We stayed at CBR from March 10 to March 17.
This is our 6th year in a row staying on property. In the past we have stayed at Pop Century (twice), and at all 3 of the All-Star Resorts. We gave the CBR a try this year as our first time at a moderate resort. In our opinion, there is no way that the CBR should even be considered a moderate resort - in fact, we found it to be less than a Value resort. The food tent is not adequately ventilated, and smells like seafood. As someone with a seafood allergy, I could not sit in the tent with a constant smell of something that will kill me in the air. Our son is also is quite to smells, and could not take the aroma of seafood.
We did a comparison of our 5 prior visits to Value resorts and compared them to our stay at the "Moderate" CBR
Hot Chocolate: (Big thing for our kids)
Value Resort : Hot Chocolate dispenser in the food court. The kids will often go from our room to the food court for hot chocolate.
CBR: No dispenser. There were packets of hot chocolate that had to be mixed with hot water. The kids weren't comfortable with handling the hot water on their own.
Movies under the Stars:
Value Resort : We've attended Movies Under The Stars at the value resorts at the pools and were seated on the pool chairs/lounge chairs
CBR: Sit on the ground on astro-turf.
Bus System:
Value Resort : Each park has it's own specific pick-up point. It is easy for guests and staff to know how many are waiting for a bus to a specific resort.
CBR: No designated park-specific pickup point. Each bus would roll up and there would be times when nobody got on, or everybody got on. Some pickup points are better than others. We were staying in Aruba, and the bus would roll up filled - always standing room only. We have a wheelchair with us, which makes it difficult to get on to a loaded bus. We ended up driving each day over to the Martinique bus stop and got on there, because it is the first stop and were able to quickly load our wheelchair on the bus.
Coffee Cream:
Value Resorts: All have a coffee cream dispenser to add to coffee. Nice and easy.
CBR: No coffee cream dispenser. Liquid Coffee-mate in individual single serving cups - generating trash with each coffee. The CBR did have a milk dispenser for anybody who wanted a glass of milk though.
Room Size:
We found no difference in the size of the Value resorts in comparison to the CBR. The CBR did have 2 sinks so that 2 people could be brushing their teeth at the same time.
1/2 Gallon Milk Availability: (We bring our own cereal and eat breakfast in our room so that we can get to the buses and parks as early as possible)
Value Resorts: Both Pop and Art of Animation sold 1/2 gallon milk jugs
CBR: Not available in 1/2 gallon jugs - had to get it at Pop Century.
Caricature Artists:
Value Resorts: All of the value resorts we've stayed at have Caricature artists. (A cool thing during the Disney Experience)
CBR: None to be found. (Our niece who was attending Disney for the first time wanted a caricature drawing, so we had to go over to Pop Century to get it done..)
Room Service:
Value Resort : Never had an issue
CBR: We specifically requested room service for our stay because we had a busy week of park visits. We arrived back one night to find that our room hadn't been cleaned or made up. We found one of the "Room Occupied" signs on our door that we hadn't put there.. After reading a lot of comments about the "security checks" and how that "room occupied" sign didn't stop the security checks, well it most certainly stops room service. We called room service and they made comments that sometimes kids will "play" with the signs and put them on doors.. They offered to come to our room to do service, but it was 9:30PM and we were getting ready for bed. They did come by with fresh towels and took away the garbage for us though. We saw a few of those "room occupied" signs blowing around in the wind while we were there, so we do understand that some kids may have put it on our door. We had specifically requested room service each day and figured that they should have at least knocked on the door... At minimum, they should put the room numbers on each of those tags if there is an issue with the kids playing around or the wind blowing them off of the doors.
We spent more time at Pop Century and Art Of Animation using the facilities there than we did at CBR. It was a good thing that we had our vehicle with us. When we stay at the value resorts, we normally park our vehicle in the parking area and don't see it again for 4 or 5 days. When we stayed at the CBR, we were in our vehicle at least 3 times a day, driving to/from bus stops and over to the Value Resorts for food and other stuff. When we would go over to Pop or Art, we would drive up to security. They'd ask where we were going, and we said that we were going to the food court, because the tent at CBR wasn't working for us. We often heard comments from the security guards saying "Ya.. That's what we keep hearing". Sometimes they'd shrug their shoulders and try to make humorous comments to try make light of it. I told the food people at Pop Century about how disappointed I was with CBR as I was ordering food "To Go" one night. I said that we were for the first time in years saying that we weren't going back to Disney the following year because of the bad experience that we were having with CBR. The person at Pop comp'd our meal. (Nice move on the cast member to do that..)
We found the "markets" in each area of the CBR difficult to find - the signage is almost non-existent.
We listened to others talking while on the bus going back to the CBR. There were comments that we heard from other guests who were talking to each other about their disappointment with the resort as well. I heard one guy say one night to his buddy - "Is there somewhere we can go for good food?"
You will note that I didn't even mention the construction. The place was pretty torn up, but the construction noise was minimal while we were there.
Our stay was such a disappointment that we absolutely had to say something as we were checking out. We spent a good 15 minutes talking with a manager at the CBR. We ended up having 2 of our 7 nights refunded, and they also gave us some quick-service meal vouchers that we could use at Pop Century as we were leaving.
I can guarantee that we will NEVER EVER stay at CBR again after this experience. There is no way that CBR in it's current state should even be considered a moderate resort... Everywhere we turned, we found that the experience was less than the value resorts. We are so very disappointed in Disney for marketing the CBR as a moderate resort when it does not deserve that designation.
As of right now, we are not planning on going to Disney next year. There's still a bit of a bitter taste in our mouth due to our poor experience at CBR this year.