We were there Dec. 17 - 21 so here is a quick report. I requested Cabanas and early arrival with early arrival taking precedence over room location since we drive down. We arrived around 1 and went to the front desk since I had not received a room ready text. I wasn't surprised, I think in over 30 years of going to WDW and staying on site I've had a room ready early maybe twice. CM said our room would be in Casitas 4 and would be an old room. O.k. so I didn't get Cabanas nor did I get early check in, oh well. We drove around and parked in the Building 4 lot and walked to the bus stop and were off to Epcot (we just hopped on the first park bus to arrive, which we normally do). Finally, around 5 or 5:30 got the room ready text, it was in Building 5, room 5307. O.k. so not in Building 4. We decided to make supper ADRs at Chef Paul's and the only thing available was at 8:45 so we just decided to hang around the park instead of going back to the room. Supper was not good by the way. It made for a long day since we started driving around 5:30 that morning and it was around 11 when we got our stuff out of the car and to the room. The room looked out over the lake, which was kind of nice. I never bother with the view at moderate resorts since it's not like you are going to keep your windows open and look any way. The room was pretty close to the stairs so that was a bonus as I prefer stairs to elevators, although we did use the elevator or arrival day and leaving day. So, room requests 0, room ready on time 0, location we were told we were going to be in 0, view good. This was not a renovated room and smelled like someone had had a very nice time with some pot when we opened the door but we were too tired to deal with moving so we just turned on the fan. My son (grown) is a huge sports fan and started to turn on the TV so he could get an ESPN fix and wouldn't you know it, no remote control to be found. I called down and a remote was delivered around midnight, he was fast asleep by then but I was awake. I have stayed at CSR twice before this, both times two nights during a split stay and enjoyed it both times, both times in the Cabanas and my son has stayed once, this was the first time we were staying for the entire time of the trip, 4 nights and it wasn't looking good so far. Next morning we were doing EMH at AK in hopes of getting on FOP and off fairly early so we just went to the bus stop without breakfast. The bus came in the time listed on the TV but as others have said, it's the first stop and by the time we got to El Centro it was beyond standing room only and they had to skip the stop. This was consistent throughout the trip, no matter what time of day we were on the bus. By the time we got back to the room that night, around 8:30 or 9, the pot smell has gone since we had left the fan on all day. Next morning, we got up and had breakfast at the QS, it was around 8:30 or 9 and pretty crowded still but we had no problems. We had thought we would just hop on the bus at El Centro but when we walked out the door it was real crowded, a bus had just arrived and it was already full so we just walked back to bus station 2. We were doing HS this day and I had actually made a FP for around 10:30 that morning, normally we would have had plenty of time to make it. When we got to the stop a HS bus was just leaving, 2nd missed bus that morning. The TV said 20 min. until the next one, o.k. no big deal. It turned out to be close to a hour before the next HS bus came, not sure what was up with that, we watched many buses come and go. The good thing was that when one came, two came because obviously they knew it was going to be crowded. That was really the only bus problem we had the entire trip. Each morning after the first, we ate breakfast at the QS with o.k. results. We went to the pool the first full day (AK day) for about 2 hours, we just sat in the hot tub most of the time while sipping refreshing adult beverages. As someone has pointed out the hot tub isn't really all that hot but it worked for us, it was 80 outside. Our third night there we were at Epcot and couldn't decide where we wanted to eat, we were tired of the booths and there wasn't anywhere in Epcot that was striking us (we had eaten at Tiffins the night before) so we just got on the bus back to the resort thinking we'd do QS. I got on
MDE and found an ADR for the Mayan Grill or whatever it's called in about 30 min. so booked it. We got off at our stop and walked back to El Centro since the bus was just too crowded for me to want to stand any more. Got there about 5 min. before the ADR. We loved the meal there, we loved the service and we loved the atmosphere. We ate at Chef Paul's, Tiffins, Rose and Crown Pub and lunch at Spice Road Tables and this was our second best meal the entire trip, Tiffins the best. Construction wasn't a big deal to us, we did have construction equipment outside our building many days but there wasn't any noise to bother us. By and large other than the whole room issue the first day, we had another enjoyable trip at CSR. We normally do split stays moving over to an Epcot resort for the end of our trips but there was no rooms to be had when I booked (3 weeks before we went) so this was our first time staying in a moderate the entire trip. I'll admit I wasn't thrilled with having to take the bus everywhere but that was just because we are spoiled beyond words of being able to walk to HS and Epcot, even though we had a car we just don't like to drive to the parks.