinda weird.
And two, housekeeping only every second day.
A theme park hotel, you generate a lot of trash.
It'd be nice to have that every day again.
But now on the question of would I stay here again?
I absolutely would, especially if I was going to Epcot
and Hollywood Studios.
It is super convenient, it's a super nice hotel.
It's expensive, that's a con too.
The going rates here are about $500 a night,
so you need to moderate that for the convenience
and the niceness of it.
It is not cheap, though there's more expensive hotels
here at Disney World too.
The Grand Floridian often runs in the $700 price range.
And so the Yacht Club is also a little bit more,
'cause the rooms are bigger and they're nicer.
Add another 100 bucks or something
if you wanna stay at the Yacht Club,
with little bigger and nice rooms.
But I'd stay here again, I recommend the Yacht Club too,
'cause it has the same amenities, so I recommend it to you.
And by the way, if you are coming to Disney World,
you might enjoy some more of my Disney World videos,
including things to know when you're staying here,
walking tours of Disney Springs, and more.
So fellow explorers as usual, I won't say goodbye,
'cause I'm gonna see you in one of these videos.
You'll also find the links in the description below.