Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center

Everything

The parking was difficult at times

The resort is beautiful and very clean, with great amenities and a unique design. It’s different from a typical hotel—there’s a large indoor atrium in the center of the property covered with a glass roof, which adds to the ambiance. I also appreciated how spacious the resort is and how close it is to many great restaurants (just a 5-minute drive away). The room we chose was conveniently located near the pool area, which worked out perfectly.

While the atrium looks nice in pictures, I personally didn’t find the atrium-view room appealing. There’s not much natural light, and the view is just of the inside restaurant and plants under the glass roof. Self-parking is $43 per day, and there’s also a $45 daily resort fee—which added up quickly for a six-night stay. The water pressure in the bathroom sink was very low, and the resort overall felt more geared toward adults. Over the weekend, it got crowded with families and younger kids, but for teens like mine, the amenities weren’t very appealing. We only used the pool and slides for two out of the six days. The FlowRider surfing activity wasn’t included in the resort fee—it cost an additional $40 per person, which was disappointing. In hindsight, I would’ve preferred a more budget-friendly hotel with free parking and spent more on outside attractions and water parks. This resort might be a better fit for families with small children who plan to stay on-site most of the time.

The Hotel was very nice, and the atriums were definitely well maintained and nice to tour. The kids loved the fish and the alligators

Several things. 1- The cost. Yes it's a nice-looking hotel. The water park is the main attraction and outside of that, there isn't much more to justify the cost. The cost of the room with all the fees, the extra cost to park. $50 for each chair at the pool. The overpriced food and basic amenities is hard to swallow. 2- The dining. In order to find the restaurants/menus, you have to download the Gaylord App. Fine. But, when you find the menus, they are all lacking one thing...a kids menu! There are no kids menus listed on the app which would have you believe they don't offer them. So, we didn't make any reservations because of this. We go to the sports bar because their menu is more kids friendly and find out...they do have a kids menu! The staff at the bar didn't know if other places had one so I had to walk to them individually and ask. To my surprise, they all have kids menus but by the time we found this out, there were no reservations available for any of them. Long waits for tables and bar food that's $$$ 3- Pool seat reservations. $50(+extra tax)/seat is ridiculous. But we got two of them and when we arrived, someone in a green shirt said they would be around to take drink/food orders and be delivered to our seats as part of the reservation. Except that was not the case. I waited ~30m for someone to come by. Occasionally you'd see a waiter run by who would either ignore you, didn't have the ability to take your order, or disappear before you could find where they went. I found the lady in the green shirt again and asked how to get an order, she said you can go to the bar and have it delivered. This was actually wrong, you can only order to go and come back to pick it up. 4- Other small things such as no one told me to keep the room key and give it to the parking attendant when we leave. Had I not questioned the process, I would have been double billed for parking.

Incredible amenities

Pricey