After reading all of the horrible reviews and the plea from the hotel's sales manager we went to this hotel fearing the worst (and carrying the phone number of the sales manager just in case). I told my wife that we would give the place a chance, ask for a tower room as soon as we checked in and, in the worst case, ask for a refund and go home 2 days early. We pulled into the hotel and asked for a tower room but the desk clerk said that the tower was full and gave us a room in building 5 right near the pool. We decided to check it out before we took anything out of the car and went in, cell phone in hand, ready to call and complain. Well, there was no mold. There were no ants crawling all over the place. There was no musty odor. What we saw was a king-sized bed with 6 pillows on it, a small couch (not sure if it opened up into a sleeper, there were only the 2 of us), a refrigerator, a safe in the closet and a moderately sized bathroom. Not scary in the least and the bed turned out to be very comfortable. It looked as if the room had been recently refurbished. Housekeeping had left a generous assortment of towels, fancy soaps and other toiletries. It was far more than we expected and better than other hotels of the same rating we had stayed in while visiting Orlando. The pool was heated, the spa gave out plenty of bubbles and was hot enough to be barely tolerable for me. At night the palm trees were lit up with christmas-type lights going up the trunks. It was really a lovely place and we wouldn't hesitate to go back there. I even left a message for the sales manager telling him that I had shown up looking to go to war with him and ended up very satisfied.

Some other reviewers have said that the location isn't very good. That depends if you have a car or not. I would hate to have to depend on the buses or shuttles to get around but if you have a car it's actually a lot more convenient than it looks. You have easy access to the hotel from exit 72 off of I-4 and that same expressway that gets you to the hotel will also get you to Universal Drive if you go up 1 more exit. Universal Drive parallels International Drive so you can go all the way up to Universal Studios without putting up with the I-Drive traffic problems. If you want to go to Disney instead you can get right back onto I-4 in a minute or take a right on International Drive and end up at 535 which goes to either Lake Buena Vista and Downtown Disney or Irlo Bronson Highway (192), depending on which way you turn. We had no problems whatsoever getting around but we (1) had a car, and (2) had been to Orlando enough times to know our way around fairly well.

All in all I gave this place an 8. I'm sure the tower would have been better but our room was fine and we had access to the same resort facilities the tower folks had at 1/3 the price.