Location. Topped by two giant swans, the aptly named Walt Disney World Swan in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., is a massive resort stocked with endless amenities and convenient guest services. Guests can take a short riverboat ride from the hotel to Disney's Hollywood Studios™, Epcot and Disney's Boardwalk entertainment area. A short walk across the street lands guests at Fantasia Gardens Miniature Golf, where even the smallest guests can putt with small plastic clubs.
Hotel Features. The hotel shares recreational activities with The Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, including a swimming complex suitably coined The Grotto. This three-acre water playground is complete with waterfalls, slides, water volleyball and spa tubs. Active guests can enjoy four tennis courts, a basketball court and a jogging path. Guests can paddle along Crescent Lake, or play volleyball on the hotel's white sand beach. The hotel also features enormous convention facilities, various gift shops and a children's camp with arts and crafts, movies and video games. Dining options include the Garden Grove Café, traditional Italian fare at Il Mulino New York Trattoria and Japanese sushi at Kimonos. Thoughtful amenities include computer rentals, ATM, laundry facilities, concierge services and currency exchange.
Guestrooms. Sophisticated guestrooms, designed by renowned architect Michael Graves in 2003, include views of the resort, Crescent Lake or the pools. Guests appreciate high-speed Internet access for a fee, minibars and in-room safes. Westin Heavenly beds feature down comforters (bedspreads) and pillowtop mattresses.
Expert Tip. At each of the restaurants on different days, children will love character dining, where Disney characters come to guests' tables to entertain, sign autographs and pose for photographs.
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Guest Reviews: Walt Disney World Swan
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- Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin
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1500 Epcot Resorts Boulevard | Orlando, FL 32830
- TripAdvisor Traveler Rating:
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Based on 951 traveler reviews
- Most Recent Traveler Reviews:
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“Great Stay at Walt Disney Swan - will visit again!”
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Mar 13, 2010
Kelharms, New York, New York
- We just stayed at the Disney World Swan Hotel at the beginning of March. My husband, kids and I really enjoyed it. My two year old can’t stop talking about...
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- We just stayed at the Disney World Swan Hotel at the beginning of March. My husband, kids and I really enjoyed it. My two year old can’t stop talking about it. We booked the Swan just because of other recommendations on Tripadvisor and we were very pleased. We booked the junior alcove suite, which are located on the ends of the hotel. It had a balcony and a great view of the resort. We were very comfortable in the junior suite because we have two young children and the extra space was a plus. We got a fireman/police discount, but with all taxes/fees the room was $295, average for on Disney property deluxe hotel. The room did not seem too outdated, nothing that really stood out. Everything was clean. The hotel location was awesome…close to the Boardwalk, Beach/Yacht Club hotels, Epcot and Hollywood Studios. The boat ride to Epcot and Hollywood studios was very convenient and quicker than the buses and it docked right between the Swan and Dolphin. The walk to Epcot was not far at all. The smell in the lobby of the Swan was wonderful…they must pump in the aroma. The weather finally warmed up and we got to use the pool. The Swan pool was nice and warm and the grill/bar service was very good. The Jacuzzi could have used another 6 inches of water. The fact that the Swan was not run by Disney was a plus for my husband, he loved it that it wasn’t Disney 24-7. The location was awesome. The staff and service were great. We will definitely stay here again on our next trip to Disneyworld...too bad the price couldn't be a bit better. « less
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“Housekeeping Could Use Some Help”
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Mar 13, 2010
travelingfool111, New Jersey
- This was not our first stay at The Swan. While the hotel is in a great location, clean and comfortable, the housekeeping could use some help. Our first morning at...
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- This was not our first stay at The Swan. While the hotel is in a great location, clean and comfortable, the housekeeping could use some help. Our first morning at 6:30 we discovered that there were no toiletries in the room -- using soap instead of shampoo is nasty. Later that day, when called, the staff was apologetic and sent some right away. The next day our two $5 bottles of resort water were not replaced until we called. Again, the staff was apologetic and sent some right away. The next day our hairdryer died and we had to call for a new one. In addition, housekeeping left some wet towels and didn't replace our bathmat or our two $5 bottles of resort water (if I'm paying for them, I'd like to receive them whether I choose to use them or not). At this point, I was SICK of calling for things.
I stay exclusively at Westin's when travelling. While I would still recommend this hotel, The Swan needs to get their housekeeping act together. « less
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“Disappointing stay”
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Mar 13, 2010
SnilleTravel, Seattle
- I had to stay at the Dolphin for a conference, and since it was close to Disney World, I decided to take the family along. Well...
The good things first:...
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- I had to stay at the Dolphin for a conference, and since it was close to Disney World, I decided to take the family along. Well...
The good things first: the hotel and the rooms were clean, the food in the hotel was very good (although expensive), the staff was friendly (for the most part), we had a room with a very nice view to the fireworks and the proximity to Disney World makes it nice when traveling with kids.
Still I would not choose this hotel again, and here is why:
The hotel was not business friendly. There is a charge for every service, even if not used. E.g. if you want to print from your own laptop, you not only pay the printout, but also for internet, which is provided on the same line you have to use to connect to the printer - even if you don't use the internet. That's why eventually I gave the document to the business center on a USB stick, and the stick came back infected with a computer virus. For 1 single page printing, scanning and sending it to an email account I ended up paying more than $5 and spending a lot of time. I have used similar services at other hotels throughout the US before, and typically didn't have to pay anything.
Surprisingly the hotel was not very family friendly either. The prices for even small food items for the kids were as high as in the parks and there was very little the kids can do while in the hotel. We have stayed in other hotels (e.g. Gaylord Palms) in the area before, and I would rather go there instead.
The most disappointing part was actually how much some staff members cared - or rather didn't care. It was my wife's birthday while we where there, and I had to attend the conference and a customer dinner on that day. So I asked the staff for recommendation to surprise/impress my wife even with me being unavailable on her birthday. They told me, I can take her out for dinner...not very funny, not very caring. I wonder if they really read my email. We have stay at another hotel at my son's birthday, and he had gotten a small snack basket with a card with personal (!!) greetings of a number of members of the staff - so I know, good customer care actually does look differently.
Overall, for a hotel in this price segment, it was disappointing - I will definitely not go there again, even if the distance to Disney World is more. « less
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“Absolutley Fantastic!!”
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Mar 11, 2010
cherylandphil, England
- Our recent holiday in Disney Wold Florida was absolutley amazing! The Swan and Dolphin is a spectacular hotel - you can see it from almost anywhere! We stayed in the...
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- Our recent holiday in Disney Wold Florida was absolutley amazing! The Swan and Dolphin is a spectacular hotel - you can see it from almost anywhere! We stayed in the Dolphin and the room was spacious clean and the beds were extremley comfortable. Every night we could watch the Epcot fireworks from our balcony. There is a white sandy beach and a pool bar - great for the relaxing evenings! The best feature, by far, for me was the boat which took you from the hotel to MGM Hollywood Studios, Epcot and the Broadwalk. MGM has always been my favorite park (I went once when I was 11 and fell in love with it!) and the Tower of Terror is by far the best ride ever ha ha!! so the fact that I could see the tower of terror every day and I was always only a 5 minute boat ride away was a dream come true!! If you are visiting with children - please note that there is no sign of it being a Disney hotel other than the small Disney store inside - the hotel is very much for adults! I would highly reccomend this hotel to anyone! The only dissapointment I had was the food choices as by the end of busy days we were too tired to dine a restaraunts every night and the Picabu restaurant (along with many others) was great if you want pizza and fries every night! (just be prepared for the jungle noises which are played into the restaurant) I just wish there were more options but that said the whole of Disneys food choices are mainly burgers and fries etc so dont hold that against the hotel! The staff were great, the hotel is fantastic and the location is PERFECT!
*If you would like to see more, please check out our youtube page, just type in cherylandphil and we have many videos and photo clip shows on there. Any questions please leave as a comment and we will help all we can! « less
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“better than expected - great location”
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Mar 10, 2010
wanderlust0072, ny
- i always read tripadvisor reviews but have only written once when i was incredibly disappointed in a hotel. i felt compelled to write a review here because i was really...
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- i always read tripadvisor reviews but have only written once when i was incredibly disappointed in a hotel. i felt compelled to write a review here because i was really pleasantly surprised. i also did a ton of research on disney being a novice and thought it might be helpful to note several of things i learned as we thoroughly enjoyed out trip.
like many people, we chose this hotel for our disney vacation (with in-laws and a 2 year old and i hadn't been to disney world since i was maybe 9) because we could use starwood points. i was expecting very little particularly given how ugly the exterior of the hotel is and the reviews i had read but since it was free that was fine. it is really an eyesore. but my 2 year old loved it saying bye bye fishies every time we came and went. we had a renovated room, and while it is basic and not especially stylish, it was perfectly clean (i am a complete freak about hotel cleanliness), the bed seemed even more comfortable than the typical heavenly bed, there was nice storage space, the shower was actually quite good (another one of my issues) and the service was fine. some of the pool area is sad looking, and some is pretty cool. there are a couple hot tubs tucked away. the fountain in the grotto pool is nice and the cabana bar is nice and modern. the lobby again is not particularly attractive but is impressive to a 2 year old and has a good little candy shop. our last major trip with my daughter was to a couple european cities, so i realized how nice it was to be at a hotel that catered to families. they had a nice laundry room in the basement and the fridge was empty so we could fill with our necessities. we stopped at the goodings which is just a 5 minute drive from the hotel. it is a funny store so clearly set up tourists but really helpful. would not recommend the room service coffee and not particularly impressed with the coffee at the java bar in the swan, but they had decent pastries, and we really didn't find any better coffee in disney. it is nice to grab a coffee there before heading to the boat for epcot or hollywood studios.
also to note, it is a nice quick walk to epcot. you are mainly walking by the yacht and beach hotels which are really very cute and do look like something in nantucket which was evidently what they were going for. if you are there with kids, the cape may character breakfast was great. not a big selection but all very fresh and an easy way to meet the characters. i was amazed at how much my daughter loved all the characters she met at disney (she also loves winnie etc so we did crystal palace in the magic kingdom for lunch and the character spots at epcot and animal kingdom. i thought they were all well done and give your child a nice opportunity to give lots of hugs and get some really adorable pix - i really can't believe i'm saying all of this but i am a disney convert!) there is also beaches and cream at the beach club hotel with great looking sundaes and burgers. we found the location really excellent. there wasn't a lot we wanted to do at hollywood studios but since it was such an easy boat ride we went one day for the playhouse disney show (excellent for the 2-4 year olds) and the aerosmith roller coaster (which ended up being the favorite roller coaster of all the parks). incidentally i hadn't come across this in all my research but we had planned to buy 3 day tickets and just visit 3 parks and skip the studios but when it came time to buy the tix, we realized it was only like $3 per person to go from 3 to 4 days so we figured we would just get it just in case and were happy we did.
the other thing i had been confused about from researching was whether to drive from the dolphin to magic kingdom and animal kingdom. we had rented a car. i had read several things that said if you don't want to wait for a bus, you might want your own car. this advice seems completely insane to me. we never waited for a bus or boat more than 20 minutes and typically they were either waiting there or there in a couple minutes. you might have to drop or pick up people from a couple nearby hotels but this is very quick. if you drive you have to deal with traffic getting into the lot, waiting for the tram, waiting for the monorail and we saw this line at 10:30am and it was huge! just do the bus. that said, i thought the car was helpful for the airport, grocery run, going to other hotels, and downtown disney - although there is a bus for that. downtown disney is sort of set up like a big outdoor mall though so it's easy to park (although not particularly easy to find a parking spot). one little trick we realized was that if for some reason you really wanted to drive to magic kingdom, a good way would be to go to breakfast in one of the hotels on the monorail (the polynesian has a yummy breakfast at kona but an even better would be the quick service captain cook which is brighter and sells the same stuff at half price) then jump on the monorail from the hotel and leave the car parked in the hotel lot for free.
we went the first week in march which is not a particularly crowded week, but we follow the ubiquitous advice of (1) arrive at the park opening (we did this except for hollywood studios), (2) develop a game plan for the morning and use fast passes (we actually signed up for tour guide mike which kind of gave outlines in hilarious detail of what to do first etc, but i found it very helpful), and (3) go home for a break in the afternoon (sometimes this was only 1.5 hours, but we still did really feel refreshed going back to the park for the evening shows or for dinner - try to catch spectromagic and illuminations if you can). we went on every ride we had wanted to including space mountain, everest, the safari, and our longest wait was 18 minutes for peter pan and we could have done it on a fast pass, so i am a believer in the planning.
we made tons of reservations through the online system just in case. these seemed most important for the character meals, anything in epcot, and california grille. many like il mulino in the swan which was excellent and even had a great kid's menu did not seem to need reservations at least when we there. i always think better to have than not. we really enjoyed the rose and crown and teppan edo in epcot, wolfgang puck cafe and the earl of sandwich in downtown disney. pizzafari which had actually been recommended in animal kingdom is terrible. « less Read management response to this review.
Thank you ever so much for your very thorough review of our properties as well as your overall Disney experience and interactions. It sounds like you did quite a bit of planning along the way and it really does pay off especially when in the parks. We hope that you return again one day!
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Map & Directions: Walt Disney World Swan
GPS Coordinates: 28.36430 -81.55960
Address: 1200 Epcot Resort Blvd., Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830
See other hotels near Walt Disney World Swan.Nearest AirportPoints of InterestDisneys Hollywood Studios
0.40mi
Epcot Main Entrance
1.24mi
Disneys Sports Complex
1.46mi
Wide World of Sports
1.81mi
General Directions
From Orlando International Airport:
Take SR-417 South to Exit 6 International Dr.
Get off ramp and follow signs to Epcot Resort.
Turn right at the light on Epcot Resorts Blvd.
Follow signs to Disney World Swan Resort.
Amenities: Walt Disney World Swan
Hotel Services
24-Hour Security
Kids Stay Free
Beauty Salon
Restaurant
Recreational Services
Fitness Facility
Sauna / Steamroom
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