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!
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 always a problem, but when large conventions, or those with raucous participants, are around, the ambiance of the resort is somewhat disrupted. Everything will be louder and more crowded, and you’ll find it harder to get tables at the restaurants.
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 Resort View room through our choice travel advisor, Lauren Quirk of Travel With Character LLC. We paid $553.50 per night, which was part of a 30% summer room discount. There were unfortunately no Annual Passholder offer rates available.
Rack rates for standard rooms at Yacht Club in 2026 start at $636 per night. Between standard offers and maybe discounted prices at Expedia or Priceline, there may be times when rates get down below $500.
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 purchase and book Lightning Lanes 7 days in advance of your trip, rather than 3 days in advance of your visit date.
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.
If you’re considering booking, be sure to check for active and upcoming construction or refurbishment projects at the hotel.
Arrival and Check-In at Yacht Club
We were coming from Pop Century as part of a split stay. We had bell services transfer our bags, and we just ended our day at EPCOT so we could walk right over to Yacht Club.
If you’re flying in, there are several ways to get between the airport and Walt Disney World. For our previous visit, we used Mears Connect. 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.
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.
Yacht Club, Beach Club, BoardWalk Inn, and the Swan & Dolphin are within walking distance of one another. 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.
This has changed in recent years, with Jellyrolls and Big River Grille closing, but our hope is Disney finds good use for those spaces and returns the Boardwalk to its former glory.
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 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.
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.
Stormalong Bay (above) is one of the biggest reasons to stay at Yacht Club (or Beach Club), and it—along with the proximity to the Boardwalk—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, including movie nights, campfires, pool activities, and arts & crafts. You can visit the page here and “Activities Schedule” has a link to the current PDF schedule.
Our Yacht Club Room
There are a variety of room configurations at Yacht Club, and this room had a king bed and a sofa bed. We can start with a video walkthrough of the room:
Personally, I prefer the sofa bed for Zoe because the armrests facilitate putting up a pillow barrier, and if the kid manages to fall out of the bed despite that it’s at least not as high as a queen bed (I’d add that Disney World now has bed bumpers available on request).
When I’d first seen the recent “soft goods” refurbishment from online reporting, I wasn’t that impressed. This is maybe because I was already a fan of the old designs, and why change a good thing?
Seeing the new theming in person, though, I’m quite impressed. It manages to be both fun and refined. It’s almost like by going hard one direction originally—dark woods, dark blues, formal style—and then walking it back a bit, Disney managed to wind up on the right middleground.
I always worried that a “fun” Yacht Club room would just feel like a Beach Club room, but this isn’t the case at all. This room successfully maintains the Yacht Club identity, it’s just a more Disney interpretation.
I’ve long been happy with these rooms from a functional perspective. There’s plenty of surface space, a Keurig machine, plenty of closet space, and lots of outlets, including a few USB-C ports.
The bathrooms likewise got a glow-up, with new wallpapering that takes these from rather generic hotel bathrooms to Disney bathrooms.
It’s worth noting here that while we absolutely loved this room, we’ve had issues on previous stays. Our last “Standard View” room was seemingly adjacent to the resort laundry room (Disney’s, not the one for guests), which led to the balcony being flooded with laundry steam. The laundry room also let out a lot of vibrations and noise. Finally, that room—which we were staying in with our toddler—had a barking dog next door.
It’s tough to know how to balance these issues. Disney can’t rebuild the resort, but we had paid over $900 nightly for that Club Level Room. I think some inventory management is called for to avoid guests paying that much for that experience. If you get assigned an unpleasant room and arrive early enough, you can always try to be re-assigned (but we often arrive at night after park days).
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 from which you can actually walk to two parks—EPCOT and Hollywood Studios.
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 Cake Bake Shop 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 probably 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. In recent years, 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. But first…
Before I talk about the restaurants specifically at Yacht Club, I have to point out that Cape May Cafe is just a few steps away at Beach Club (it’s literally at the junction where the two resorts connect). That restaurant has a character breakfast, which makes it a must-consider when staying at Yacht Club.
Now, onto the restaurants at Yacht Club proper…
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.
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.
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.
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 used to be perfect for a bar crawl, and AbracadaBar is still 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.
Disney’s Yacht Club Resort — Conclusions
Overall Rating — 4/5
Here’s how the conclusion to this review previously opened:
“I’m really torn on Yacht Club. Really, really torn.”
The basic issue was that while I love a lot about Yacht Club on paper, our actual most recent experiences had gone poorly. There were the room issues I summarized above, plus convention crowds at the bars, and some bad experiences at the Regatta Club (separate review). Experience always varies, though, and this most recent stay was flawless.
The positives for Yacht Club are clear. Yacht Club has great location, good table service restaurants and bars, and the best pool at Walt Disney World. The new rooms are fantastic.
The biggest downside that’s built into the resort itself is the lack of a good quick service option. I’m not willing to totally disregard this; it’s a serious problem for a theme park resort.
While past experiences had me on edge, our most recent, positive experience has to cut in favor of the resort, and I definitely think it’s worth consideration for the right party. So, who is that?
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.) You’ll probably be looking at room preferences and pricing to make that decision.
Overall I’m glad to have had a good stay at Yacht Club. It’s the resort I visited most as a kid, and it’s been jarring that it didn’t feel like “home” for the last few stays. Between the new rooms and an experience that just…didn’t have any flaws, Yacht Club is definitely one I’ll consider for future stays in the area!
All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered
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Be sure to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few weeks in advance. Good strategy will keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, EPCOT Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.
Know what to ride with our guides: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, EPCOT rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our Guide to Blizzard Beach and our Guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.
Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip.