Pool hours at HRH are currently (and I'm sure subject to change) 8 AM to 10 PM on weekdays and 8 AM to 11 PM on weekends.
Traveling to the parks and resorts is simple... you can walk or take the boat. US is real close (5 minutes tops), no sense is using transportation at all. IOA is a bit further, so the boat ride is an option. But it's only about a 10 minute walk from the hotel, so we walked there too. Just take the elevator to the bottom floor, go out by and around the pool, and take the paths provided. Either side of the pool works... the right side has a gate (behind the Beach Club) that goes along the parking lot (not as pretty), the left side has a gate that has a path along the waterway (much more scenic, maybe a tad farther a walk).
Travelling to Portofino is also easy... you can walk the path along the waterway in the other direction (away from the parks... it is farther away from the parks) or wait for the boat and take it there.
Because everything here is much tighter, it is not comparable to the resorts at Disney.
