Disney's Wilderness Lodge

Andrew Hayman

This is a gorgeous property. The grounds are meticulously landscaped. The interior is like a Christmas wonderland. There are many many lovely little spaces to hang out. The pools are well kept and they have fun activities for guests. Why 3 stars... the food at the quick service spot is cafeteria quality. Very little effort to make the experience match the deluxe status of the hotel. And then there's the pricing. I've paid less for beachfront access in Hawaii per night. Nightly rates here for early December were above $600/ night. The least they could do is comp a sit down breakfast! That said, we love this hotel. This and Animal Kingdom are faves, especially for Christmas.

Andrew Noel

I’ve stayed at this property twice, and visited specifically for the restaurants. While this resort is not advertised for its food options, it should be noted that this is one of the best resorts in terms of fresh vegetables from quick service. My wife and I found the room to be spacious, the amenities on property plentiful, and the location desirable. While the main lodge is a lot of fun, it can be relatively noisy, especially due to the Whispering Canyon’s antics. Still, between the pool and scenic views, you can’t really go wrong with this one.

Formula Motorsports

Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Walt Disney World overall have become a masterclass in how to hollow out a once great brand while charging more than ever for less than ever. The rooms at Wilderness Lodge have been refurbished, but already feel tired, generic, and worn. Worse is the total elimination of housekeeping. During COVID, Disney claimed cleaning rooms was somehow unsafe. That excuse never made sense and now, years later, they’ve kept the policy purely to cut costs. We stayed an entire week without the room being cleaned once. No beds made, no bathroom cleaning, no vacuuming. Towel drops are not service. This is unacceptable at a so called Deluxe resort. Food across Disney World is atrocious. Disney publishes its own nutrition data, and it confirms what your taste buds already know. Everything is engineered around sugar and salt. Even cheeseburgers are sweet. Vegetables are nearly nonexistent unless drowned in sauce. Every restaurant serves the same low quality food in different formats. Geyser Point has about six items. Whispering Canyon is a sodium and nitrate nightmare. Fine dining is an embarrassment. The people responsible for food and beverage should be fired. Alcohol is everywhere. From early morning onward, there are drink carts, vodka stands, and hard liquor being pushed constantly. EPCOT has been turned into an alcohol loop. What was once cultural and educational is now fast food and drinking. Disney has clearly decided that sugar and alcohol are the fastest way to increase spending, and they push both relentlessly in what is supposed to be a family destination. Ride wait times are out of control. From park opening, most major rides are one to two hours. Hollywood Studios has maybe four real attractions, all with two to three hour waits immediately. Disney brings in massive daily crowds without having the rides or infrastructure to support them, then charges extra for paid line skipping to fix the problem they created. Transportation is one of the few things that still works, but everything else is visibly understaffed. Pools, restaurants, guest services, all stretched thin. Meanwhile ticket prices approach $200 a day, bottled water is over $6, and hotels labeled “value” still cost $800 to $900 a night. There is no value. Only access. The hotels are no longer destinations. They are revenue extraction tools. Themed but soulless. No magic, no exclusivity, no care. Most guests order Uber Eats because even Disney Springs restaurants like Boathouse serve overpriced, poorly plated food that feels like fast food with a bigger bill. Disney has kept every COVID era cost cutting measure while dropping the pretense of guest experience. Everything now points toward profit through crowding, sugar, alcohol, and merchandise. Longtime guests and Disney Vacation Club members are right to be disgusted. Disney didn’t lose its way. It chose this.

J Sen

The Wilderness Lodge is a beautiful property but you cannot clearly see any fireworks from the grounds. I’m not sure if you can from any rooms but if you can you pay extra for that and there are a limited number of rooms and they are on high floors. I called weeks in advance requesting a ground floor or low floor room because my husband has mobility issues. They put us on the fifth floor. I know they got my message too, because during the same call I explained to them we were married there 25 years ago and when we arrived an anniversary message was on the tv. Our room was cleaned every day but lacked clean wash clothes a couple of days and I had to go chase some down which isn’t fun after a long day in the park. And when housekeeping did show up one night they had towels not wash clothes and decided to argue with me that I had told the front desk towels. But they did finally go and get wash clothes and bring them back. The early open restaurant/quick serve at the lodge doesn’t open until 7am and we were leaving out the door for the parks each day at 6:30am. So the restaurants were not helpful for early morning breakfast quick bites. Fortunately we brought snacks and ate in the room. Boat transport was uncomfortable and I felt unsafe. They had smaller open air boats which they packed absolutely full going to Magic Kingdom and to Fort Wilderness. This was during Christmas week and seemed odd they would send such small open boats considering it was 32° and so busy. It felt like the boat could barely pull the weight on both occasions. Also, one other morning we were waiting for the boat and a bigger boat pulled up but they told us to go catch the bus as it was too foggy. We wasted a lot of time. It seems like they could have notified us sooner than leaving us stand for 20 minutes then pull up in a boat anyway to tell us to go another way to the park. Cast members at the front desk were helpful for the most part but did not know the rules on sending someone to urgent care being a free ride. My husband became ill and had to go to urgent care and was told he had to take a cab. He paid $25. When he was talking to the staff at urgent care they told him that was a free ride service from the resort. So he spoke to someone else when he came back to the resort and a credit was put on our room. The lodge is currently experiencing renovations and the geysers are not working and on the exterior there is scaffolding up and on the inside there is film blocking some exterior views. Overall our stay at the Wilderness Lodge was not at what we were expecting for our 25th Anniversary unfortunately.

Lynn Robinson

I love this resort, especially around the holidays. Great amenities. Our room was a little dated and I didn't like being on the ground floor right next to a sidewalk. But overall the stay was nice.