Sonesta ES Suites Orlando – Lake Buena Vista — Hotel in Dr. Phillips

The only thing this hotel has going for it is the location, everything else is disgusting and low rent. I booked this hotel online and pre-paid, I then called to extend my stay due to weather and was told it could not be extended that I needed to pay for a separate reservation. Which I did. I had already paid for a late checkout on my initial reservation so I was told by Rob it would me moved to my actual check out day which had changed. When we arrived at like 11PM we attempted to check in and were met with nothing but problems. Online it says they are pet friendly up to 2 pets. It does not state they are not cat friendly, and they only allow dogs. I found this out AFTER I arrived at the hotel. So we had to make other arrangements for out car, I still had to pay for a pet fee. I did not receive any room service for the entire 2 weeks I was there. When I arrived I had pre-paid for the reservations (2 separate reservations) with a credit card which I lost at the airport, I explained this and put my debit card on file with them since the hotel was already paid for. They ended up refunding my charges on my credit card and charging my debit card (2 separate stays) without notifying me. There was a guest there who refused to leash her dogs, the dogs came after me and my children several times, the hotel refused to do anything about it. Mack was involved and kept telling me they were my dogs and that I was fine. They weren't my dogs, they were trying to attack me. The guest refused to leash them for her stay and made using guest spaces impossible due to her agressive dogs. The electronic doors were constantly malfunctioning. The room we intially were assigned to didnt work so we had to go down 3 flights of stairs to the front desk to get new keys, and they still didnt work, waited for maintenance and his didn't work. Had to get a new room and move all of the belongings which we had brought up to the 3rd floor. The room was disgusting. It just felt like there was sludge and grime everywhere. We laid blankets over the couch to sit on. There was not bedding to use the pull out couch and the hotel refused to provide additional bedding. My son needed replacement bedding while we were there due to spilling a drink, he waited over 5 hours before he could receive it. We were told there was no housekeeping and needed to bring our towels and trash down. We were told there was a laundry bin in the room, there wasn't. We checked in as 5 guests into a room that can accomodate 8 people but there is only enough plates for 4 people. The microwave didn't work correctly and only heated on 1 side, it melted several plastic bowls. The tubs were stained brown from feet and ineffective cleaning. There was stuff all over the floor. They di provide a broom since you are expected to do your own housekeeping, however the broom handle was broken. The AC in the king size bedroom blows directly at part of the bed, so when it kicks on its freezing. The windows were single pane (not hurricane rated, so not sure how they meet Florida code), so you can hear everything outside. The traffic on the backside is extremely loud. The spa turned green halfway through our stay. The pool door broke so we couldn't get access to the pool, we were told to use another gate to get in. Eventually the guests started propping the gate open. On our final day there we were called on the hotel phone and then cell phone and told we had to leave and were not allowed to be there. We explained we paid for late checkout (which was confirmed on check in and which Rob had written in his book for room 1033), the lady who spoke minimal english refused. My husband showed her the receipt and the itinerary from the Sonesta website showing our charge, she still refused and said we were lying and that we didn't pay it because it didn't show for her. We told her to check the book, she said it didn't matter and we had to leave. So we paid for late checkout and weren't even allowed late checkout. This place is just a giant...

Pretty bad value for the money, to be honest. Upon getting there's the reservation that was made for three suites got "lost in their system" and we had to re-reserve our rooms one-at-a-time with three separate transactions, making the check-in process over a half hour long. When we did get into our room, the place was spacious and had up-to-date furnishings which was nice. When we went to use the dishes though all of the glassware had a residue on all of them, similar to some other recent reviews here. Other than that though, the place was okay the first day, other than the living area being freezing and the bedrooms being super warm.

What really sets this place apart from other places that I've stayed at is how bad the service is. For starters, they only clean once a week, so we just got more and more uncomfortable as we'd get home hot, tired, and sweaty from our activities each day. The breakfast was also quite bad. The first day I went there they were out of milk and orange juice (somehow) and all I got were 4 crumbly muffins. We couldn't even sit down there either!

Another thing that really turned us off about this place was the front desk service. Because we didn't get the place cleaned/towels swapped daily like any other hotel, we ran out of towels the first couple days. To get more, we went to the front desk and it was completely abandoned in the middle of the day. We saw plenty of maintenance workers who told us that they can't do anything for us and that we had to wait for the front desk assistant who was "out for the time being". An hour later we got towels and went upstairs. At 10 PM, we got a phone call in our rooms saying that our towels were on the way, even though we already got them. This woke up the small child in our party that took forever to get to sleep and the best part is that the SAME PERSON that gave us towels in the beginning gave us even more hours later. Didn't even need to happen at all, and could've been prevented if they kept track of anything at this place. To add icing to the cake, all of our "fresh towels" had a super strong vinegar smell, so strong that it stunk up the whole suite for the night.

When it came time to do laundry, we learned that it's $3 to wash and $3 to dry, which is just a complete rip off. There was a change machine in the room thankfully but unlike most normal places that use quarters this place uses Chucky-Cheese-esque tokens that had no cash value. So an entire $20 was initially gone into these game tokens. We were able to get the remaining tokens exchanged after an hour wait. The dryer didn't even dry the half load we put in there!

Lastly, the pool was disgusting. I didn't really use it much because most of the day I wasn't here but the one day I went to the pool to lounge the limited capacity rule was not enforced at all. Place was packed with kids running and screaming and diving into the 3 foot area. Nothing was enforced at all. We took the child in our party to the kiddie pool and we were invaded by a bunch of kids that brought chairs into the pool. Ruined all the fun!

To sum this review up, there's really no point in staying here. For the price of the rooms, you get no free parking, zero cleaning service, a essentially non-existent breakfast, and a pool that you can't even use as an adult. If you just need a place to sleep to go out all day going do Disney, this isn't even a gold value either because the rooms are over $200 a night. The only reason this place even gets a star for me is that it's close to Disney World. That's about it. The Comfort Inn we stayed at on the way to Orlando was leaps and bounds better than this place and was half the price....

So, let me start by saying there are NO ELEVATORS! I want to make that clear for those who may be impacted by that. I am disabled and chronically ill and this was not well advertised at all when we booked online so we were initially given a third floor room which would have been lovely had there been elevators but without them that was impossible to manage. The stairs are pretty steep and even lugging one single suitcase up would have been difficult for a healthy person let alone 4 of them plus our pram and all the other things we need for me and our toddler. That needs to be made more apparent on their website and the other booking sites. The staff were great and upgraded us to a first floor suite because of that and the next day were able to put the seniors travelling with us on the first floor too thankfully once a room was turned over. The room was very dated but lovely and clean. We wiped down all the surfaces with antibacterial wipes as we do in every hotel since covid and they all came off clean, no dirt or grime. The toiletries are in large pump bottles in the showers which I love, no need to bring any shampoo, conditioner or body wash and no rationing those tiny bottles that some hotels provide. Plenty of clean towels, toilet paper, paper towel and washing up supplies. |Good location with a dollar tree, Wawa, Pizza Hut, kfc, walgreens and a few other outlets just across the street. The rooms are nothing amazing but like I said, ours was large, clean and had plenty of supplies. The bedding is very thin which isn’t a huge deal but the air conditioning is either warm or arctic so the bedding isn’t enough to keep warm and if you turn down the AC you are pretty hot. We ended up requesting extra blankets from the front desk who were very friendly and accommodating, I’d request some at or shortly after check in to save yourself going back in the evening as they don’t leave them avaliable in the rooms like other hotels do. Our AC was leaking very badly on the kitchen floor by the second day and after having to move and adjust everyone’s luggage to new rooms already we tolerated it so we didnt need to move again. They did send someone to check it out and bring us the bucket we requested to catch the water but they didn’t know what was wrong. The issue did resolve on its own after a couple days. This place is certainly ok for the money but we realised shortly after booking that we had actually meant to book the newly renovated Sonesta on international drive and ended up here by mistake so double check if you are booking and make sure you have the right one. That’s on us for not double checking the address. It’s not terrible, if you have already booked it then it will be fine but It’s mediocre compared to what we thought we were booking. They also slug you an extra $15 a day for parking which is just unnecessary and a bit of a cash grab. If they did away with the parking fee and maybe updated the rooms a little then I could see myself staying here again. I would have given it a 3 but the friendly staff and cleanliness of the place really gave things a boost. They are the backbone of this place and seem to really take pride in their jobs and keep things...