Stayed here for my 30th birthday (cue laughter). I had visions of spending it in Puerto Rico, Trinidad or Hawaii. What I learned was having a cheap girlfriend (now ex) meant my options were limited to Disney World and a mini jungle gym in the backyard. At the last minute, she threw in the third option of an inflatable kiddie pool and claimed we could create our own Caribbean experience. That made the decision all the more easier....and depressing.

The hotel is gorgeous. It has a modern look from the lobby to the suites. The suites are huge, clean and chic. All of the amenities are fashionable and current. The suites come with a large kitchen well stocked with various appliances and utensils. The pool is lovely and well maintained.

The location of the hotel is a little bit out the way, particularly for those with no transportation and/or whose sole purpose for the trip is to visit Disney. There is a rental car location nearby to make travel simpler. There is also a shuttle that runs from the hotel to Disney but it runs periodically.

I would definitely recommend the hotel as a romantic getaway for a couple. It offers a certain amount of serenity that cannot be had staying at one of the many Disney Resorts with kids running everywhere 24-7. The hotel can also work well for a large family that does not want to eat out 3 times a day and would rather utilize the kitchen and prepare their own meals. The staff is very friendly and the environment is very picturesque.

On a side note, I would not however recommend Disney as a grownup birthday option. As it turns out, Disney does not really do a whole lot to recognize birthdays per se. You get a button signifying it's your birthday and then you may randomly get little treats like birthday greetings from Disney characters, snacks/desserts, photo ops, fast passes, etc. Additionally, recognizing a grown man's birthday at Disney is a little weird. I didn't really want to a hug a dude in a Goofy costume. I had my own real life Cruella De Ville flipping the bill on this trainwreck anyways. The photo-ops were not a good look. Everywhere you turn you see pictures of little kids anywhere from ages 5-11 smiling with various Disney personnel. Then there's a grown man (me) mean muggin, standing next to some unknown bootleg Disney character I had never heard of along with my girlfriend at the time who is about the size of the dwarfs from the Snow White story. And they want me to pay for extras of those pics?? HELLLLLLLLL NOOOOOOOO!! I wanted to burn the ones I got for free!!

Enjoy the hotel!

My other half and I stayed at the Melia for 2 nights. We are locals so just wanted to get away from our city and spend a cpl days together. The room was great and the bed was absolutely AMAZING. It is not possible to not fall asleep in that bed. We even tried to find a tag for it but weren't able to and when checking out totally forgot to ask the front desk about what type of bed that was.(So if You anyone can tell me I'd truly appreciate it) We had a nice size kitchenette (that we did not use), and the bathroom was a good size as well. The bedroom had the king size bed and the room came with a closet, safe, a desk and a nice comfy chair. We had great big windows, and the ceilings were pretty high it gave the room a wonderful touch. The pool is gorgeous and nice and the temperature was perfect. We didnt really have a view from our balcony(which didnt bother us at all), and prior to our arrival when I had called to request a high floor they accommodated Us. (Yay!!!) We arrived later in the evening and it was a little hard for us to find it at first (maybe cause it was dark), but when called the front desk reservationist stayed on the phone with me to give me the directions. The area is pretty full of restaurants but You will definitely need a car, the restaurants are not in walking distance. The area itself is pretty nice, actually the resort is in Kissimee, which was aboyt a 20 min drive from Orlando. We truly had a wonderful stay, and hopefully will come back to visit again (maybe even get a repeat guest discount ) Thanks to all the Melia staff it was abolutely wonderful.

As a first time visitor, I was a bit concerned with a name change. But the Melia was much more then what we all expected! Since this was our granddaughters Birthday, we wanted to be very special - even being outside of the Disney Resorts, we felt like we were in it - and at a good value with luxury in mind! We had an issue with our Sofa Bed - service was there quickly or we could have gone to another room. We were not facing the pool but our view on the 4 th floor gave us the Sunrise ! Our stay was great and even our 2 year old felt at home - she thought Mickey stayed here too !

Stayed in a one bedroon unit for 8 nights. Had to wait until 4pm for check-in as they had a full house the night before (why is that our problem?). Never even heard of a 4pm check-in anywhere on the planet before. We had requested a pool view room via our travel agent months prior but were told no one bedroom units had a pool view. Asked how come our travel agent was not advised of this and after discussions in the back office we were given a one bedroom pool view room which had apparently not existed moments before.

You had better be feeling fit too, because it is entirely up you to get your luggage to your room and back again at check-out. If you are lucky, you may be able to find one of the two luggage trolleys that they have hidden away.

Once in the room, we could not get the ice maker in the freezer working and there was no plug for the sink. The maintenance man came fairly promptly and got the ice maker working by pouring hot water into it, but warned that they were 'not very good' and it would probably stop working again. We were welcome to make regular trips to the bar for ice if we needed to. In the event, the ice maker kept working all week so we were spared the inconvenience.

We asked about the missing sink plug to which he replied 'You must be from Europe, we don't have sink plugs over here'. We are actually from Australia, but everywhere else we have stayed in the good ol' US of A has managed to come up with a humble sink plug. The following night my sister checked into a room just down the hall and her room had a sink plug so I guess you just have to get used to the lies at this place.

The washing machine in the room was cactus but they now have a guest laundry on the first floor with 3 washing machines and 4 dryers (3 of which work). This is free to use but can be hard to find an empty machine when the place is busy.

This place also has a resort fee of $12 a day (+ tax). This is quite a common fee at many hotel in tourist areas of the US these days. It is very hard to find out what this fee entitles you to at the Melia, and largely depends who you ask. It does include free parking (which should be free anyway since they have an unsecured car park). It includes use of the pool, although hard to imagine anyone being excluded from using it. The only saving grace is that the fee includes a shuttle bus to Disney, but the return times are a bit strange and don't fit well with the park closing times.

It also includes a 'continental breakfast'. Now, we have been to several european countries and pacific islands and sampled their continental breakfasts. A tiny croissant, tiny danish, and tiny muffin is NOT a continental breakfast no matter what they think at the Melia. We asked if we could exchange this junk for one of their tiny boxes of cereal but got a flat NO on that one. It seems their aim is to upsell you to a more expensive breakfast.

Many hotels that charge a resort fee also give you free long distance calls (we stayed in one in Waikiki that even gave us 60 minutes a day of international calls). Here at the Melia, you get free local calls only. Handy if you know someone in Orlando, but if you did, you would be better off staying with them. Calls within Florida are 75c per minute, interstate calls are $1.25 per minute so buy a pre-paid SIM card for your cell phone and save money.

The maid service is a bit erratic, some days you won't get toilet paper, other days they will forget the hand towels but the place was kept reasonably clean. Having said that, you could tell that they had done a rush job prior to us first coming in.

Would we stay here on a future trip to Orlando? No way! There are so many places to stay around this area, it is easy to find better value and service. Some places do not have the onerous 'resort fee' so insist that your agent finds one that doesn't charge this.