Hi Becky,
Welcome to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! I am delighted to hear that you are considering
Disney's Polynesian Village Resort or
Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows. My family absolutely loves Disney's Polynesian Village Resort!
First, I suggest that you review the room types and decide which would best suite your needs, especially if traveling with a family. We stayed in a standard view room on the first floor with a super cute patio and a view of the monorail. There are also rooms with a view of the pool or marina, lagoon or theme park. The villas have deluxe studio rooms with standard or lake views. The bungalows are gorgeous options for larger families. You might also want to consider a Club Level room. Although we have only stayed Club Level at Disney's BoardWalk Inn, we enjoyed it.
Before we arrive, we always find a resort map online to help us see exactly where rooms are located in relation to the main dining areas. If you click on the resort map located on the resort's homepage, you can enlarge the map to see building names and locations. There are also quite a few variations of the resort map that can be found on other sites online. I prefer the ones that provide some sense of the room numbers as well. We prefer rooms near the Great Ceremonial House because we want to be closer to shopping and dining. We stayed in Aotearoa on one visit while another family we knew stayed in Samoa. Our friends loved being close to the pools in Samoa.
We also adore Disney's Polynesian Village Resort because we could take the monorail to Magic Kingdom and some of our favorite restaurants are located at other resorts that have access to the
Resort Monorail, so we had several great breakfast and dinner options. Our favorite restaurant is located in this resort -
'Ohana. We always make a dinner reservation at 'Ohana during the time of the Happily Ever After fireworks show so that we can see the fireworks while dining.
Disney's Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show is also located at this resort. The dancers and music mesmerized our girls!
Becky, we love this resort because it is incredibly relaxing. As much as we appreciate the excitement of vacationing at the Walt Disney World Resort, we embraced the tropical spirit here that rejuvenated us every day on our last visit!
Magic and memories,
Donyell