Hi all. I so enjoy reading all your reviews and thought I'd give you my trip report/reviews as we just arrived home yesterday from a wonderful beach club stay. We are of course sad to have had to leave and can't wait to plan the next trip (august 2017). We have stayed on the YC side for the past 3 stays and decided to try the BC side this year as we were ready for some newly refurbed rooms.
Our immediate family had four rooms and what I can say is the BC has wonderful customer service and did their best to give us our requests of keeping us together. We were in room 1550 on the ground floor, on the path to the gate that spills out right at the bridge to the international gateway to Epcot. A perfect location (see view from room pics hopefully attached) as we were close to epcot and the marketplace too. We so enjoyed the first floor patios - even caught the UK band song sets a few times from the patio! We are used to staying on the YC side, and we usually set up camp at the kiddie/sand bar pool side of SAB, so we found it was a trek to the pool and back though. We LOVED the new rooms at the BC. We found we missed the YC though and will surely return there if possible next summer, as long as the room refurbs are done or close to done there. It is important to my family to have full balcony/patio so we like that the YC has that guarantee, pretty much. We did think the customer service was better at BC but that could have just been a fluke. Two of our rooms (out of four) weren't ready by late afternoon and we received a call on our cell from someone at the hotel that mentioned that they had a housekeeping issue and considered changing our rooms but knew we wanted to stay together so they offered to add some fastpasses to our
MDE to compensate for the lateness of getting into our rooms. It was most nice of them, as we hadn't even complained to anyone before the phone call, we were just so happy to be getting rooms near each other.
As a pp stated earlier, the mosquitos and flies were in full force this trip and most especially on our balcony near the wooded area. Bring bug spray!
We enjoyed a lunch and a few cocktails on separate occasions at the Crews Cup and love this hidden gem!
The ice machine COULD NOT keep up with the demand at the marketplace and hence there were many days ICE was a premium and not available. Not sure if the arms on the ice machines were broken and you could certainly get ice in the hallways though. I read a rumor here that a quick service counter might be reno'd soon at the Ale and Compass in the YC lobby and we are keeping our fingers crossed for that. Also as the Marketplace doesn't open until 7:00 a.m. we spent many morning walking to the Ale and Compass in YC lobby to get coffee/tea as they opened at 6:00 a.m., I believe. I found it ironic as for three prior stays, I walked from YC to BC for a drink and now was walking the opposite way. #firstworldproblems! lol.
We had ice cream a few times from Ample Hills on the boardwalk and the consensus of our family was their ice cream was better than B&C. Worth a try. We did like the fact that most places we were visiting on the Boardwalk were closer to our room at the BC than walking the opposite way (past Swan and Dolphin) on our prior YC stays.
We also ate at Shula's for the first time this year. There is a 20% off coupon if you google online for most Swan and Dolphin restaurants through the end of 2016 and the short walk to Shula's at the Dolphin was awesome. We also ate at Il Mullino (Swan), Rose and Crown Pub and Via Napoli, all within walking distance of our room at the BC and highly recommend them all!
The weather was great. Only rained twice during pool time quickly. Pool only closed once that we knew of. The rain NEVER affected our trip whatsoever and while we had a few hot days/evenings, we also had some pleasant not too hot evenings/late afternoons.
We also enjoy the quietness of the YC lobby as opposed to the BC lobby. But we have only stayed during a slow convention time (magical labor day time) so maybe if we were at the YC during a serious convention time we would feel differently.
Well, until next year, I will continue to read this awesome board (thanks Dee) to survive.