From: Rich_Koster@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US (Rich Koster)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.disney
Subject: Disneyana - Dixie Landings Comparison
Distribution: world
Date: 1 Oct 92 05:12:29 CST
Organization: The Amiga GateWay BBS * New Orleans, La.

NOTE: This review contains a slight SPOILER below -- to skip it, don't
read the lines set off with 3 stars ("***").
 
We stayed here for the first part of our trip to WDW just prior to the
Disneyana Convention, so here's a description of what's there and what
it's like.  We stayed using a Magic Kingdom Club package.
 
First let me preface by saying we went to the pool at Port Orleans and
drove around Caribbean Beach.  We can't compare all three to each
other in every respect.  They are all the same in these ways:
 
(1) The room prices (more $ with a "river" or water or pool view, less
$ with a parking lot view.  We booked a parking lot view for $85/night
with a request for a king-size bed.  When we arrived the only made up
(cleaned) room with a king-sized bed turned out to have a river view,
which usually costs $104/night!  In the middle of our stay we got a
message to call the front desk.  Message was an offer to extend our
stay at special rates:  $69/night in a $104/night room!).
 
(2) Styles and layouts will be the same, differing only in the interior
and exterior decorating and theming.  The design format of the swimming
pools will have a very basic similarity (size of pool, hot spa, a pool
slide of some sort of the same size in all three resorts, but the
theming will differ, bridges over the pools look different, all themed
pools have water splashing into them from above).  All three have food
courts and Port Orleans and Dixie Landings have full service restaurants
and lounges in addition, nice but not as highly decorated as, say, the
Grand Floridian.  A road from the main boulevard leads to a circle-type
road around the Dixie Landings resort, so you drive in a circle to get
to the building where your room is.  Caribbean beach is laid out in more
of a "U" shape but has a main road which goes along the "U".  Port
Orleans is more tightly packed around a central courtyard/pool and has a
parking lot on one side of the buildings and the "river" on the other
side.  This "Sascagoula River" has boat launches on it which connect
Dixie Landings and Port Orleans with the Village Marketplace/Pleasure
Island complex.  We'll tell you about a bad experience we had with the
boat launch in another post.
 
All three of these resorts have extensive landscaping.  All three have
laundromat facilities near the pools. You can get towels near the themed
pools and deposit them in special bins when you're through without having
to bring towels from your room or from home.  Dixie Landings also has pools
clustered in between the lodging buildings, but these are not themed and
don't have the towels stacked up, although there are towel return bins.
 
Port Orleans only has one bus stop for the Disney bus system, but then
it's a smaller resort.  Caribbean Beach and Dixie Landings have a few
more, placed at the main lobby building and around the perimeter road.
Dixie Landings and Port Orleans share a bus to all the attractions
since Port Orleans they are so close together (cast members refer to
the two resorts as "Port of Dixie"!), while Caribbean Beach has its
own busses to various parts of WDW.  So you can bus directly to/from
your resort to the theme park of your choice.  But you cannot catch a
bus from one of these resorts and go directly to another resort (say,
from Port Orleans directly to Polynesian Resort for the luau or Sunday
church services).  You can take a bus from your resort to one of the
theme parks or the Ticket and Transportation Center and from there
transfer to the bus or transportation which takes you to the resort
you want to wind up at.  This is free, but it's cumbersome and time
consuming.  Allow oodles and oodles of time if you're trying to make
a dinner or show reservation (reservations are held only 15-minutes
past the reserved seating time) or Sunday on-site Catholic and
Protestant church services at the Polynesian Resort Luau Cove (people
were arriving last Sunday for 8 AM Mass as much as 30-minutes late).
 
If you want to do anything or go anywhere more complicated than to and
from your hotel to one of the parks or to one dinner show, rent a car.
You get free parking at all theme park parking lots if you're staying
on-site, and the signage on the roads is so excellent you can't get
lost and you can drive directly where you want to go.  The drawback is
that most months you'll be entering a hot car after waiting out in the
sun for the parking lot tram to take you near your car.  Sometimes this
can take longer than using Disney transportation.
 
Caribbean Beach has coffee makers in the rooms, supposedly to make up
for inadequate on-site dining facilities.  CB was the first of these
three resorts to be built, and what they learned from this one they
incorporated into the other two.  Port Orleans and Dixie Landings
do not have coffee makers in the rooms, but they have more extensive
dining facilities which are easier to get to than at some places at
CB.  If you need your first cup of the day right when you wake up, you
may want to choose this resort over the other two. Then, if you're
curious about the other two, take your car or bus (or a motor launch
between Port Orleans and Dixie Landings) to the others, walk around
the buildings and peek inside the windows!
 
Basically, choosing which of the three resorts to stay at is a matter
of deciding what kind of mood you're in.  We chose Dixie Landings over
Port Orleans because we live in the New Orleans metro area already,
and Dixie Landings was the newest of the three.  We stayed in the
Acadian House section of Dixie Landings, which completed construction
only at the end of June, so it was extremely new.  You get the same
type accomodations as the other two resorts but just wearing a
different suit of clothes, so to speak.  The floorplans of the rooms
are very much the same, just with different set dressing.
 
Dixie Landings has vast numbers of rooms, distributed in two and three
story buildings themed around plantations and bayous.  If you're
familiar with Louisiana's plantations you'll recognize the
architecture of some of the famous ones duplicated for the exterior
facades.  The rustic Alligator Bend buildings have exposed brick facades
on some of the buildings, more rustic shutters for the windows, and a few
of the buildings have tin roofs.  The sidewalks leading to the main lobby
and food court from the rooms all have impressions of leaves and palmetto
fronds -- very charming.  The concrete walkways around the Alligator Bend
buildings have patterns in them that make them seem like wood planks.
There are several pools on the property, but there's a themed pool with
water slide and spa on an island in the center of the resort, with a
playground nearby for kids and a poolside fast food restaurant and lounge.
There is water falling into the pool which you can get underneath. The
landscaping makes it seem very secluded and "found" in the middle of
boondocks, and they've made up a little story about it posted on a sign.
There's a wonderful walkway along the river where you get vista-type
views of the room buildings.  Each building looks like a different
plantation.  (The company calls them "mansions" to not offend anyone, but
forgive me if I call them what they look like to a Louisianan.)
 
Caribbean Beach has more rooms than Dixie Landings, some of which are
very far from the main buildings.  CB does have stretches of beach,
though, which the other two do not have.
 
Port Orleans has about half the number of rooms as Dixie Landings,
and is a Disneyfied version of the French Quarter in New Orleans
complete with alligator statues, brick walkways and courtyards, but
it lacks the crime and trash of the real city and also doesn't have
kids running up to bet you that they know where you got your shoes...
In other words, in some ways PO is better than NO, but it is at the
expensive of losing the funky character of NO -- more like staying
in the New Orleans section of Disneyland than at the real place.
The themed pool at PO has an alligator playing a clarinet that spouts
water into the pool, as well as an alligator band playing in front
of a scalloped shell that sprays water into the pool.  Plus there's
that sea serpent that winds its way throughout the entire pool area
and whose head serves as the water slide.
 
It seems that all the Disney resorts have switched to voice mail
messaging.  You can leave your name in the system if you want.  You
can even leave a personalized message to be played to anyone calling
your room if you want, like on an answering machine (otherwise a
generic one that the Disney folks made is automatically run if there
is no answer to your room phone).  They provide you with the codes
so that you can check for messages when you are away from your room
-- by using house phones while still on Disney property or by calling
a phone number while off Disney property.  There is a dedicated
"Messages" button to use while you are in your room.  I found that
the system worked exactly the same at Dixie Landings as it did at the
more expensive Contemporary, so I'm assuming the system is now in use
at all the Disney resorts (I know, I know -- "When you assume..." ;-)
 
Don't forget that Disney provides room refrigerators as a free service
to all the guests staying in their resorts.  They are mainly for the
use of guests who require refrigeration for their medications, but
I requested one at both Dixie Landings and the Contemporary if they
had any unused ones that weren't needed by people for medical reasons,
and both resorts had enough on hand to provide one to us for the
length of our stay.
 
The Dixie Landings resort (and probably PO and CB as well) provide
guests with cute Mickey Mouse bath soap & facial soap, and Mickey Mouse
shampoo.  If you stay at a more expensive Disney resort like the
Contemporary you'll also get Mickey Mouse conditioner, shower cap, and
a card telling you who made up your room.
 
 *** (SPOILER: They position all these things in the Contemporary ***
 ***           in a way that the printing on the packaging forms  ***
 ***           the entire body of a certain Disney character!     ***      
*** (END OF SPOILER)                                             ***
 
Besides visiting PO and CB as well as the Yacht & Beach Club, we've
stayed at the Polynesian and the Contemporary, and we've stayed in
the Village Hotels area at first the Americana Dutch and then later
when it became the Grosvenor, but I'd prefer our stay at Dixie Landings
over all of those others.  From what we saw of the Grand Floridian, I'd
prefer to stay there over any other resort if we had the money for it!
 
We would be interested in hearing the comments of any who have stayed
at these resorts.

-- Via DLG Pro v0.992

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