Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace Review (2024)

We recently stayed at the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace-Disney Springs Area. Before we get into the review, I need to make sure you understand that this is a different hotel than the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista- Disney Springs Area. This one-word difference will move you down the road a tenth of a mile.

The Hilton Palace is a large convention resort with 1,101 rooms. It consists of two parts, the 27-story tower situated over the dining and lobby areas, and the 4-story Island building, which is closer to the pool and Disney Springs.

The prices of the hotel are reasonable compared to most Disney-property resorts. However, when comparing, make sure you factor in the parking fee ($25 for self-parking, $35 for valet parking) and the resort fee ($39). This is important because currently Disney-owned hotels do not charge resort fees or parking fees. Another thing to consider is that Disney does not charge for parking at the parks for Disney-owned hotels. You’ll have to shell out $25-30 when you head to Magic Kingdom or one of the other parks.

Here’s a shot of the lobby. Front desk ahead, bar to the right.

The Hilton Palace is a Good Neighbor hotel, which means it has a special partnership with Disney that does offer a few perks. Currently, guests staying at the Hilton Palace can reserve their hotel and park tickets as part of a package, can take advantage of early entry, and, oddly, 50% off golf club rentals at the golf courses.

Hotel Location

We booked the hotel because it was close to Disney World and Disney Springs but came at a cheaper price tag, especially for a suite. But how close is it?

Parks

The Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace is a Disney Springs hotel, so it’s not extremely close to the parks. It’s roughly 9 minutes to Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Hollywood Studios, and 11 minutes to Animal Kingdom. All of this is dependent on traffic.

We found this to be accurate when we drove our own car. The Hilton buses don’t have to make multiple stops like they do at some Disney resorts, so as long as you don’t have to wait for a bus a long time, the drive will be short as well.

Disney Springs

What we really loved about the hotel is its proximity to Disney Springs. It’s about a 10-minute walk from the Tower and about a 5-minute walk from the Island Building to Disney Springs. We’ve also stayed at the Drury and B Resort, which require you to cross several other hotel entryways and watch for cars. The Hilton walk was a straight shot to the elevator and then across the skywalk to Disney Springs. No street awareness necessary.

My middle daughter earning her keep on the short walk to Disney Springs. We are standing next to the Island Building, and you can see the Aerophile balloon in the distance.

If you love the shops, the live music, and the restaurants at Disney Springs, this hotel is closer than all the Disney resorts except for one certain part of Saratoga Springs. Here’s some ideas of things to do with your family at Disney Springs.

My daughters and son (in the stroller) heading to Disney Springs across the skywalk.

Amenities

The Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace has all the amenities you’d expect from a resort hotel. It has a small arcade my kids loved when we were there. It has guest laundry, but only in tower, which pretty much excludes the island building guests. We stayed in the Island Building and therefore didn’t attempt a long walk just for laundry.

There’s also a fairly large gift shop with all the Disney and vacation items you might need. We bought some $7 toothpaste and $2 Advil (2 whole capsules!). The price made me feel better about the gouging I experienced from Disney. Check out the $7 chap stick.

$7 chap stick is crazy. It’s even crazier when you realize that it might cost $200 for the whole box.

The Buena Vista Palace used to have character meals and a full-service spa. These things are no longer offered. My guess is that they were casualties of covid. You can still see the pool for the spa behind a locked gate at the base of the tower.

The best amenities are the dining, bars, and pool, so I’ll cover them in the next sections.

Dining

Subway tile and a typewriter font spoke to the hipster in me.

Despite having such a large facility, the Hilton has only one real restaurant, Letterpress. We only ate there for breakfast one morning (because it’s expensive), but it was amazing. Great food, neat atmosphere, great service, and beautiful views on the water.

The girls loved the breakfast at Letterpress.

Buena Vista Palace also has a counter-service restaurant called Citrus 28 that makes hot breakfast sandwiches, pizza, and other items. They also sell grab-and-go food. These items were affordably priced and fast, perfect for heading to the park. I’m a big fan of the subway tile they used as well. We got breakfast here most days and really enjoyed it.

The counter at Citrus 28. They had amazing breakfast sandwiches, and a cooler off-camera to the left filled with everything you could need.

Finally, the Palace has 3 bars: one in the lobby called Sunnies, a sports bar called Blue, and a pool bar called Shades. Each has a full bar and an array of bar food to order. Since Sunnies and Blue were in the Tower, we never went there. It was almost faster to walk to Disney Springs if we wanted a drink, and it was December, so we never had a reason to hit the pool bar. More on that below.

Sunnies bar in the lobby. That must be Lou Bega in the back there.

Pool

The pool at Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace is amazing. It competes nicely with the Disney resorts. It has zero entry areas, splash pad areas, and a large lazy river with inner tubes. It also has a hot tub, a nice pool bar, and green space with games.

I couldn’t take a picture of the pool to do it justice, so I borrowed this one from the Hilton website. As big as this is, it still doesn’t show you the hot tub or the green space. (Photo cred: Hilton)

They keep the pool heated in the winter, so I’m told, but the highs were in the 60s during our trip. Therefore, we never mustered the courage to get in the pool. Despite a low crowd in the hotel (at least in the Island Building), there were always at least a dozen guests suntanning and swimming at any given time.

Room

My room experience was probably the worst part of my stay at the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace. Let’s start with the good. The rooms here are spacious. The tower has great views, especially if you get a high tower room facing Disney Springs, EPCOT, and Magic Kingdom. And most of them come with balconies or patios, which you can only find at deluxe Disney resorts.

They also were not overly expensive. We booked a suite for my family of 5 and managed to get it for under $300 a night. The room was clean and orderly when we arrived. I also was pleasantly surprised that the suite came with two bathrooms (a full and half bath). I thought Disney was the only company to offer this. We love it because we have a toddler that can sleep in a pack and play in the master bathroom while we use the guest bathroom.

Here’s a gallery of the rooms. I forgot to take pictures before we threw our stuff everywhere. I’ll blame the kids.

Another unique part of the hotel is that all the windows were mirror-finished on the outside. That gave the building a unique reflection, usually of the sky, and also allowed you to keep the shades open without worrying if people were looking in.

The other good parts are that the Island suite where we stayed was so close to Disney Springs, and the hotel was extremely quiet. However, both of these things come with caveats. The Island building is close to Disney Springs but a long way from anything else. There is no self-parking near there, and all of the amenities are in the tower, which is at least a 5-minute walk through the pool.

Also, it was extremely quiet because no one was there. We checked out three days before Christmas, which was extremely busy at the parks, but no one was in the hotel. This makes me nervous for the future of the hotel. I thought maybe there were more guests in the tower, but the breakfast buffet at Letterpress was empty as well. Perhaps we were in between conventions.

Here was the roughest part. I booked the room for 5 people, but housekeeping forgot to put sheets on the pull-out couch (the only other bed was a king). It took from 8PM until 11PM for them to bring sheets. I had to hunt down housekeeping/security in the hallways after calling the front desk 3 times.

Our door was old and expanding from humidity. It wouldn’t shut without putting my shoulder into it, which also made an extremely loud noise. The noise was bad at night while the kids were sleeping, and it was a safety hazard if we weren’t careful to shut it all the way when we left.

The Island building was also carelessly constructed. One of the lobbies had a beautiful waterfall, but when you were above it (floor 2 or above) you could see exposed unfinished plywood. Also, since the hotel was built in 1983, there were many parts that felt dated. There was lots of fading awnings as well.

Finally, the Island Building is constructed as 3 or 4 parts with triangular lobbies, with rooms on all sides of the triangles. This made for extremely confusing navigation. It took two days before our elementary-age daughters could navigate it, and in case you think I’m exaggerating, bell services got lost trying to bring us our luggage.

It’s possible that the Tower is much better cared for and has better hospitality, but the Island was really close to Disney Springs. All in all, after getting our bearings and coming to terms with the issues, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay.

Transportation (link to articles)

Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace has a fairly robust transportation system. It runs buses every 30 minutes around park open and park close, and it runs them every hour in the middle of the day. We never used the buses because we drove, and we like to drive to the park because it’s easier with the stroller for the baby.

My toddler might have had too much fun on the Mears bus from the airport (my wife drove our car separately a day earlier). I’ll let you try to figure out what’s going on here.

Mears provides the buses, which is the same company that provides Swan and Dolphin bus transportation, and it’s the transportation from the Orlando airport to all the Disney hotels and many Good Neighbor hotels. I’ll say it again: Mears provides transportation from the airport directly to the Palace. Here’s some other options for airport transportation if you don’t want to take the bus.

Conclusion

We liked our stay and might go back if the price is right, and we’re planning on spending a lot of time at Disney Springs. We enjoyed the food, will probably enjoy the pool, liked the vibe, and the location.

For an offsite comparison, my wife prefers the Hilton Palace to the Drury because of the location and pool (even though we didn’t use it). I prefer the Drury for the room renovations and free food/drinks. One other major benefit is the Mears transit from the airport to Hilton, which Drury doesn’t have. Here’s my review of the Drury.

Have you stayed at the Hilton Palace? What’s your favorite Good Neighbor resort? Let me know in the comments.