In this post, we’ll review Disney’s Yacht Club Resort, a deluxe resort at Disney World situated in the Boardwalk area between Epcot and Hollywood Studios. We’ll cover everything you need to know, from pricing to transportation to special perks. Read on to learn all about Yacht Club at Disney World!
Important Note: Disney has announced that from January 2025 through June 2025 (not 2024), Stormalong Bay, the feature pool at Yacht Club and Beach Club will be closed. We do not recommend staying at these hotels during this time, and recommend you instead consider Boardwalk Inn.
The Basics of Disney’s Yacht Club Resort
The Yacht Club is a deluxe level hotel at Walt Disney World in the Epcot Resorts Area. Deluxe resorts are Disney’s best hotels. If you’re considering Yacht Club, you may want to read some of our other posts. We have a ranking of the best Disney World deluxe resorts. We also have a guide to all the hotels of Walt Disney World.
And here are our reviews of all the deluxe resorts (links open in new tabs):
Review of Disney’s Yacht Club Resort (you are here)
And if you’d like to see where this resort falls overall, check out our complete Disney World hotel rankings.
One notable thing about Yacht Club is the convention center. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but when large conventions, or those with raucous participants, are around, the resort is not a great experience. Everything will be louder and more crowded, and you’ll find it harder to get tables at the restaurants.
As we’ll mention repeatedly in this review, Yacht Club’s biggest perk is its location, which leaves you within walking distance of Epcot (7 minutes), several resorts, the Boardwalk, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios (20 minutes or 12 by boat). If you have a trip specifically focused on these two parks (common during Epcot festivals or just for groups without young kids), Yacht Club is a particularly good option.
Yacht Club and Beach Club
If you’ve read our Beach Club review, you’ll notice several sections of this review are similar or identical to that review. Because the resorts are connected and share a pool, there is a lot of overlap in the two experience.
Regardless, the rooms and theming are distinct, and we cover the restaurants separately (even though you could easily walk to the other hotel’s restaurants if you wanted). Here’s the official map shared by the resorts:
Booking Yacht Club
For our most recent visit, we booked a Club Level Standard View room through our choice travel advisor, Lauren Quirk of Travel With Character LLC. We paid $946.13 per night, which was rack rate. There were unfortunately no Annual Passholder offer rates available. That’s usually our preferred way to book Club Level stays.
Rack rates for standard rooms at Yacht Club in 2024 range from $567 to $1046 per night. Between standard offers and maybe discounted prices at Expedia or Priceline, there may be times when rates get down to $475.
Staying at Yacht Club, you get the perks of any Disney stay. You’ll have access to free transportation to and from the parks and Disney Springs. You’ll also have access to Early Theme Park Entry and the ability to book your individual Lightning Lanes at 7AM (as opposed to when the parks open). Yacht Club is a deluxe hotel, so guests have access to Extended Evening Hours, granting these guests extra time in select parks on select nights.
Arrival and Check-In at Yacht Club
There are several ways to get between the airport and Walt Disney World. We used Mears Connect this trip, which will likely be the last time we use it. Our hotel was originally set to be the sixth stop. After an hour on the bus, we exited at the fifth stop—BoardWalk Inn—to get pizza and coffee there before walking to Yacht Club. It’s worth noting that Yacht Club’s stellar location was a convenience to us even before we got to the hotel.
Disney has pushed people toward online check-in the last few years. We checked in online and had a room assignment just before we got to the hotel, so we were able to head straight to our room. I had some Magic Band issues, but was able to use my phone to unlock the door until I visited the club concierge to recode my band (the front desk can also do this).
If your room isn’t ready via online check-in, you might be able to get bumped up the list by visiting the desk. Usually we’ll arrive at a resort and eat lunch, swinging by the desk before or after lunch if there’s no line. If we can get a room, great, otherwise we drop off our bags with bells services and go to a park.
If you’re staying club level, they’ll place a call upstairs and escort you up to the Regatta Club Lounge, Yacht Club’s Club Level lounge (which we’ve reviewed separately here). Alternatively, you can just head straight to the club yourself.
Yacht Club Grounds, Theming, and Activities
Yacht Club and Beach Club, while they are separate resorts, are connected and share a pool area (this isn’t a downside in our experience, more below). For this review, we’re going to talk exclusively about Yacht Club’s offerings.
As we emphasize repeatedly, all of Yacht Club, Beach Club, BoardWalk Inn, and the Swan & Dolphin are within walking distance. One loop around the Boardwalk, which takes you past all those hotels, is 0.8 miles.
(Ignore pricing on this old screenshot)
While the Boardwalk doesn’t compare to Disney Springs, the variety of bars and restaurants at your fingertips, plus the proximity to Epcot, make Yacht Club especially worth consideration for adults visiting Disney World, which is no doubt why the area is home to two of Disney’s conference centers.
Yacht Club consists of a single hotel building and a second building for the convention center. Most guests don’t need to know anything about the convention center, but we’ll note it does have a business center. The feature item in the lobby is a beautiful, large globe.
It’s one of the cooler features in a Disney resort, but it also sort of begs you to notice the comparatively small size of the space. BoardWalk, Beach Club, and Yacht Club all have smaller lobbies that are easily contrasted with the grandiose, open lobbies of Wilderness Lodge, Polynesian, Grand Floridian, and Animal Kingdom Lodge.
That said, it’s not really a small lobby:
Yacht Club is, as its name suggests, nautically themed. It doesn’t really hit you over the head as hard as it could (i.e. it isn’t as visually loud as the value resorts), sticking to the deluxe hotels trend of using understated features and simple displays more than kitsch to convey the theme.
The feature pool at Yacht Club is Stormalong Bay, the pool shared with Beach Club and widely regarded by experts as the best pool on Disney property. Stormalong Bay features a lazy river, a sand-bottom zone, and a water slide.
We don’t want to belabor this point, but Stormalong Bay (above) is one of the biggest reasons to stay at Yacht Club (or Beach Club), and it makes the hotel particularly good for planning a Disney World no parks day. If you’re not a pool person, then obviously this shouldn’t impact your decision, but it is a major highlight of the hotel.
There is also a secondary pool on the far end of the resort if you hate fun (there’s also a tennis court right next to this pool):
The farthest rooms on the first floor are a three-minute walk from the lobby at our relatively quick pace. That’s not huge, but it is sort of a bummer that they’re in the direction away from Epcot. You will be three minutes closer to Hollywood Studios, though.
The resort maintains a standard roster of activities:
Our Yacht Club Room
There are a variety of room configurations at Yacht Club, but this room has two queen beds. Please note that since this is a Club Level room it may have a slightly different configuration than other rooms. In particular, items such as individual toiletries may not be available outside Club Level.
Yacht Club was the first of the deluxe resorts to receive this type of refurbishment—hardwood, sleek but themed at every opportunity, better use of space. While I’m overall a huge fan of these changes, I will say that more recent updates, particularly at Polynesian, Contemporary, and Animal Kingdom Lodge impress me even more. (Note: pictures come from multiple stays just because, e.g., lighting on some item was better one day than another)
The room was relatively spacious, as is standard for rooms at the deluxe resorts.
On the bathroom and amenities end, it was nice to see mouthwash and lotion provided, and the shampoo and conditioner were bottled for personal use (values and moderates use large dispensers). The vanity area was actually a little smaller than expected, maybe even about the same size as at the moderate resorts.
There were plenty of outlets and a nice desk, which is a necessity for us. The furniture is all brilliantly designed, creating a very cohesive aesthetic. The curtains contain star patterns, and absolutely brilliant touch. A Keurig coffee maker is standard in the Yacht Club rooms.
I guess the couch is a little blugh. Nothing’s perfect.
We’d booked a standard view, which to be honest should be renamed something like “Bad View.” Here’s a look at the view from the balcony before I go on to talk about some…related…aspects of this most recent stay…
(Begin rant.) Okay. So, yes, we booked a “Standard View,” and that’s on us. But let’s be real, no one should ever get this view for $946 per night. This is a view of steam escaping from the hotel’s laundry room. It’s no fun to look at, and if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction it just renders the balcony unusable.
If this were the only issue with the room location, I could let it go (even though, as a professional, I shouldn’t, because $946 a night!). But the laundry room also emitted vibrations throughout the night that really messed with my head.
To be fair, Emily didn’t notice this sound the first night. The second night, she didn’t mind. But to me is sounded like having a car parked outside blasting bass all night. It wasn’t loud, but it was there. And by its nature, it was very hard to block out with white noise or headphones.
Weirdly enough, this isn’t even our first issue with sound at Yacht Club. Last visit, someone was having an absolutely explosive breakup over the phone well after midnight. That’s not something Disney can account for, so I’ve never held it against them.
But even weirdlier enough, we had another noise issue this stay—DOGS. Yacht Club is a “dog friendly” resort. This is good particularly for accessibility reasons. But what isn’t good is placing barking dogs in proximity to sleeping toddlers. Since Disney knows the ages of hotel guests, this is something they should account for. Fortunately, Zoe has grown up in relatively noisy environments, so the dogs didn’t pose a huge barrier to sleep (white noise machine helps, too).
One might rightly wonder “well did you bring these issues up to anyone?” And the answer is a resounding “NO,” for several reasons. First, we’re personally low maintenance, despite what this review (in my professional capacity) sounds like. I’m not going to waste my time and the time of hotel staff to maybe get a room change (if one is available) as long as my kid can sleep. (And if I’m going to get a note in my file, I’d much rather it be because someone actually took the time to read this review.)
Second, guests don’t ordinarily have time to address these issues during Disney vacations. Unlike typical resort stays, where guests plan to spend several days at the resort, Disney stays are mostly about the parks. If you’re leaving at 7AM and returning at 8PM, you don’t have much time to waste dealing with these issues. This brings us to the main reason I don’t complain about these issues…
For $946 per night, it shouldn’t be incumbent on a guest to bring these things up. These issues simply shouldn’t happen. Again, a screaming guest in a neighboring room is something Disney can’t control without me bringing it to their attention. But shoddy views, rooms adjacent to laundry facilities, and dogs booked near toddlers—these are all things a competent hotel charging $946 per night should account for in advance.
But all I can do is share my experience and reasoning. You very well may feel you either (1) wouldn’t be bothered by these issues or (2) would be wholly comfortable requesting a room change if anything like this happened to you. (End rant.)
Location & Transportation at Yacht Club
Yacht Club has one of the best locations on property. Along with Beach Club, BoardWalk Inn, and the Swan & Dolphin, this is one of the few hotels you can actually walk to two parks—Epcot and Hollywood Studios—from.
Epcot’s World Showcase is about an eight-minute walk from the Yacht Club lobby. Hollywood Studios is about a 20-minute walk from the Yacht Club lobby.
Keep in mind that when visiting Epcot, you’ll be using a different entrance than other guests. the World Showcase entrance is between the U.K. and France pavilions. We briefly discuss this in our Epcot Rope Drop Strategy.
Besides the two parks, you can also walk to all those other hotels and any other spots along the Boardwalk, which has restaurants like Flying Fish and Big River Grille, as well as a pretty good bar in AbracadaBar.
Besides walking, you can take a boat to Hollywood Studios (approximately 12-minute trip, running every 15 minutes) and Epcot (about 5-7 minute trip).
For the most part, we stopped using the boats years ago (we walk), but we occasionally ride them just to keep tabs on them. Generally, they’re more reliable than buses because they run on constant loops, but nothing is ever as reliable as the walking path.
Realistically, you’ll always prefer to walk to and from Epcot, at it would take you just as long to walk to the boat dock as to walk to Epcot. Hollywood Studios is a bit of a different story.
It makes sense to take the boat to Hollywood Studios and walk back, particularly if you’re at the park when it closes. The line for the boat gets quite long when the park closes, though we’ve often seen it long during the day as well:
To reach Magic Kingdom, you’ll have to rely on bus transport (15 - 20 min). Keep in mind that although you can walk to Epcot, you use a different entrance than the main entrance, so it isn’t practical to walk to Epcot and take the monorail to Magic Kingdom.
And, as always, to Animal Kingdom (15 min), Typhoon Lagoon, Blizzard Beach, and Disney Springs you’ll rely on bus. We’ve been satisfied with bus transportation at Walt Disney World. For whatever reason, it seems somewhat improved from 5-10 years ago when it was a constant source of ire.
Keep in mind that if you’re flexible, you can always hop on a bus for BoardWalk or Beach Club and walk back to Yacht Club from there. This won’t always save you time, but particularly in the middle of the day (when bus transport is at its worst), if you see a bus to Beach Club or BoardWalk, hop on it.
We always recommend you also consider using Uber at Walt Disney World when you’re in a hurry. There’s also Minnie Vans, the more expensive but “Disney official” option.
If you’re bringing your car to Disney World (or renting one), parking is once again free. Guests of Disney hotels also have free parking at the theme parks.
Finally, the Epcot Skyliner station is a short walk away, past Beach Club. This would allow you pretty quick visits to Caribbean Beach, Riviera Resort, Pop Century, and Art of Animation if you had cause to visit those places.
Theoretically you could walk to that station and then take the 20-minute trip to Hollywood Studios. It’s a bit awkward to go so “out of the way”, but it could be your fastest option, depending on your walking speed.
Food and Dining at Yacht Club
One of the nice things about staying at Yacht Club, is that for the most part your dining options are unlimited.
From Yacht Club you can easily walk to all the restaurants of Beach Club, the Boardwalk, the Swan & Dolphin hotels, and Epcot. That’s a really awesome feature. So keep that in mind while we quickly discuss the thing I hate most about Disney’s deluxe resorts…
Quick Service Food at Yacht Club
I have a huge gripe about the lack of quality quick service at Disney’s deluxe hotels. I’m very drawn to the food court setup at the value and moderate resorts. At Yacht Club, you’ve got two quick service options.
The Market at Ale & Compass is actually the Yacht Club’s store in addition to offering a very limited selection of quick service food. While we were there, they offered your choice of four hot sandwiches and a soup of the day for lunch and dinner.
Additionally, you’ll have pastries, chips, and pre-packaged food (cold sandwiches, salads). Market is usually open a bit after the parks close, between 10PM and Midnight.
Hurricane Hanna’s Waterside Bar & Grill is the pool bar (and grill) at Yacht Club and Beach Club. It has an okay lunch menu, which includes burgers, a buffalo chicken wrap, and a vegetarian quinoa wrap. Hanna’s closes earlier than Market, usually around 8PM to 9PM.
(Begin rant.) I’ll never understand why deluxe resorts don’t offer better quick service options. If you come back to your hotel after a regular Epcot or Hollywood Studios close, you’ll have no dinner options besides expensive table service (if you can get a table), expensive room service ($3 delivery and 18% service included) or very limited, unimpressive options at Market.
Yes—guests at deluxe resorts tend to be willing to spend a bit more. But that doesn’t meant they’re going to want a table service meal after being at the parks all day, or that they’ll want to deal with the delays and hassle of in-room dining. To me, nothing beats being able to come back at 11PM from an exhausting day, walk right up to a counter, and order a burger or pizza at a reasonable price. (End rant.)
Table Service Restaurants at Yacht Club
Yacht Club has three table service restaurants. We’ll provide brief overviews of them and link to reviews we trust. Our limited experiences with them (and our limited food knowledge generally) don’t qualify us to really speak to their quality.
Ale & Compass is the newer restaurant at Yacht Club, having opened in November 2017. It’s the resort’s casual table service restaurant, adjacent to the lobby, and requiring a single table service credit. It’s open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Reservations are recommended. Here’s a review from Disney Food Blog.
Yachtsman Steakhouse is the signature table service restaurant at Yacht Club, requiring two table service credits. It’s open only for dinner.
You’ll have to follow the hallway past Ale & Compass toward Beach Club to get there. Reservations are highly recommended. Here’s a review from Ziggy.
Beaches & Cream is a fun little soda-shop themed spot right on the border of Yacht Club and Beach Club, off the Stormalong Bay pool.
It’s most known for its legendary “Kitchen Sink” dessert—an ice cream sundae designed to serve four—but it also serves burgers, sandwiches, and a variety of alcoholic ice cream floats. In the past, it didn’t take reservations but now does, mostly because it has very limited seating. Here, again, is Disney Food Blog.
Bars at Yacht Club
Besides Hurricane Hanna’s which is a combo bar-quick service stop, there are two bars at Yacht Club.
Ale & Compass Lounge is the lobby bar at Yacht Club, neighboring the Ale & Compass restaurant. It’s in keeping with the modern aesthetic of the Yacht Club rooms—with dark wood and deep blues. Ale & Compass Lounge is a fantastic spot for a cocktail, but it can get crowded due to its proximity to the lobby.
Crew’s Cup Lounge is the bar attached to the Yachtsman Steakhouse It’s actually easy to miss if you’re not eating at Yachtsman, as the sole hall-facing door is a bit hidden. Crew’s Cup really captures the former aesthetic of Yacht Club.
The wood is something like oak / walnut—dark but lighter than Ale & Compass Lounge. It’s maybe better for wines than Ale & Compass due to sharing a selection with Yachtsman.
If you’re looking for bars, you have more options just outside the hotel. The Boardwalk is perfect for a bar crawl, and gems like AbracadaBar and the dueling piano bar, Jellyrolls, are a good reason to step outside your resort if you’re looking for a drink.
Shopping at Yacht Club
We previously mentioned The Market at Ale & Compass in the context of its limited quick service options, but it’s also the store at Yacht Club. As with all Disney’s hotel stores, it offers basic travel essentials as well as a limited selection of hotel-branded items. More recently, the hotel line has been sadly limited. As it’s a deluxe resort, you’ll also find some higher end options, like items from Vineyard Vines.
Disney’s Yacht Club Resort — Conclusions
Overall Rating — 3/5
I’m really torn on Yacht Club. Really, really torn. If I never actually stayed at the resort, it would easily be one of my favorites at Walt Disney World. I’ve been a fan of the rooms since they debuted. I love the location with walking access to two parks and the beautiful Boardwalk. I’m even willing to overlook the mediocre quick service options because access to the Boardwalk and two parks more than makes up for it.
It has two of my favorite bars—Ale & Compass Lounge and Crew’s Cup. And it has a fantastic pool, Stormalong Bay. It seems like to find anything wrong with Yacht Club you have to, well, stay there.
Our last two visits just have not gone well. The noise issues detailed in this post are a big part of the problem. I’ve also felt the crowds are a bit heavier than other deluxe resorts. All three nights of this recent stay I found Ale & Compass Lounge at full capacity when I walked by.
I should admit here that I’m also perpetually unsatisfied with the club lounge here (separate review). Since that’s part of the reason for the high price we pay, it’s only fair to say maybe I’d evaluate these issues differently at, say $600 per night than I do at $950 per night. Then again, isn’t $600 per night really enough to complain about whatever bothers you?
Let’s circle back to my own feelings once we cover some objective points. Families with younger kids or who will be focusing on Magic Kingdom aren’t getting much out of this location. It may make sense to pay more for a monorail resort or less for a place like Gran Destino Tower or Port Orleans French Quarter, since you’ll be taking the bus to Magic Kingdom either way.
If you like the convenience of this location for getting to Epcot and Hollywood Studios but you don’t like the price, consider Caribbean Beach, Pop Century, and Art of Animation. These three resorts are less expensive than Yacht Club but have Skyliner access to Epcot and Hollywood Studios.
If you’ve settled on this location, the choice comes down to Yacht Club vs. Beach Club vs. Boardwalk. That link covers that debate in more depth (Sidenote: Marriott operated Swan & Dolphin are also in this area, and are worth considering, but we’re pushing them aside for a moment as they aren’t Disney-operated hotels.) The short of it, though, is that Yacht Club has the newest rooms, Beach Club at least has Stormalong Bay, and BoardWalk certainly has a whimsical charm.
So, how to wrap up this…experience…of a review? For me, it comes with “take my review with a grain of salt.” Disney manages Yacht Club, Beach Club, and Boardwalk. If I fault management for the issues of my stay at Yacht Club, it’s hard to instead recommend Beach Club or Boardwalk. (In fact, I’ve had more bizarre noise issues—not kids screaming etc.—at Disney resorts than all the other resorts I’ve stayed at in my life.)
Objectively, I have to stand by my position that Yacht Club should be the best option at the Boardwalk. Best pool. Best rooms. That’s that. But subjectively, I won’t be rushing back here. Maybe I’m just salty, but I can’t get over the small headaches my recent visits have come with. Instead, I’m greatly looking forward to bringing Zoe to Beach Club and Boardwalk in the near future.
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