Marriott's Harbour Lake — Hotel in Dr. Phillips

I love this property! I can’t believe this is a 3 star property. No, it’s not the most modern space but for the money, it’s everything you would expect and more. I was pleasantly surprised.

The 2 bedroom/2 bath suite is phenomenal…. extremely large for just 2 adults (my son and I). An entire family of 4 could totally “never” see each other if they didn’t want to - that’s how big that “apartment” is! It’s probably bigger than most “regular” apartments - no exaggeration - with a full kitchen and even a laundry room. Lots of cabinet and cooking space and everything you need in the kitchen and laundry room. My son and I really enjoyed the screened in deck with the view of a big water fountain and lake, and I definitely enjoyed the spa tub in my master suite. My son had his privacy too - his own room and bathroom on the other side of the suite, which he loved. Additionally, the entire resort and the room was exceptionally clean. The property has tons of activities going on - even a Luau - and the amenities are awesome. If we didn’t have 4-day passes at Disney World, we definitely would’ve had more time to enjoy all of the fun activities going on, including tennis and several pools. (Next time for sure). By the way, both Disney World and Sea World are within 5 to 10 minutes from the resort. The area where the resort is located isn’t one of those super busy, traffic-heavy areas either (Very nice area). This property is huge!

You’re also only about 5-10 minutes from many really good restaurants. It is rather hot in Orlando in June, but if hot is what you like, then you won’t be disappointed. As for me, I’ll go in the fall next time. LOL! And just an aside - I ate like a pig all week, got home, and happily discovered I did not gain 1 lb the entire week! That’s because it was so hot that between all the walking around at the resort and Disney Parks, along with all the sweating, I burned every single calorie I ate and this was completely unintentional. LOL!

I digress: Patrice was at the front desk and helped check me in. I saw her several times throughout my stay and she is super fantastic and so friendly! Really, all the staff truly are amazing. And with security at the entrance, it gave us such a peace of mind. It was a really peaceful stay when we wanted peace, and lively stay when we wanted to just have fun. I emailed the manager, Brandon, and told him how much we absolutely enjoyed our stay. Orlando has great food and fun options, and is a really nice place. I highly recommend staying at this resort, especially the 2 bedroom suites. It’s way too big for just 2 people (like we were), but can comfortably sleep and house 5 people with room to spare. For the price and amenities, it’s absolutely a great value. The southern hospitality is one of a kind! Even the front gate security folks made us feel like we were coming home the whole week, each time we returned from an outing. We created such an unbelievable and wonderful family memory here. I can’t wait to return! Brandon is doing an awesome job with...

The pros: The grounds and rooms are clean, rooms were well laid out and organized. |The color scheme was very upbeat.|Everyone we met was friendly. |There's always something going on, lots of options for all ages.|Location can't be beat, walking distance from a cvs, and many restaurants nearby, yet quiet.|Parking is plentiful, and the layout of the resort is very nice. Lots of opportunities to walk around and sit down to watch the lake. |The opportunity to earn sand dollars was a nice touch for the kids, they bought something fun with it at the end of the trip.|Now for the cons...|The dishwasher in the room was falling apart, definitely in need of replacing.|Housekeeping has no schedule and if you like to plan your day around your service, you can't (sometimes they came early in the morning and other days afternoons. We ended up placing the don't disturb sign on the door most days).|There's no communication from front desk unless you physically inquire. We were here 16 days and during hurricane Helene, but no word whatsoever from front desk about the situation. Coming from a hurricane belt ourselves this isn't acceptable as there are always guests looking to roadtrip or visit parks that were shut down.|The smoke alarm in the bedrooms flicker a super bright green light, and are posed towards the bed so no escaping it, even with eyes closed it still bothered me...|The pillows, horrible. Very lumpy and uncomfortable.|The front desk doesn't inform you of anything going on on property (like we missed out on s'mores nights and the free ice cream refills if you buy a bowl. We weren't informed). |When checking in you are forced into a timeshare pitch to be able to get your parking pass.|The staff starts leaf blowing around 7:30 each morning. Didn't bother me but if you're looking to sleep in it might be annoying, quite loud. |The pool at the big slide is super small, lots of unused space where they could have enlarged the pool. And it's shallow everywhere...4 feet |My last annoyance was the rules at the poolslide. There's always a staff member monitoring at the side of the stairs to the slide, and it highly depends on who is there what's allowed and what isn't. The majority were overly strict on not allowing anyone to come down the slide any other way except sitting down, but we had one instance where plenty of kids were coming down on their bellies, nothing was said until our son did it and he got in trouble for it. Left a bad taste and embarrassed him.|They really should ease up on the rules, it's not a super fast slide or anything that could cause an accident, let the kids have some fun.|Also each person has to wait at the bottom of the stairs until the previous person comes out of the slide, this isn't very efficient and makes the wait time longer. Let everyone go up and wait upstairs until the person comes out...||All in all we will be back simply because of the location and...

We purchased our stay here via a vacation package we received in the mail. I extended my stay beyond the package and that was easy enough. When we arrived we were surprised to find out that our package purchase included a timeshare presentation. We went, said no, sat through an attempted guilt trip, and still said no. They were very high pressure sales, and while I understand the reasons behind that tactic I didn't appreciate being told over and over that $700 a month was affordable. (Then when we said no, they tried to get us to give them a number we were comfortable with and then they couldn't meet it - they STILL tried to convince us it was affordable)

The room was okay. The washing machine was crusted with old detergent and smelled moldy. The dishwasher was caked in old dishwasher powder. When we ran it to clean our dishes, it did NOT get the dishes even a little clean. The rest of the rooms were nice, and we were pleased with the kitchen set up. We brought toaster bags because I don't like to mingle my food with other's left behind crumbs and I'm glad I had them with me.

The hotel was located close to SeaWorld, and nearby to many local shopping centers and restaurants. We were about 25 minutes away from Disney, which was fine for us. Parking was really scarce at the resort and we often had to park very far away from our room. Check in was fairly easy beyond the fun surprise of the presentation. Checkout was also easy, however our flight changed and we needed to leave a day early. We got no reimbursement for leaving an entire day early so I paid for an entire extra night we weren't there for - and apparently there was nothing they could do.

The pools were nice and clean. The other amenities we didn't really check out, other than the on-site restaurant. We were unable to order food from there as they did not have anything gluten free and we had a person in our group with a food allergy to wheat.

Overall it was an enjoyable stay without any major issues, but we did encounter several annoying inconveniences: the dirty washing machine, the non working dishwasher, icky toaster, parking far away, one of the outlets in the room didn't work, add the timeshare presentation. Honestly the presentation itself wasn't bad but the way they literally blew up my phone with calls and texts reminding me about it was insane. They also kept calling our actual room phone to confirm we were attending. It was incredibly annoying while I was trying to enjoy my vacation.

We would probably stay here again if we received another discounted offer, but I did not find the stay worth the retail pricing. There are other places in the area that I've had better experiences at that were more reasonably priced. They did offer us some discounts due to sitting through the presentation, which I took a picture of and...