Your Hotel Room Views at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
Last week we launched Hotel Room Views, showing you the view you get from every Walt Disney World hotel room. We started with pictures from every room at All-Star Sports and followed that up with Disney’s Polynesian Resort and Saratoga Springs. We’re ending the week by rolling out Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. Cue up Aaron Copeland’s Rodeo as background music, and let’s get going!
The first page shows you a map of the entire Wilderness Lodge grounds. On the left side is a set of filter options you can use to find exactly the room you want:
- Room Type Includes Disney’s description of the view, and the bed type in the room (if we know it). For the Wilderness Lodge, we were able to get information on which rooms contain 2 queen beds, and which contain 1 queen and 2 bunk beds.
- Walking Distance to Lobby Useful for cutting down on walking time.
- Walking Distance to Transportation The Wilderness Lodge’s bus stop is pretty far out, so use this option to find rooms closest to the buses.
- Floors If you prefer ground or upper-floor rooms, you can specify that here
- Sound Level Helps find the quiet rooms at the resort
- Accessibility Identifies ADA-accessible rooms by feature, including roll-in showers and more
- Our Picks Shows only the rooms which the Unofficial Guide has determined to be the best at the resort.
- Prices You can also filter by price by entering the date you’re checking in.
Set any of these options and click “Show Matching Rooms.” The map will highlight in red if there’s a room that matches your options.
Click on the Lodge and you’ll see a map of all of the rooms which match, starting with the first floor. Rooms which match your filter options will be highlighted in red:
Click on one of the highlighted rooms and you’ll see the view from that room:
Once you’re looking at a room’s view, you can do a comparison of nearby views by going left or right one room, or up or down one floor.
Another really great feature on this page is shown in the green text just below the photo:
Bldg 6,Flr 1,NW-facing Room.Exmple: 3545,3543,3547,3541,3527,3525,3523,3521,3507
This is the exact wording to give Disney (or your travel agent) to request that specific room, and rooms like it if this room isn’t available. During this project we learned that Disney’s reservation system may only have 80 characters of text to make room requests, and we’ve ensured that this text fits in 80 characters or less. While there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the room, by telling Disney the room you want and its alternatives, you increase your chances.
Why is this important?
There are definitely rooms with bad views at the Wilderness Lodge. If you don’t make a room request and leave the choice to Disney, you could end up with one of them. For example, if you’ve reserved a Standard View room at the Wilderness Lodge and let Disney pick your room, you could end up in room 4046, with a view of … trucks:
Or you could request on of the rooms on the other side of the resort, 4091 through 4099, and get this view:
Other Features
You’re also able to leave public reviews and private notes about a room, rate a room, and mark a room as a “favorite.” When you mark two or more rooms as favorites, you’re able to do a side-by-side comparison of each room’s view by clicking the Compare Favorites link on the left side of the page.
We expect to have every Disney-owned resort in Orlando available by the end of this year. That includes DVC resorts, suites, and more. Here’s the approximate rollout schedule:
| Week Ending | Resort |
| October 4 | All-Star Sports Done! |
| October 11 | Polynesian Done! Saratoga Springs Done! Wilderness Lodge Done! |
| October 18 | Port Orleans French Quarter Port Orleans Riverside Caribbean Beach All-Star Movies Pop Century |
| October 25 | Coronado Springs Fort Wilderness (campsites and cabins) |
| November 1 | All-Star Music Art of Animation |
| November 8 | Animal Kingdom Lodge Beach Club Yacht Club |
| November 15 | Contemporary Resort BoardWalk Inn Grand Floridian |
| November 22 | Bay Lake Tower Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas |
| December 6 | Wilderness Lodge Villas Old Key West Saratoga Springs Treehouses |
We had a lot of cooperation from Disney executives and resort staff to help collect these photos. For the deluxe and DVC resorts, we’ve got pictures of most of the first-floor rooms at every resort. For upper-floor rooms, we’ve got sample photos from different parts of each wing or building, showing the approximate view you’ll get at each room.
If you’ve got photos of the view from your room at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, please email them to us! You’ll be helping out other families planning their visit.
Whether you’re taking a honeymoon or taking the kids on their first trip to Walt Disney World, we’ll help you find the perfect hotel room.
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Just wondering if there’s an updated timeline for this amazing project! I can’t wait until it’s complete. I’ve already been using the completed ones as a reference point!
This whole thing is absolutely FANTASTIC!! Great job!!!! Wish you could work out the bugs with My Disney Experience. Now for my stupid question. I can’t figure out when and how to communicate room requests to Disney. The online check-in only gives the option of checking 2 check boxes. When, where and how in the process does one communicate their requests using your green text to Disney?
Thanks Kathy! I think you have a couple of options after booking. One is to call the hotel and make your specific request known. Another is to fax the hotel.
Disney’s website has a place to note for special requests, but apparently it’s only available during the booking process, not after. I’ll check and verify, but for now contact the hotel through fax or phone.
I think there is a bug. When I search for Courtyard view queen/bunkbeds without any other parameters, I’m only being returned three rooms (4013, 4017, 4021), and when I click on those rooms, I’m shown a view of the parking lot from a nearby room (4044).
Katy, I’m getting 125 rooms back when I do the same search. Can you click the ‘Clear Filters’ button and try again? Let me know what happens.
That appears to have fixed it. Sorry for the false alarm!
Yeah, I saw the views of the standard rooms. I think that it will be worth it to upgrade to woods. But, if we didn’t upgrade what would you say the best standard room is?
Hey Nick – Wilderness Lodge 4091, 4092, 4093, 4094, 4095, 4096, 4097, 4098 and 4099 would be the best views in the “Standard View” category. On our new WL page, filter for “Standard View / 2 Queen” rooms, then go to the 4th floor and look at the highlighted room in the lower left corner.
Hey Nick-It’s tough to say whether Disney will upgrade any reservation.
An upgrade to Woods View is around … $25/night? The thing is, a lot of the Standard room views are really bad, so if view is important to you, then yeah, I’d say it’s worth it.
Have you seen the views from the standard rooms?
Hi Len, If we booked a standard room (WL) during one of the slowest weeks of the year, Will Disney upgrade us to a woods view for free. If they don’t, how much extra do you think it will cost to upgrade, also, do you think it is worth the extra price for a Woods/Courtyard view
Thanks,
Nick
HI Len,
Is there a way to tell which room connect to another room? We will need this on our next trip. Thank you.
Hey Ali –
Good question. I’m checking on this. We’ve done the programming to show these, it’s getting the information that’s hard.
Hi Len,
This is a great idea – how about adding the Swan and Dolphin (i know they’re not 100% official disney but they are on property!) they have some varied views!
Thanks David! We’re going to talk to the Swan and Dolphin when we finish the Disney hotels.
I stayed in room # 4024 woods view bunk bed two years ago and will send in my room view pictures. We could see the castle in full view and two glimpses of the monorail. Also could hear the Electric Water pageant even though we could not see it. Very quiet too!
Thanks Karen! I’d love to see photos.
Your program has some serious problems. Selecting courtyard view room 4023 gives “approximate view from nearby room 4044”, a standard room with view of trucks! So a room on the other side of the hallway with a completely different view category… which isn’t very helpful and could be very confusing for someone who didn’t have the room # chart.
And that was just one example… there are courtyard rooms with views of woods, etc. And you might want to check what floor some of your views were actually taken from. Example, View from Room 4077, where
you look to be close to ground level and looking up at floors 2 and 3.
Ah, okay. Thanks Christine. We’ll take a look at this. It should be simple to tweak the way we’re figuring out the closest room.
I take it you like the new feature? 🙂
It depends on how busy they are. If you’re going after, say, December 19th, pay out now – there won’t be any rooms available to which Disney could upgrade you.
If you’re going before it gets crazy, you could take your chances and just offer to pay for the upgrade if nothing free is available.
Love love love the new feature. I’ve spent years googling different room numbers trying to find out where the best rooms are, and reading tons of trip advisor reviews…usually to no avail.
My fellow customers may hate me for this but you could significantly increase the price of subscription just for this feature.
I’m in WDW from 7-18 December. Chose the dates based on the crowd calendar 🙂
Please make ‘Touring Plans Geek’ t-shirts in big girl sizes… You’ll get at least one buyer!
Okay so I’ve spent the entire day since you posted this article looking at every damn room in advance of my December trip and I have my ‘yes’ rooms and my ‘no’ rooms. 😀
Question: having booked a woods view room I’m wondering what my chances are of an upgrade to a courtyard room… Do Disney tend to upgrade people if they cheekily ask or am I better off paying out now?
Thanks Len
Len, This is really great! We usually switch year to year between the Poly and WL. While I use Steve’s site religiously, there isn’t anything great out there for WL. As we venture beyond MK resorts, I’m sure I will be using it for those as well. Thank you and your team.
Thanks Debbie! The team did a great job on this, and lots of folks are sending in their own photos. I hope it’s useful for families planning their trips.