Staybridge Suites Orlando Royale Parc Suites by IHG in Kissimmee, FL

The rooms were a bit tired and in need of renovation, but still totally fine all in all. The lobby, hallways, and parking lot reeked constantly of marijuana. Elevator B was scary to ride in, and I seriously question its certification. The pool and staff were really nice

I'm rating this hotel as "average" due to a few drawbacks, which I'll detail below. I did want to just say before I start to ramble and list a few negatives, however, that the service and staff at the hotel couldn't have been better, and no part of my review is a criticism of the good people working there that our family encountered. That said, for context: we're a family of four, we travelled from the UK, stayed here for nearly two weeks and decided not to drive and to rely on shuttles and Lyfts/Ubers. That said, positives and negatives: POSITIVES *Our main reason for looking at this hotel in the first place was in order to be able to have separate spaces within the same suite for our boys and ourselves, and in that respect the hotel more than delivered. Both of our boys had big double beds, we had our own room and a good sized living area. We didn't have any of the cleanliness issues I've spotted flagged in some reviews (not belittling those reporting them, just communicating our experience) and the hotel, while perhaps not the fanciest or most modern, met our needs brilliantly in this regard. *As noted the staff couldn't have been more helpful and sorted small issues - such as technical issues with the safe and door controllers - quickly and calmly. *Cleaners were unobtrusive and did everything required - again top marks. *The hotel was relatively close to the Disney parks and even while not inclined to use the shuttles (see below) an Uber or Lyft was inexpensive to this area (less good value for the further-afield Universal parks) *You're within walking distance of a Seven-Eleven, Walgreens, IHOP and Dennys alongside Kissimmee Old Town and the World Food Trucks, so in that respect it's a good location. NEGATIVES *The shuttle services were poor, sparse and in some cases illogically timed. The shuttle to Epic, for example, arrived a long time before standard park opening on some days, and there were limited options in terms of timing - the only parks to have more than one shuttle in the morning was the Magic Kingdom/Epcot bubble, and that just had one early and one mid morning. We didn't use the return service at all because there was only one option and the timing generally didn't suit us. We ended up more inclined to do things at our own pace and simply book Ubers and Lyfts in general rather than stress about timing things for the shuttles. That all said, my recommendation for anyone staying here to "do" the theme parks would be to have your own transport. We didn't want to drive for our own reasons, but having a rental car would've eliminated the above as a negative for us, and the location would've been absolutely fine. That said, the free shuttles are touted as a positive, so just to say - this didn't work out well for us, the actual ride actually made my wife feel quite unwell once or twice on older buses, and we did end up spending more than we had intended on transport as the alternative. *The breakfast area is quite small and we found the "traffic" indicator (as to when the breakfast area would be more and less busy) to largely be meaningless. It was largely too busy, we gave up a few times simply because we wanted to get moving and were having to wait for tables, and, if we're being honest, the offerings were limited and not great. To summarize: our negatives are obviously highly specific to our own experience so for us, this was a 3 out of 5, but that's not to say that the hotel didn't have its major positives - it's people amongst them - and not to say I wouldn't recommend it, with the above cavaets.

Decent location, good set up, bed is comfortable, pool is pretty, water pressure is great. The pillows are flat, couch was dirty, hot tub was dirty, shower head needed replaced, breakfast wasn't great, but the staff was awful, coffee was bad and THERE WERE ANTS EVERYWHERE!!!! Even in bed. The raccoons in the parking lot were good, free entertainment. The sales pitch to get us to buy into a time share (I assume) was super frustrating