CL worth it?

[ww52]

I've read several dozen pages on this thread and have a general idea of what CL benefits get you - but I still wonder.

We have reservations at the Swan CL for $199 teacher rate vs. $129 for a regular room. Here is what I see we get for $70 per night (three people):

Continental breakfast each day from 7-10.
Snacks from 5-7.

We'll take advantage of the breakfast each day, but with some advanced shopping we could accomplish the same thing. Maybe that saves us $25. Of course CL would be more convenient.

The evening is less likely to add much since we won't often be around for that time.

So am I missing anything? I haven't read anything about the rooms being any better on the CL floor. I suspect the view is better since it puts us on the 12th floor - but I would think we could get a good view without paying the $70 difference. Is the $10 resort fee waived? Can you take bottles of water or snacks out of the lounge to bring with to the parks?

It would be a no brainer if we got the upgrade for free, or even with SPG points (I'm working on that and have a question on the Starwood thread about that). But is it worth $70?

Thanks

 

[ww52]

Sorry - meant to put this on the Swan/dolphin thread and hit "new thread" instead of "reply". Then tried to delete but could not.

 

[chrissyk]

Honestly, it's not. I'm sure that you'll get varying opinions on this, and this is JMHO of course. DH and I stayed at the Swan May 9th-11th. We had a great Priceline rate, and we used our Starwood points to add CL privledges. For 1250 points/night, the Club was worth it. I would not pay actual $$ for it, though. First of all, we asked for a corner king room on another floor...we wanted a good view of Illuminations and one of the nice corner king rooms. We got room 627, which was great! They still allowed us to have CL privledges w/o being on the 12th floor, which was great. That way, we got the best of both worlds...a great room and CL.

The CL offerings were decent, but not worth $70/night! You could go to the Boardwalk Bakery and grab yourself a breakfast of similar items for $10/day! The evening snacks were decent, but again, you could go to the Dolphin Fountain and buy yourself the same cookies (albeit a huge version!) for a few dollars. I'd say upgrade to CL if you have the points, but skip it and spend that $70 elsewhere if you don't. You can buy a lot of food for $70, even in WDW