Disney World with the Twins was amazing! We had such a fun time showing them around and they were very popular with the other guests. We each took a child that was ours for the day and we switched daily so as to spend equal time with both, but I still got to bond with both of my babies on morning and nightly strolls around the Wilderness Lodge Resort. Lawson and I sat on the balcony of our room one night and watched as the sky grew dark. It was really exciting.
The grounds are gorgeous if you are into the national park vibe. We plan on taking the twins to places like Yosemite and Yellowstone when they are older, but this was a nice boiled down representation the way only Disney can do it. We had some issue with the customer service when it came to housekeeping though, which made our first night on property anything but fun.
After Sara pumped Lawson’s milk and went to store it in the refrigerator in the room, she found that it wasn’t cold enough. We needed to keep it chilled at around 140 degrees and were concerned about the milk going bad. The freezer compartment seemed to be working which was great for the blue block we planned to use to keep the milk cold while in the parks, but it was not large enough to freeze all the milk even if we wanted to.
We called housekeeping and asked for the refrigerator’s temp. to be checked on. All we wanted was for somebody to gauge the temperature for us since there was no thermometer. This was too much, evidently. They sent somebody up right away. She confirmed it was not cold and proceeded to switch out the refrigerator with another one. Problem was, this new refrigerator had no freezer compartment. So now we had a refrigerator that needed time to cool to temp, which we still had no way to verify, AND we had no way of freezing our block for keeping the milk cold while outside the hotel room.
This turned into hours of bad service, semantics arguments, excuses, and really bad communication breakdowns in the housekeeping division. We were very disappointed in how badly the standards for service at Disney have slipped. The rest of the trip we avoided housekeeping and just kept them out of our room. The rest of the staff was sufficiently polite, the Bell Service cast-members in particular were friendly and courteous. I spoke to a man there named Michael who was very understanding and quick to offer assistance.
There is beautiful atmosphere outside the hotel that I enjoyed walking through with the twins. There are two table service restaurants, two counter service restaurants and two bars/lounges. There is a very fun looking pool that is very well themed next to a geyser inspired by Old Faithful that goes off on the hour. They also offer boat rentals and fishing excursions at the resort. One of the transportation perks of staying at Wilderness Lodge is the ferry boat that will go straight to Magic Kingdom, or to other Magic Kingdom resorts. From the Magic Kingdom dock you can access the monorail which will take you on the Magic Kingdom resort loop with the opportunity to transfer to a monorail to Epcot. Taking this method to get to Epcot from Wilderness Lodge will take easily an hour, so if time is precious I recommend Uber.
All in all there was not a ton to do at the Wilderness Lodge resort, but we didn’t plan to spend much time at the hotel outside of our room anyway. We did have drinks at Geyser point. I got the seasonal cocktail Thanksgiving in Manhattan. It was very good as was the service. For breakfast we stuck to counter service for coffee and pastries.
We encountered lizards, birds, squirrels, rabbits and even a frog on our morning walkabouts. I did keep my eye out for Snakes and Alligators, which are a caution, but we didn’t see any of those.
One of my favorite things to do in the hotel room was cuddle with Gwendolyn and Lawson on the bed and watch Mickey Mouse Cartoons. The new ones are really really fun.
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