Sheraton Lake Buena Vista Resort

The Sheraton Orlando Lake Buena Vista Resort holds four hundred and eighty-six rooms across six floors, on South Apopka-Vineland Road, a five-minute drive from Disney Springs. It is a large, recently renovated hotel, and it compares mainly on three lines: the water, the fees and the shuttle.

Two pools, a slide, and connecting rooms

Two outdoor pools open from eight in the morning to ten at night, a children’s pool with a slide, two hot tubs and cabanas for hire. That is more than the category usually offers at this distance from the parks.

Connecting rooms are available, which solves a family of five or six better than a sofa bed — provided you ask for them when booking rather than on arrival. Three addresses on site: Zest for all three meals, the 27 Palms Bar & Grill by the pool and the Springboard coffee counter. Pets are not accepted.

What “Disney Good Neighbor” means, and what it does not mean

Good Neighbor is a designation Disney grants to hotels outside its own property. It says the hotel meets a standard of quality and sells Disney tickets at the front desk. On its own it grants no park benefit whatsoever. Dozens of Orlando hotels carry the label and receive nothing beyond it.

The benefits come from separate lists that name each hotel individually. A property is on one or it is not. Most comparison articles blur that distinction, and it is the first thing to check before booking anything in this corridor.

Early entry: this hotel is not on the list

The Sheraton Orlando Lake Buena Vista Resort does not appear on Disney’s Early Theme Park Entry list. Seven hotels in the Disney Springs Resort Area do, and every hotel owned by Disney does. Everywhere else in Orlando, including most of the properties that carry the Good Neighbor label, the gates open at the published time and not a minute earlier.

Said plainly before departure, this costs nothing. Discovered at the turnstile on the first morning, it colours the whole trip.

Getting to the parks, and the parking trap

The shuttle is covered by the resort fee charged every night: it is prepaid rather than free, and the fee applies whether you board it or not. Have the front desk confirm on arrival which parks are served and at what times. Parking is billed separately, self or valet, with in-and-out privileges. Disney Springs is a five-minute drive away.

Hotel parking and theme park parking are two different things. Confusing them is the most expensive misunderstanding in the sector: a family that budgets nothing for parking pays for it again every morning of the trip. Your advisor has the current rates.

And since 28 June 2026, Disney checks room keys on its buses leaving Disney Springs. Parking there to catch the Disney network for free was a shortcut regulars knew well. It closed.

Restaurant reservations, one day at a time

Everyone books Walt Disney World table service sixty days ahead. The difference is not the window, it is the block. Guests of a Disney-owned hotel book the whole stay at once on day sixty. Staying off property, you book one day at a time, each at its own sixty-day mark.

Over seven nights that means the on-property family takes the sought-after tables in a single morning, while you come back seven mornings running and arrive behind them. The remedy is a calendar and seven alarms, set for 6 a.m. Eastern.

Disney Springs, and the evenings you do not go back to a park

Disney Springs costs nothing to enter, holds more than a hundred restaurants and shops, and stays open late. It is the escape valve of a trip: the afternoon the parks overflow, the evening nobody has a queue left in them, the four o’clock rain that arrives most summer days in central Florida.

You drive there from this hotel, and parking is free. On weekends the garages fill early in the evening, so arriving before six changes how far you walk to the first shop.

Who this hotel suits

It suits families who want water on site and connecting rooms, and who intend to use the shuttle every day, since it is already paid for. It suits you less if you rent a car: the resort fee and the parking stack up. Nights count toward Marriott Bonvoy, which no Disney hotel allows.

It suits you less if the point of the trip is to live inside the Disney bubble from the moment you land. There is no charging to the room in the parks, no Disney transport at the door and no Disney dining plan.