The short answer is YES! For our family, I feel it was worth it. I will share my thoughts on the resort so you can see if it is worth it for your family too!

We paid $1382.00 on Priceline for 5 nights at this resort. It was $229 a night plus tax and fees. Was it worth it? Yes! Because…

1. The atmosphere. Just walking around the resort was an experience. Everywhere you looked was decorated in the theme and was larger than life.

2. The pools. There are 3 pools- a Little Mermaid themed, a Cars themed, and a Nemo themed. The Nemo pool is in the center of the resort, is VERY big, and has splash pads and water playgrounds. In fact, this pool is the largest pool of all Disney World Resorts. It even has a beach-like entrance so little ones can play in a shallow area. There are plenty of lounge chairs and tables to sit at in all 3 areas. The tables have umbrellas for shade. There are also pool towels provided, and they are easily accessible. The Nemo pool has a station outside to fill up the refillable resort mugs with cold pop while you’re still in bathing suits. All 3 have numerous life guards on duty at all times and are open 10 am to 11 pm.

3. The food. The resort has a cafeteria open 7 am to 11 pm daily. It serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast items are around $8-12. We skipped breakfast here to get to the parks early, so we didn’t try anything. Lunch and dinner meals are around $10-16. Everything we ate here was delicious. A large cheese pizza is $20.99. The Nemo cheesecake was beautiful AND delicious ($6.79)! There is a refillable resort mug for $21.99 that you can refill at the resort during your entire stay as much as you want with fountain drinks, tea, and coffee. We found this to save money. We filled up with coffee on our way to the parks, and then filled up on pop several times after the parks each day.

4. The activities. They have an outdoor kids movie, like Finding Nemo, every night at 8:30 pm outside of the Nemo pool. They have complimentary marshmallows to roast at a campfire every night from 6:30-7:30. They also have outdoor checkers, an arcade, a gift shop, and movies playing in the cafeteria. These are all fun extras!

5. The 30 minute early admission to the parks. Every day, you can get into any park 30 minutes early with your resort stay. Arrive even earlier than you think, because lines form, and they sometimes start letting people in earlier. At Animal Kingdom, we arrived at 7:05, got in line by 7:10, and they started letting us in at 7:15 for the 7:30 early entrance. We were in line for the Avatar ride by 7:32 and still had a 20 minute wait (other people run faster than we do…🤦‍♀️). The wait times jumped quickly to 40, 60, and even 105 minutes, so our early arrival really paid off!

6. THE SKYLINER! This is the best perk of this resort! You can easily take large, sturdy cable cars to Epcot or Hollywood Studios. They run continuously, and there’s hardly a wait. You can only get this from 3 other resorts besides Art of Animation, so this is a BIG plus!! These opened in 2019 and they are SO much better, faster, and more fun lthan the bus!!

Some things to take into account:

—The Little Mermaid rooms, including the beds, are VERY small. You are paying for being inside Disney- not for the room itself! We were overflowing as there wasn’t space to store anything. Other sections of this resort have bigger rooms, but you will pay A LOT more!

— They only clean the rooms every other day.

— The resort is very spread out. It was at least a 5 minute walk to the cafeteria, Nemo pool, Skyliner, or bus transportation from the Little Mermaid Section. Again, you can stay closer in the other sections, but you will pay more. You can park your car, decently close to your room, as the Mermaid rooms have outside entrances and the parking lot surrounds the buildings. We sometimes drove the car to the cafeteria after walking all day at the parks.

Everything considered, I highly recommend this resort for a great Disney vacation!! It is worth the cost!!😁