6 Best Disney Resort Amenities You Need to Know
Every official Walt Disney World resort possesses a dazzling array of amenities, each of which is stellar. Many of these offerings are available at multiple resorts. For example, Disney’s Movies Under the Stars program is an option at most properties. Some of the greatest advantages of staying at resorts are exclusives, though. Let’s pick two of the best Disney resort amenities for each tier at Walt Disney World.
Value Tier
Lobby at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
I’ve populated this list by tier for a simple reason. Most of the best property-specific amenities are at the resorts in the Deluxe Tier. That’s not a controversial opinion or anything. Disney wants to incentivize guests to stay at the most expensive properties, and these spectacular amenities are the enticements.
Don’t overlook the best Disney resort amenities at the Value Tier resorts, though. These hotels have the largest amount of bookings on a given night. Disney officials understand this and have elevated each of these properties beyond the concept of basic hotel rooms.
To wit, the lobby at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort is like a Master’s Class in the history of animation. The pictures that adorn the words here are cels from the most beloved films in the Disney animation library. These images were the inspiration for your favorite scenes.
Whereas you rush through most hotel lobbies on your way to your room, you could and should spend hours examining all the details of the cels on the walls here. You’ll appreciate the attention to detailed required to create an animated film. Every second, 60 of these frames flash onscreen during a Disney movie, meaning that a 90-minute film requires 32,400 of these individual pictures.
Yes, the images on display at Art of Animation’s lobby aren’t enough for a single movie of a film! Disney movies are stunning achievements, folks.
World Premiere Food Court at Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
You’ll discover plenty of reasons to stay at Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort when you visit. My personal favorite is the food court, though. It’s akin to the ones that you know from your local malls, only Disney theming is everywhere. The concept is that you’re at a gala, a grand opening for a huge blockbuster movie. You go behind the velvet rope to feast on A-list cuisine.
At World Premiere Food Court, you’ll find five different serving stations. Each of them features a distinct menu and food style such as sandwiches, Italian foods, or burgers/hot dogs. Anyone who vacations a lot knows from experience that most meals are compromises, but that’s not the case here. You’re likely to find something that puts a smile on the face of everyone in your traveling party.
Moderate Tier
Lost City of Cibola Pool at Coronado Springs
As we step up in tiers, we also step up in amenity quality. The Lost City of Cibola Pool at Coronado Springs is absolutely decadent. It’s a monument to the imagination of Disney designers. Most hotel builders think, “We need a pool.” Only Imagineers would think, “We need a pool set at the foot of Mayan ruins!”
The idea for this novel pool design is that you’re at a dig site at the foot of the Lost City of Cibola. Towering above you is a 50-feet tall pyramid. While you can’t walk up and down the steps of this spectacular architectural feature for safety reasons, water does trickle down from it into the pool. It somehow elevates the swimming experience, creating the illusion that you’re swimming at the bottom of a waterfall near an abandoned ruin. It’s breathtaking.
The Restaurants at Disney’s Port Orleans
The magic word is beignet. I’ll write a bit more, but let’s be honest. You’re already hooked. When Disney chose to re-theme Disney’s Dixie Landings Resort into a new facility, they sagely settled on an antebellum New Orleans setting. The hotel became the smaller half of Port Orleans, the one with the French Quarter moniker, and the theming here is impeccable.
The Mardi Gras vibe is readily apparent the instant you see the entrance to the hotel lobby. And that party atmosphere carries over into the Quick Service restaurant onsite, Sassagoula Floatworks, which is where you’ll find those glorious beignets. Their menu features beignets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and so you should eat beignets here at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Don’t sleep on Riverside’s restaurant, though. Boatwright’s Dining Hall has such authentic Cajun cuisine that you half-expect Emeril Lagasse to come walking out of the kitchen. The menu here is a glorious collection of all the foods you know about New Orleans, even if you’ve never been there. Jambalaya, Mississippi Mud Pie, and Étouffée are all available here, and each one is every bit as good as you’ve heard. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better version in the Garden District of New Orleans, either.
Deluxe Tier
Lobby at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
Back in the 1990s, Disney’s Wilderness Lodge set the standard for Disney resort lobbies. Its awe-inspiring celebration of natural park lodges across the country triggered a newfound appreciation for hotel lobbies. When guests entered this building, they gazed in awe at the multi-story fireplace and wooden facades.
A few years later, Disney decided to build two similar lobbies. One is at Disney’s Grand Californian Resort & Spa, while the other is at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge at Jambo House. Notably, Disney chose the architect, Peter Dominick, for both. Yes, he’d been the visionary behind Wilderness Lodge, too. Disney fans owe him a great deal of gratitude.
At Animal Kingdom Lodge, Dominick wanted to honor African safari lodgings while mimicking the majestic lobby at Wilderness Lodge. The outcome of this aspiration is a tranquil hotel lobby that will soothe your soul. There’s even a sitting area in the middle of it, a place where you can veg out and relax for a while.
The best part of the Animal Kingdom Lodge lobby is that you’re only a few steps away from an exit out the back, one that leads you to the other spectacular amenity here: the animals that populate the hotel grounds. The lobby at Animal Kingdom Lodge’s Jambo House is the epicenter of what’s beautiful about this property. I’ve spent many hours here, and I’ve loved every second of it.
Stormalong Bay at Disney’s Beach Club Resort
This particular amenity is so great that you have to stay at Disney’s Beach Club Resort to get it. All of the other best Disney resort amenities listed here are ones that someone from a different Disney resort could still enjoy, even the Lost City of Cibola Pool. That’s not the case at Stormalong Bay, though. The massive pool area here is so exclusive that Disney checks Magic Bands all day. Once you’re authorized, you get a wristband that verifies that you’re a hotel guest.
Why does Disney take such strenuous security measures? Without them in place, people would ignore all of the other pools at Disney resorts. I’m only half-joking here. Stormalong Bay is as large as some water parks, and it has special touches that exceed some of those cookie cutter parks. One of the pools here is sand-bottom, and it connects to a lazy river that I’ve lazily ridden for many, many hours of my life.
Stormalong Bay also includes an entire shipwrecked section that connects to a thrilling waterslide. The other pool is so large that Disney cast members play games with children in the water, which is something of a no-no at most resort pools. Beach Club Resort is one of the most popular hotels at Walt Disney World, and its main pool area is the primary reason why.
