Disney's BoardWalk Villas

You live above a wooden promenade running along the water, with 1930s Atlantic City around you: candy-striped awnings, wrought iron balconies and painted timber. Disney Vacation Club owns the villas wing, which is the technical way of saying the accommodation comes with kitchens rather than just beds. Disney's BoardWalk Villas occupy part of the same long, pastel-painted building as Disney's BoardWalk Inn, curving around the southern shore of Crescent Lake.

Check-in happens in the BoardWalk Inn lobby under a hot air balloon chandelier, and villa guests are treated as BoardWalk guests throughout. You use the same pools, the same restaurants and the same transport. The difference sits behind your own front door, and on a 14 night British holiday that difference does real work.

Position is what people pay for. EPCOT's International Gateway entrance is a walk of roughly five minutes along the promenade, which is the shortest walk to a theme park from any Walt Disney World hotel. Disney's Hollywood Studios is about 20 minutes on foot past the Swan and Dolphin, or a Friendship boat ride across the water if legs have run out.

Early Theme Park Entry applies here as it does at every Disney hotel, giving your party 30 minutes in a park before the published opening time on every morning of your stay. Extended Evening Hours are the tier perk. Disney runs those late sessions at Magic Kingdom and EPCOT for Deluxe and Deluxe Villa guests only, and BoardWalk Villas qualifies, so you can stay until closing at EPCOT and be home in five minutes without a queue.

Noise is the honest trade-off. Entertainment on the promenade runs into the evening, Jellyrolls is open late, and villas on the BoardWalk side hear it. Rooms facing the Rose Garden or the internal courtyards are considerably quieter, and it is worth asking.

Begin with the Deluxe Studios, the entry category and the one most UK families price first. Sleeping arrangements are built around a queen bed plus additional sleeping surfaces, and layouts vary between villas, so check what is shown on the booking page for your own dates rather than assuming. Cooking is limited to a kitchenette with a small fridge, a microwave, a sink and a coffee maker. That covers cereal, milk, cold drinks and reheating last night's leftovers.

One Bedroom Villas change the category entirely. You get a separate bedroom with a door, a full kitchen with a cooker, a full-size fridge and a dishwasher, and a washer and dryer inside the villa. Anyone who has fed coins into a resort laundry room at ten at night with two overtired children will know what that is worth. Pack for a week, wash twice, and everyone travels with a smaller case.

Two Bedroom Villas add a Deluxe Studio alongside the one bedroom layout, giving two bathrooms and enough space for two couples or a family of six or seven travelling with grandparents. A three bedroom Grand Villa category also exists here, and inventory is very small, so it needs booking a long way ahead. Ask about it early rather than hoping something appears.

Views are sold as categories. Some villas look over the BoardWalk promenade and Crescent Lake, some over the quiet Rose Garden courtyards, some over the pool or the car park. BoardWalk views are lovely and lively in equal measure. Balconies and patios appear on many villas but not all of them, so confirm at the point of booking if sitting outside matters to you.

Practical details carry over from the deluxe side. Cots and high chairs can be requested, accessible villas exist across the categories, and housekeeping in a Disney Vacation Club villa does not follow the daily pattern of a standard hotel room. There is more on that below, and it is worth reading before you book.

Walk through a carnival entrance to reach the water and the middle of the day looks after itself. Luna Park Pool is the feature pool and one of the more characterful ones on property, around 184,217 gallons under a 1920s seaside amusement park theme, with grinning elephant statues spouting water from their trunks and vintage show posters on the walls. Depth suits mixed ages, there is a separate kiddie pool for toddlers and a whirlpool spa for adults.

Keister Coaster is the slide, a 200 foot run that starts inside a wooden roller coaster structure and drops into the main pool. Children who have been told there is no slide at other deluxe resorts tend to make straight for it. Height requirements apply, so check before making promises.

Quieter swimming is available at two leisure pools, one in the Rose Garden courtyard and one beside the Community Hall building, each with a whirlpool spa. Neither has a slide and neither has a queue, which is exactly the point at four in the afternoon when Luna Park is at full volume. Activities on the daily schedule include themed pool parties, pool games, relays and trivia, all listed in the My Disney Experience app.

Away from the water, the promenade is the recreation. Surrey bikes for four or six riders can be hired along the boards, street performers work the evening crowd, and there is an arcade for the hour when everyone has walked enough. Community Hall on the villas side lends games and runs simple children's activities, which is a genuinely useful hour on a wet afternoon.

Evenings are the resort's best trick. Stand on the promenade or the bridge towards the Beach Club and you can watch EPCOT's night-time fireworks over the lagoon without paying to be inside the park. Plenty of families here build one evening a week around exactly that, ice cream in hand.

EPCOT is effectively next door, and staying this close changes how you use it. Festivals run through most of the year, with Flower and Garden in spring and Food and Wine from late summer, and a five minute walk makes a one hour evening visit entirely reasonable rather than a whole expedition.

Crescent Lake gathers four hotels around it, so the neighbourhood is unusually rich. Disney's Beach Club and Yacht Club sit across the water, five to ten minutes round the path, and their Beaches & Cream Soda Shop is worth the walk. Swan, Dolphin and Swan Reserve add a further stack of restaurants that any Disney resort guest can book.

Disney Springs is a bus ride away with no admission charge, holding a two-storey World of Disney store, cinemas, live music and dozens of restaurants. Go on your arrival evening while everyone is still adjusting to the five hour time difference and nobody has the energy for a park.

Off property, the shops and supermarkets around Lake Buena Vista and Palm Parkway are roughly 4 miles east and are where most British families do the big grocery run that a villa kitchen makes worthwhile. Universal Orlando is about 10 miles north east on Interstate 4, which is 20 to 25 minutes outside rush hour and considerably more inside it.

Anyone with a hire car and a free day should know that Clearwater Beach on the Gulf coast is around 95 miles west, a comfortable morning's drive on Interstate 4. Halfway through a fortnight it makes an excellent reset before the second week of parks.

Adults and older teenagers get more out of BoardWalk Villas than almost any other Disney resort. Two park entrances within walking distance, a signature restaurant, a brewpub, a cocktail lounge and a duelling pianos bar on your own promenade means the evenings have somewhere to go. Very few Disney hotels can say that.

Families who love EPCOT should be looking hard at this and at the Beach Club. Popping in for an hour before dinner, coming home for a swim, then walking back for fireworks is a different holiday from bussing in once a day and staying because you have to.

Multi-generational groups work well in a Two Bedroom Villa. Two bathrooms, a full kitchen and a door between the grandparents and the children removes most of the friction, and Community Hall gives the youngest members somewhere to go on a rain afternoon. A three bedroom Grand Villa suits the largest parties if you can secure one.

First-time visitors travelling with toddlers who plan to live at Magic Kingdom should think twice. Magic Kingdom is bus only from here, and a nap-driven day means more time on coaches than this address deserves. Wilderness Lodge or a monorail resort fits that trip better.

Light sleepers and anyone chasing quiet should choose carefully rather than avoid the resort. A courtyard-facing villa on an upper floor is peaceful. A BoardWalk-facing villa on a Saturday night is not, and the price is the same either way, so the request you make at booking matters more here than at most Disney hotels.