Concierge Service at Walt Disney World

My family and I knew after our first visit to Walt Disney World (WDW) in February 1996 -- a one-day trip to the Magic Kingdom -- that we had to go back. For our second trip in February 1997, our travel agent booked us a special four- day, three- night "Toy Story" package for the Concierge level at Disney's Yacht Club Resort. Although this package was nothing more than a Resort Magic package with a special Toy Story toy thrown in, the price seemed right, so we made the reservation.

The approach to the Yacht Club Resort

The trip was wonderful, and the Concierge benefits so fabulous that we have returned five times, always staying at the Concierge level at Disney's Yacht Club Resort. Many of the deluxe- level resorts WDW offer Concierge service, and in this article, I detail its benefits, so that you can get a sense of why we are reluctant to stay anywhere else at WDW.

The benefits of Concierge service start even before you get to WDW. A few weeks after making your reservation, Concierge staff from the hotel send you a personalized welcome letter with a blank trip itinerary form. This form lets you note such information as arrival and departure dates, special needs, priority seating requests, ticket requests, and child care requirements.

The Concierge staff use the information from the form to make all your reservations, and send you a written confirmation. This huge time- saver eliminates your need to make painstaking preparations for the most popular priority seating destinations, such as breakfast at Cinderella's Castle. Although you may not get exactly what you request (for example, dinner reservations may be changed by a half an hour), you almost always do. In fact, there has only been one occasion when they were unable to satisfy my priority seating reservations request in advance.

Cinderella's Royal Table, the most difficult character breakfast "priority seating" to get within all of Walt Disney World. 

The Concierge staff are available even before you arrive, so we usually wear out our phones calling with questions and special requests. They have always been so helpful that with each trip, we usually end up dealing with one person for all our requests. This was the case for both of our last two trips, in which the same person has made a special effort to welcome us at check- in, making us feel extra special.

All arrangements are made for you in advance. When you travel by car, you get a special resort guest parking pass at the guard shack to identify you as a Concierge guest. This alerts the valet, so that as you pull up to unload your car, someone from Concierge can greet and help you through the check- in process. When you are finished unloading, you are immediately escorted and whisked away to the fifth floor for check- in, completely bypassing the registration desk and any lines it may have.

The resort's nautically- themed lobby... a place where you don't have to spend much time as concierge check- in and out is handled exclusively on the 5th floor.

At Disney's Yacht Club Resort, the Concierge level is on the fifth floor. In keeping with the hotel's nautical theme, this floor is referred to as the Regatta Club. Other deluxe Disney hotels have special names for their Concierge levels as well. All 75 or so of Disney's Yacht Club Resort rooms on the fifth floor are part of this service.

As you exit the elevators on the fifth floor, you see two desks staffed by Regatta Club members. These desks are staffed from 6:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night. Staff turnover seems fairly low; we have seen many of them trip after trip. We recognize them, and they have even begun to recognize us, which is also very special. Many are also very quick to learn guest names. I don't know how they do it, but they address you by name whenever they see you during your stay.

During your check- in process, you get a combination room key / elevator-key / admission-media / charge card (called "resort ID" from now on, just to make it easier), and a folder containing relevant information for your stay, such as a copy of the confirmation of all priority seating reservations, and all the park brochures and resort maps. My favorite thing to receive is a little book that describes all the restaurants at WDW; I don't think the book is an exclusive for Concierge guests, but it is an invaluable resource for deciding where to eat. Once you are checked in, you can get into your room depending on the time of day and availability, just as elsewhere at WDW. Even if you can't, you have everything you need to go to the parks and start having fun!

Getting to the fifth floor by yourself requires you to have your resort ID with you. Unlike other WDW resort guests who use their resort IDs as just a room key, your resort ID also activates the elevator's fifth- floor button. To make this work, you must insert it into a little slot above the buttons on the elevator panel; only then does the fifth- floor button stay lit when you press it. This is a slight pain, especially if you go out for an errand and forget your resort ID. But it is also kind of fun, in an exclusive, "clubby" sort of way.

In addition to giving you Concierge- floor access, your resort ID is a different color than those given to standard- room guests. I was told that this identifies you to Cast Members throughout WDW as a VIP guest who should be afforded special treatment. CMs in the parks rarely even see the resort IDs, though, so whether concierge guests are actually treated any better is debatable.  What I did not expect, though, was that, during our last visit many of the CMs that did see our resort IDs didn't know why they were different.  Clearly, the differently- colored resort ID are not having the intended effect even for those CMs who do see them.

The Regatta Club lounge is located just to the right of the staff desks.  The lounge, which we often just call "the food room." is one of the great things about Concierge service.  This lounge is about the size of two guest rooms put together, with various tables, chairs and sofas, as well as areas where the food is laid out. A TV monitor shows Disney videos during the day, with a show schedule posted on a board outside the lounge. There are complimentary daily newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal (without which no day is complete for me) and a nice balcony with some tables and chairs.

This room opens at 7:00 in the morning and closes 10:00 at night, with intermittent closures during the day. Coffee is available as early as 6:30, and stays out past 10:00 at night.

Various types of food and snacks are available throughout the day, but the best part about the food room is breakfast. You can't really make lunch or dinner out of the food put out during the rest of the day, but in the morning, there are cereals, bagels, donuts, sweet rolls, breads, lots of fresh fruit, juices and coffee. This is a perfect breakfast for me and my family, and I don't have to go anywhere (except down the hall) to get it. I can go get food, then it take back to our room for the family to eat. Our daughters eat while my wife gets ready, and vice versa. This saves us the hassle of having to get up and get ready, just to go get breakfast. We also avoid having to buy breakfast when we arrive at a park, thereby being able to immediately start on the fun stuff. All in all, a great way to start the day.

During the rest of the day, there are snacks (such as chips, pretzels, cookies, fruit, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), hors d'oeuvres and wine in the evening, and desserts and cordials at night. Soda pop, juice boxes and water are available all day as a self- service when the room is open. When the room is closed, a Regatta Club staff member is happy to go into the kitchen and get a beverage if you ask. The food is actually quite good, although the types of hors d'oeuvres and desserts stay the same from day to day. If you are there for a long trip, you could get a little bored with the selection. You can eat and drink as much as you want and the cost of all this is "free" (although, of course, you pay a premium for the higher level of service in your room rate).

Throughout your stay, the Regatta Club staff are available to offer suggestions, make changes to existing priority seating reservations, make new reservations, assist with obtaining tickets to shows, make tee times, and fill other requests. We have used them many times for advice and to make last- minute priority seating reservations and changes. Overall, this resource extremely helpful to have available just down the hall whenever you need it.

For example, last year, my family and parents- in- law went to the early Tapestry of Nations parade at Epcot. It ended about 7:15 or so, but -- shame on us -- we had not made a priority seating reservation for dinner. We tried to go to the restaurant at the Italy pavilion, but the wait was very long. Because we were getting restless and no one felt like fast food, I got on the phone from Epcot and called the Regatta Club desk. I asked them to help us obtain priority seating somewhere. While I was on hold, the desk staff contacted the Yachtsman Steakhouse, and got us a reservation for later that evening. Perhaps we could have called priority seating ourselves, or maybe we could have just shown up at the Yachtsman Steakhouse and been seated. It was much more convenient however, to have the Regatta Club staff do it for us so that we knew we had a reservation.

The Yachtsman Steakhouse, where Patrick and his party had dinner that night.

Concierge- level rooms are basically the same as in the rest of Disney's Yacht Club Resort, with a few minor amenities such as a robe in the room, turn- down service, and a make- up mirror. However, the fifth floor is much smaller than the rest of the hotel, so you usually have a shorter walk from the elevator to your room than elsewhere in the hotel.

Rooms provide either a lagoon view or a garden view. Lagoon- view rooms look over the back entrance courtyard to the hotel or Stormalong Bay, as well as the lagoon to the Boardwalk. You can see Epcot's fireworks from these rooms, so you can still enjoy them even if you don't want to be in the parks. The garden- view rooms are identical, except for the view, which isn't quite as exciting. With a slightly cheaper rate, these rooms overlook either the parking lot or down one wing, the wedding pavilion.

The Boardwalk Resort is located just across Crescent Lake from the Yacht Club resort.

Your Concierge service continues on the day of your departure from WDW even after you check out. As with the admission media to the parks, you continue to have access to the fifth floor and the Regatta Club lounge for the day. We usually schedule our departure from WDW for the end of the day, but as with all Disney resorts, check- out time is officially at 11:00 AM. I was once told however, that we would not have trouble as long as we were out by 1:00 in the afternoon.

The early check- out / late departure combination can limit your activities on your final day. After all, who wants to go swimming in the afternoon if there is no room to go back to in order to change into dry clothes? It also deprives you of the "afternoon break" that Disney boasts as one of the benefits of staying on- property. However, because access to the Regatta Club and the lounge (including a single- person bathroom adjacent to the lounge) continues all through the day, you can still change clothes (in the bathroom) and take an afternoon break (in the lounge), even without a hotel room to go back to.

It should be no surprise that the cost of this service and benefits is high. It is not cheap to stay on- property at WDW, and this is especially true about staying at any deluxe- level Disney resort. The Concierge level, meanwhile, is even more expensive than the deluxe resort's standard rooms. For example, for our most recent trip in February 2001 during peak season, a standard lagoon- view room at Disney's Yacht Club Resort went for $364 a night, while a Concierge lagoon- view room was $560 a night. Even the garden- view room was a pricey $520 a night. Room rates vary throughout the year so the difference is not always this large, but there is a significant extra expense associated with this service. Is it worth it? For us, the answer is "yes."

With Concierge service, you are truly pampered and well taken care of. I would recommend that everyone visiting WDW stay on the Concierge level at a deluxe resort at least once, just to be able to enjoy its benefits.

The Grand Floridian Resort & Spa and all of the other deluxe resorts also provide concierge service.

You can write Patrick Carey at:
lcarey6219@aol.com

Lani Teshima's "The Trip Planner" has a great article about the concierge service at the Disneyland Resort.

PLUS, there are these trip reports in MousePlanet's archive that include concierge stays at some of the other WDW resort hotels!

Judi Lazoff -- July 2000 -- Walt Disney World (PR)

Amy Bradley -- June 2000 -- Walt Disney World (PR)

John Thompson -- March 2000 -- Walt Disney World (BVIR, Offsite)

Kathy Lowe -- April 1999 -- Walt Disney World (BIR)

Anne Bevilacqua Campbell -- November 1998 -- Walt Disney World (GFRS, PO, CSR)

Jimmy Rose -- September 1998 -- Walt Disney World (GFRS) / Disney Cruise Trip

Marla Hellwig -- June 1997 -- Walt Disney World (CR)

Patrick Carey, 37, is a corporate attorney who lives in Birmingham, Michigan. He and his wife, Lynne, have visited WDW a number of times with their two daughters, ages 7 and 2.  The Carey family has been visiting Walt Disney World regularly since February 1996, always staying in Disney's Yacht Club Resort Concierge rooms.

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