Del Coronado

We traveled to Georgia over the Christmas break to visit family, and we decided to tack on a few days at Walt Disney World in Florida over the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It was kind of a last-minute trip, prompted by changes in travel plans and by the potential of getting employee discounts on the hotels and parks.

The whole period at the end of December is among the busiest — if not the busiest — times of year for Disney World, and bluntly, I wouldn’t have even considered it if not for the employee main entrance pass. Even as it was, we were blocked out of the Magic Kingdom for the entire trip, and the waits were so long for everything that we went on barely any of the attractions.

On the plus side, though, that did a lot to help us enforce our pledge to make this a relaxing vacation instead of an exhausting one. Being able to head to the parks after sleeping in, and having no set agenda when we got there, meant that we could mostly just enjoy them as parks instead of trying to cram for maximum magic per second ratio. And a big part of what prompted the side trip was that gut punch of an election, after which we both just wanted to escape the real world for a little bit and just enjoy staying at a nice hotel.

Our resort choices at the time I booked (late November) were down to the Port Orleans Riverside and the Coronado Springs resort. I’ve stayed at Riverside before, and I like it fine. Like most of the moderate resorts at WDW, it feels to me like a nice motel. I don’t remember anything particularly remarkable about the Riverside apart from having boat access to Disney Springs, which was convenient.

I’d never stayed at the Coronado Springs before, especially after hearing people from Imagineering complain about being booked there while working on site. The two most common complaints I heard about this one: It was a convention center first and foremost, so the Disney touches were kept at a minimum. And its buildings are so spread out around a huge property that it required a long walk or bus ride to get from your room to any of the facilities.

In 2019, they opened a huge expansion to the resort centered around the Gran Destino Tower. This is a beautiful building inspired by Spanish architecture, named and lightly themed after Destino, the short film collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney. It’s remarkable how much it makes the resort feel like a “deluxe” resort still charging “moderate” room rates.

Everything was decorated for Christmas (with an additional menorah for Hanukkah) while we were there, with red and green accents used in place of the hotel’s usual red and orange. The lobby of the tower is absolutely gorgeous, with all kinds of repeated designs that remind me of what I’ve seen of Barcelona in photos. On the bottom floor is a coffee bar with an enormous colored glass design behind it, framed by Gaudi-like organic shapes, and it never stopped being stunning. It also had some extraordinarily nice cast members working there, in particular a man named Landon who took the time to remember our names and favorite drink orders even among the hundreds of other guests.

On the top floor is the Dahlia lounge, named after the main character from Destino and filled with dandelion-shaped chandeliers in reference to the movie. Like the Riviera, it opens onto a rooftop patio with great views of the parks and I presume fireworks.

The top floor also has the Toledo tapas restaurant and steakhouse, with a huge ceiling that gradually changes color throughout the night. I’d honestly expected this to be the least remarkable restaurant of the trip, since the menu only had options we’d expected to be fine instead of favorites. But we split an order of the best brussels sprouts I’ve ever had. Jason had a vegetable plate which had sounded middling but was presented unlike anything I’d ever seen before. And I had the lamb loin, which surprisingly turned out to be one of the best meals I’ve ever had on Disney property.

Another highlight was the Three Bridges Cafe in the center of the resort’s central lake. We went fairly late on the first night of our trip, when a heavy wind was blowing a rain storm into the area. The cast were just great, moving us to a dry and warm table and being friendly and conversational throughout. I had chicken mole, which was good even if not exceptional, and just a treat to be able to get that at a theme park resort. But we both shared an order of the roasted corn dip, which was life-changing. I spent the rest of the week trying to find excuses to make our way back for that corn dip.

One advantage of the renovation/expansion that I wouldn’t have expected: the former check-in area was turned into a kind of common area for the hotel, with comfortable couches, several tables, and places for charging devices and/or getting some work done. It made it feel as if the resort’s sprawl had been turned from a detriment into a benefit, with a homey area intended to be lived-in instead of an impersonal convention center space. We frequently saw families gathered around the table, either eating or playing board games together. That’s the kind of stuff that I tended to remember from my trips as a kid.

On the whole, it was just a really, really nice hotel stay. Exactly the kind of escape I’d wanted, and for considerably less than the “official” deluxe resorts on property. As we came in, the resort was playing Spanish guitar versions of Christmas songs, and it just made the whole experience feel special. (Unfortunately, it seems like the resort only licensed a single record of Spanish Christmas songs, because I kept hearing the same ones over and over and over again. I’m afraid that “25 de Diciembre” is permanently burned into mi cabeza).