staceymay00
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2008
My family spent four nights of Thanksgiving week in a 2BR at BWV. We enjoyed our stay and would definitely consider another stay there in the future. Villa was clean and in pretty good condition with regard to wear and tear. The obvious benefit of BWV is walking to both EP and DHS. Some people may find the walk to DHS a bit long, but we did not and always walked instead of waiting for the boat. I was surprised at how quiet it was in our room except for during the afternoon pool party each day. I had requested a quiet pool view, but we had a view of the main pool instead - not a big deal since the pool noise was not terribly loud and only in the afternoon. My kids really enjoyed the BWV community hall. They were neutral about the pool - didn't love it, didn't hate it, however they said they prefer the pool and sandcastle slide at OKW. I was worried about parking, but it was not a problem for us as I've heard it sometimes is. There were plenty of spaces when we arrived Saturday at 5pm. We only used our car once to go to MK one morning, and there was plenty of parking when we returned. We missed the extra square footage at OKW, and prefer the two beds in the studio portion since we need sleeping space for three kids. But, overall we really enjoyed BWV. We have tried AKV and BWV this year and liked both enough to consider a split stay in the future (even though I am not a huge fan of split stays) in order to get the best of both worlds at our home resort and a second resort we also like on the same trip.
Speaking of split stays, I did not have enough points for the last two nights of our trip, so we moved from BWV to an AoA Cars Suite. I think AoA is nicely done and my kids thought the Cars theme was fun even though they have outgrown the movies, but wow was it expensive - really made me appreciate our DVC points! It was a fun one time thing for us, next time we will stay offsite if we are out of points and can't get a discounted onsite room. Rack rates these days for the family suites, two moderate rooms or a deluxe room that sleeps five are just more than I am willing to pay. Food prices wore on me this trip, too. Now that 2, sometimes all 3 kids order from the adult menu, CS meals are often in the $60 range. Our dinner at the AoA food court was almost $60 and that was with the 20% TiW discount - would have been over $70 without it and that was just entree and drink, no desserts. I ended up canceling our Thanksgiving Day Tusker House character breakfast when I realized it would be $170 with tip for the five of us...for breakfast food...I was done with overpriced food by that point. Just one more reason I appreciate our DVC points because the kitchen gives us some flexibility to avoid overpriced food over and over, even if it is just by making sandwiches or frozen pizza a few times a trip.
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Speaking of split stays, I did not have enough points for the last two nights of our trip, so we moved from BWV to an AoA Cars Suite. I think AoA is nicely done and my kids thought the Cars theme was fun even though they have outgrown the movies, but wow was it expensive - really made me appreciate our DVC points! It was a fun one time thing for us, next time we will stay offsite if we are out of points and can't get a discounted onsite room. Rack rates these days for the family suites, two moderate rooms or a deluxe room that sleeps five are just more than I am willing to pay. Food prices wore on me this trip, too. Now that 2, sometimes all 3 kids order from the adult menu, CS meals are often in the $60 range. Our dinner at the AoA food court was almost $60 and that was with the 20% TiW discount - would have been over $70 without it and that was just entree and drink, no desserts. I ended up canceling our Thanksgiving Day Tusker House character breakfast when I realized it would be $170 with tip for the five of us...for breakfast food...I was done with overpriced food by that point. Just one more reason I appreciate our DVC points because the kitchen gives us some flexibility to avoid overpriced food over and over, even if it is just by making sandwiches or frozen pizza a few times a trip.
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