We are staying at CBR right now and so far it has been a mixed bag. We are in Martinique, and I would definitely recommend paying the extra for preferred location because we aren't noticing any construction at the resort at all. Our room is clean (well, at least it was clean when we got here. LOL) beds are comfortable. Refrigerator in room is absolute garbage and man from maintenance basically told us that it isn't meant to keep perishables cold. (WHAT?!) So we packed our refrigerator with ice and are using it as a cooler. We do see the Riviera Resort construction when walking to our room but we don't hear any noises from it. We were offered $10 per day for opting out of housekeeping.
Now the rough part. Our building lost power on Saturday night. Apparently some lightning struck something and it was out from 8 or 9pm (not sure because we were still at MK) until about 4am. It was SO HOT. My husband, in an effort to save our food because the ice was melting, had to walk over to Aruba (because ice machines didn't work in our building) and haul ziplock bags full of ice back to Martinique. Up the stairs, in the dark. In case you are wondering, there are NO generator lights on the outside of the buildings or in walkways. So we had to walk with the light of our cell phones with our stroller, kids, up the stairs, in complete darkness. Old Port Royale had power on a generator, no food or drinks and no ability to purchase anything, and people were lying on the couches in there. One little girl was vomiting because she had overheated. So we asked if we could move hotels. They said if we had a medical reason, we could move to Pop Century or Art of Animation only, and that every other room in all of Disney was completely booked. We basically told them that it would be ridiculous to try to pack our bags and carry them down the stairs in the dark at midnight, so we opted to stay.... which resulted in us missing rope drop for Hollywood Studios the next morning. The next morning, we woke up to a chipper voicemail offering us a refund of our room for the night and $100. We went to the desk and asked for fast passes for Toy Story since attempting to sleep in a hot, stuffy room caused us to miss our fast pass and rope drop, if we could at least have that. They said no. So... while I know this was not their fault, this was incredibly stressful and I think that they could have made an exception on the fast passes. We weren't asking for higher compensation, but it did ruin half a day of our trip.
Buses are no different than buses at any other resort. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes packed in like sardines, and sometimes everyone has a seat.
All staff have been friendly. Also, we ordered
Amazon Prime now and they kept our cold food cold until we picked it up. This was definitely cheaper than buying from the food court or gift shop.
I'll update if anything else happens, but so far it's all ok minus the hiccup with the power outage. I'd most likely stay here again. Kids LOVE the pool.