Checking out where you will check into.

I have learned the hard way that you must research the hotel that you are going to stay in. I have stayed at a Best Western in Anaheim that gave me an upside down lunch tray with lawn chair legs for a shower bench. It made all the water puddle on the floor and into the towels (could have been shocking for my wife when she used the hair dryer). Another experience was in Florida where we stayed at the Disney Port Orleans Riverside after our cruise disembarked. We discovered mold in the shower (lots of it), the hardest bed I have ever tried to sleep on and a questionable cleaning job (run a vacuum), plus no room service put me on edge. What I am saying is that just not all accessible rooms are created equal, and along those lines not all moderate rooms are equal either.

Our trip to Walt Disney World Resort in 2013 is over a year away and we are already scouring the Internet to figure out which place is best for me, my wife and our son (who will be 4). There are many great sites like Frommer's, Fodor's, and Trip Advisor that offer an unbiased review of the hotel. This is great because you get a ton of opinions. However you have to read the reviews because some of the complaints can be just nit picky little things like "the sheets were to rough", "I didn't like the soap", or "I had a pool view from my room that didn't look like the brochure". There can be serious ones like " we found cigarettes on the headboard under the pillows" and "there is old in the corner of the bathroom" which any reasonable hotel should want to correct right away.

We are weighing out several hotels on property for their location to the parks we really want to visit, reviews from independent sources, and information we have gotten from our travel agency. The front runners are the Animal Kingdom Lodge, The Beach Club, and The Polynesian. All of these have different ammenities that we may want to have access to. They are all located at different points of the resort so that we can have a home base near the parks that we may spend the most of our time at. As we get closer to the travel date the rates for next year will come out and there may be additional hotels we will look into with better rates. It is important to look ahead so that you do not get overwhelmed when you have to book. There is nothing worse than going into something blindly, as it can have a very negative effect on you vacation overall. I will revisit this as we get closer and review in depth each of our choices.