Our group of 7 stayed in three rooms in the Garden Wing of the Contemporary. All of them were Water View rooms, which is a step up from the standard view as they have a view of Bay Lake or possibly both the lake and the resort’s pool area, depending on the location of your room.
Here is the view from Room #5245…
While technically I guess we could see a little bit of the lake, our view was pretty underwhelming. But I guess that was enough for this room to be considered to have a Water View and charge the upgraded price for it.
Anyway, my husband and I were assigned to Room #5244 and my daughter and granddaughter were in the connecting room #5245. The photos that I took were of Room #5245, but the two rooms were identical with both having 2 queen beds and a pull-out sofa. At 427 square feet. the standard rooms at the Contemporary are the second largest on Disney property. Only the standard rooms at the Grand Floridian, at 440 square feet, are larger but the Grand Floridian rooms are much more expensive.
Both rooms had only a shower (no bathtub/shower combo) and both had two sinks in the room with the shower. There was a privacy door to the small room (aka water closet) where the toilet was located. My one gripe about the Contemporary’s bathrooms is that the sinks are not located outside of the room with the shower like at most of the other Disney hotels. This would allow for the other guests in the room to use the sinks/mirrors to get ready while one guest is using the shower. The glass shower door offers no privacy so you can’t even run in to quickly use the sink or toilet if someone is using the shower without invading their privacy. This is very inconvenient when multiple people are trying to get ready at the same time to get to a park early in the morning.
These rooms were identical to the ones I had recently stayed in the Main Tower of the Contemporary. They were the same size and set up. The only differences were the location (within the main tower building of the resort where the monorail platform, restaurants, and lobby are located vs. the outer building known as the Garden wing), view and of course, the price. In the past, when renting just one room I splurged and stayed in the Tower with a Theme Park View where I could walk out onto my room’s balcony and see Cinderella’s Castle and the Magic Kingdom fireworks. This was quite expensive but the experience was so memorable that I don’t regret spending the extra money. But with this trip we were needing 3 rooms for our group of 7 so I just could not justify the added expense of having our rooms in the main tower. But overall, I was quite satisfied with our rooms in the Garden Wing and have already reserved two rooms there for our upcoming trip later this month.
To answer the question as to why I chose the Contemporary for this trip and also our upcoming trip, I have a two word response, “Location” and “Price”. The 2025 trip was focused on my 3 year old granddaughter and therefore I knew we would be spending a lot of our park time at Magic Kingdom, where there are the most rides/attractions for young children. The same will be true of our upcoming trip, as we will again have our granddaughter (now 4 years old) plus her little brother (2 years old) will be joining us for his first trip to Disney. The Contemporary has a walking path to Magic Kingdom, which is super convenient. Though you can also walk to Magic Kingdom from the Polynesian and the Grand Floridian, the walk is a bit longer and the rooms are much more expensive than the Contemporary, especially if you stay in their Garden Wing.
Taste of Disney 