Our New Favorite Way to Stay at Walt Disney World!

Every Walt Disney World fan has their dream vacation. How they’d do things if money were no object, from luxury accommodations to lavish extras and upcharges, premium line-skipping, VIP tours, fancy meals, and more. Like anyone else, we’ve dreamed about where we’d stay–both the WDW Deluxe Resort and the specific suite–if we won the lottery.

Up until recently, our answer was starting in the Yellowstone Suite at Wilderness Lodge (or “settling” for the smaller Yosemite Suite if our lotto winnings weren’t the mega jackpot) in order to have access to Old Faithful Club for the first leg of our trip. We love Wilderness Lodge, so even though it’s not the pinnacle of luxuriousness, it is us.

Then we’d transfer over to BoardWalk Inn where we’d stay at the Steeplechase Suite or Sonora Suite, and have access to Innkeeper’s Club. If we were bringing along family, we’d do a Grand Villa at BoardWalk (or maybe Riviera) instead, which would be more economical by renting Disney Vacation Club points. My “vote” would be for the Treehouse Villas instead, but that idea has been vetoed in the past. Alas. Suffice to say, we’ve given this a lot of thought over the years, and our daydreaming was just entirely upended as a new contender has entered the ring.

After staying in the main building at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa post-reimagining and experiencing the Royal Palm Club, that is our new favorite way to stay at Walt Disney World.

We haven’t done proper research into the fancy suites at the flagship, but our future lottery winnings are being allocated for one of those. Which is going to be a real challenge, since we don’t gamble. But even so, we still have about as good of a shot at winning as anyone else.

Oh, and scratch the split stay. It’s just Royal Palm Club in the fancy suite at the Grand Floridian. At least, until our daughter is no longer a toddler and graduates into expert traveler. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though…

Royal Palm Club is the concierge lounge in the Main Building at Grand Floridian, which is Walt Disney World’s flagship resort that’s within walking distance of Magic Kingdom, and connected via monorail to EPCOT. This used to be one of two Club Levels at Grand Floridian, but the Sugarloaf Club is gone; it was removed during the recent resort reimagining.

As part of that same reimagining, Royal Palm Club was completely redone. This concierge lounge overlooks the lobby, and received a top-to-bottom overhaul as part of that project. So if you’re looking at photos from a couple of years ago that look a bit antiquated, they are. This is what Royal Palm Club looks like as of 2026.

We’ll review whether this Club Level is worth the money and how it compares to other options, what’s included, as well as photos of the food served for breakfast, lunch, dinner & dessert.

This review covers only the Royal Palm Club Level experience. if you’re looking for our thoughts on the hotel as a whole, check out our Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort Review. Spoiler: it’s now one of our favorite hotels in all of Walt Disney World as of 2026.

We love the location, redone rooms, and appreciate the attention to detail and whimsical themed design. But as with any resorts, it’s not for everyone–so that also covers the pros & cons. We’ve also already mentioned the resort reimagining several times here, and it’s incorporated into the above review, but you can also check out Walt Disney World’s Flagship Hotel Finally Fits Its Status & Sky-High Prices for a detailed assessment of the reimagining.

We’ll also mostly gloss over the various perks and benefits of staying Club Level, instead focusing on what’s unique to the Royal Palm Club. If you’re looking for general info, our Guide to Club Level & Concierge Lounges at Disney World offers overarching thoughts on what you can expect and advice on various Club Levels around WDW.

Upon arrival at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort, you might be greeted at the front entrance by a Cast Member who escorts you up to the Royal Palm Club for check-in. We’ve found this happens about half the time when checking into Club Level at Walt Disney World.

We were greeted by a Cast Member at the front entrance, but not from the Royal Palm Club. Once we began the check-in process, a Cast Member from the concierge team magically materialized to take us up to Royal Palm Club. They even had a welcome sign with our names printed on it.

That Cast Member took us up to couches on the lower floor of the Royal Palm Club, where they gave us special welcome drinks and completed the process. They then escorted us to our room, showed us key features of the accommodations, and offered to answer questions. All of this made a strong first impression, and felt like we were receiving the white glove treatment.

As always, we recommend arriving to the Grand Floridian as early as possible on your check-in day. Even if your room isn’t ready, you’ll have access to the Royal Palm Club, where you can lounge, snack and drink while you wait.

We are frugal fans who enjoy Club Level as the occasional splurge (one of our favorites at Walt Disney World!), and every hour of access is worth $X from our perspective. We’ve been known to take redeye flights or do strategic split stays to maximize our hours in the Club Level. Time is money! 

Royal Palm Club is different than other concierge lounges at Walt Disney World. Instead of being a dedicated lounge that is accessible to guests on a portion of one floor or a couple of floors, the Royal Palm Club is the Main Building. At least, once you get above the restaurants and retail on the first couple of floors.

Everything above that is the Royal Palm Club. The lounge itself spans three floors, and is accessible to all guest rooms on these floors. In terms of sheer size, this makes it the largest lounge at Walt Disney World.

In terms of how many guest rooms have access to the Royal Palm Club, that’s a lot more nebulous. You might assume the room count is astronomical if it’s three floors, but the Main Building doesn’t have that many rooms. There aren’t long hallways radiating out like Yacht Club or other larger resorts.

Based on the number of people we saw using the Royal Palm Club, it seems like the room count is pretty comparable to other Club Levels at Walt Disney World. That’s entirely anecdotal, though, and occupancy obviously varies. But this more or less comports with my expectations just in wandering around and estimating the rough room count.

The desk for the Royal Palm Club is located on the third floor and is staffed by concierge Cast Members from 7 am until 10 pm; in addition to helping while you’re at the hotel, they can be contacted while you’re in the parks should you need assistance.

In addition to seating on the third and fifth floors, which is accessible by convenient stairs or an inconvenient elevator, the lounge itself is on the fourth floor. This level has the most seating, with a variety of tables and chairs adjacent to the lounge, plus high tops along the perimeter. All told, there’s a ton of seating and it’s nicely spaced out.

Here’s a look at the Royal Palm Club seating:

All of this is open access, which is to say that you use your room key or MagicBand to access the third through fifth floors on the elevator up, and then never again. This is different from most other Club Level lounges, which have physical doors.

At least for me, this is an incredibly meaningful distinction, as I wake up earlier than everyone else in the room and like having a separate space for working. With the Royal Palm Club, I had oodles of options across the third through fifth floors.

If you read older reviews, you’ll notice the style of the Royal Palm Club used to be more Victorian meets grandma’s house in the 1990s. At least, if grandma were wealthy. Seating was cozy and comfortable, but the look was dated.

The redone lounge is more stylish, with the same Victorian meets modern luxury sensibility found throughout the lobby. It is more upscale than what was here before, and like the rest of the resort, it’s now befitting of its flagship status. The seating is still plenty comfortable, and there’s a wider variety of it.

One thing that hasn’t changed about the Royal Palm Club is its location.

Honestly, I had never really thought about what was up in the high reaches of the Grand Floridian lobby prior to staying here, but it’s impressive that the Royal Palm Club spans the entirety of the third through fifth floors. It’s also novel.

This is a stark contrast to the lounges that are tucked away in small rooms, and feel like they were shoehorned into upper floors after the fact once Walt Disney World realized people would pay more for lounge access. Grand Floridian feels like its Main Building was purpose-built for a lavish lounge. The layout is unrivaled, as are the views down into the lobby. The lounge feels spacious and extravagant as a result, as opposed to cramped and chaotic.

In both form and function, Royal Palm Club impresses. The look and feel, plus the larger size, 24-hour access to the space itself, and location perched high above the gorgeous lobby of the Grand Floridian all make the physical space of the Royal Palm Club big winner.

As much as I love both Old Faithful Club at Wilderness Lodge and Kilimanjaro Club at Animal Kingdom Lodge, this takes the cake as the best lounge at Walt Disney World. When it comes to the lounge itself, Royal Palm Club is the unequivocal #1. Perhaps there’s no need for a suite once we win the lottery!

Throughout the day, the Royal Palm Club lounge serves the following:

• Early Riser Coffee: 6:30-7 a.m.
• Beverages: 7-10 a.m.
• Continental breakfast: 7-10:30 a.m.
• Light snacks and refreshments: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Hors D’oeuvres and beverages: 5-7 p.m.
• Desserts & cordials: 8-10 p.m.

One thing to note is that coffee does not start before 6:30 am. Despite the lounge being open access and there being self-service beverage stations, they’re also disabled and everything is oddly disassembled at night. Even the coffee table books are removed.

Apparently the crowd paying north of one thousand dollars per night for a room cannot be trusted unsupervised around $30 books and self-service coffee. Trust me. I speak from experience as someone who is normally up and ready for my first coffee at 5 am. The earliest it starts is 6:25 am, if you’re lucky.

Here are food photos and glimpses at the spreads for each of these meal services:

Consistent with other Club Level lounges around Walt Disney World, we found the 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. spread to be best of these.

Walt Disney World refrains from calling this dinner, because they don’t want to encourage guests to make a full meal of it, but no encouragement is necessary for me. Or, presumably, anyone inclined to squeeze the most bang for their buck out of Club Level.

Also as is typical, breakfast was the time when the lounge was busiest. The middle of the day is least busy–it’s also the weakest of the spreads. This parallels all other WDW lounges and most real world executive or club lounges, for whatever it’s worth.

Every spread at Royal Palm Club was best in class or very close to it.

Sarah and I have, ahem, different dietary preferences and priorities, and Royal Club Palm checked the right boxes for both of us. Don’t call it dinner offered a wide range of options, from rich comfort foods to healthy vegetables to inventive chef’s choice dishes.

Almost all of them were good to great. Even the vegetables, which I tried for research (and due to peer pressure).

Especially noteworthy are the baked goods, pastries and breads from the Grand Floridian Bakery. All were fantastic and high quality, to the point that I couldn’t resist indulging in some “filler” at the expense of the delicious chef’s choice salmon, beef, and seafood dishes. The charcuterie was likewise excellent; more varied and a much better quality than other Club Level lounges.

Unsurprisingly, this carried over to the dessert spread. Grand Floridian does desserts well, and our expectations had already been set high by dinner. Dessert more than delivered. Some Club Levels have been really phoning in desserts, with quality rivaling grocery stores. Grand Floridian’s were clearly made in-house, and the quality reflected as much.

Everything we had was decadent and delicious, but I want to call special attention to something you might otherwise overlook: the Black Forest Cookie (above). If this is available during your stay, it’s a must-eat. I may or may not have taken one or two or a larger number than that of these back to our room…and saved a few for the flight home. The regular chocolate chip cookie is also pretty tasty.

Surprisingly, my favorite meal at Royal Palm Club might’ve been breakfast. This is how it should be, as it’s the meal service most guests take advantage of at the lounges, but it’s often phoned-in with mostly cold items, fruits, and pastries.

The breakfast spread at Grand Floridian offered all of that, plus a few hot items each morning. Where it really shined, though, was in the sweets and pastries. These were just so far above and beyond what’s offered at other Club Levels.

The end result was a very thoughtful spread, which made for a fun and memorable leisurely breakfast as opposed to something we powered through quickly before Early Entry for “fuel.”

The midday ‘don’t call it lunch’ also punched above its weight. While definitely not intended to be a full meal, there was more of substance here than any other lounge we’ve done. That’s doubly true if you want a sweets-forward lunch! We were impressed by this, and all of the spreads.

Having done recent stays at Chronos Club, Kilimanjaro Club, Regatta Club, and Innkeeper’s Club, I’m confident that Royal Palm Club is the best of that bunch. Like so much, Club Levels at Walt Disney World generally peaked around 2018-2019 and haven’t fully recovered; Royal Palm Club feels the closest to 2019 quality of any Club Level we’ve experienced since.

Beer, wine, and champagne are available at Royal Palm Club. It seems that the new normal for this is open access in the evenings, and upon request at other times of the day.

Alcohol is potentially outcome-determinative for Club Level for adults doing Walt Disney World. I know that if we had our honeymoon to do over today as really-for-real adults instead of fresh-out-of-college-and-broke twentysomethings, we’d absolutely be doing Club Level. But we don’t drink anymore, so booze doesn’t move the needle for us these days.

Another highlight of Royal Palm Club was the exemplary service. I hesitate to comment on this in most reviews since I feel like it can be luck of the draw or variable based on staffing strains.

However, it seems to me that Walt Disney World is chasing accolades with the redone Grand Floridian, so I strongly suspect the resort has made a concerted effort to go above and beyond with service.

We found a mix of long-serving old-timers at Royal Palm Club, as well as fresh-faced Cast Members eager to help. For reasons beyond the scope of this post, that’s really the perfect mix. Cast Members were attentive and proactive, knowledgeable, warm and conversational. The last two points are common with Disney Cast Members, who are world-class.

Occasionally, we hear from cynical readers questioning whether we get “special treatment” because Disney or Cast Members know who we are. The answer is that I assume we don’t based on negative experiences we’ve had.

Cast Members do usually figure it out (or ask) after I’ve taken about 1,000 food photos, which is why I typically refrain from doing that until we’ve actually established a connection. (That’s mostly out of self-interest, since plenty of Cast Members dislike bloggers, vloggers, influencers, etc–and often, for good reason!)

It has been further reinforced that we weren’t receiving special treatment before, because I feel like we are receiving more attentive service now thanks to having an adorable (IMO) toddler. Cast Members are much more eager to assist, go out of their way to stop and talk to her/us, ask if we need anything, etc. (Since becoming parents, we’ve become even more impressed with the exemplary guest service offered by Cast Members, but that’s another topic for another post.)

This was the case at Royal Palm Club. One specific example is that every time we entered the service station areas, Cast Members asked if we would like anything special for our daughter. We are picky about what she eats, and this followed a request for grilled chicken breast on night one.

On every subsequent visit, someone from the culinary team quickly came out and inquired about what they could prepare. We don’t have any dietary restrictions or anything, but it reminded me of that type of service that I’ve seen at table service restaurants.

Cast Members and service in Royal Palm Club to be exemplary. We’ve had good experiences in other lounges, but those can usually be described as friendly service (consistent with Cast Members, as whole) or reactive service. Royal Palm Club was attentive and proactive, like a real world club level.

In terms of cost, you’re looking at rack rates starting at over $1,300 per night for standard Club Level rooms, depending upon your view. Suites or multi-bedroom units cost even more. Even with a good discount, you’re likely looking at $900 per night to stay Royal Palm Club Level.

By contrast, standard rooms at Grand Floridian start at around $800, or $500 or so after discount. This amounts to a minimum spread of around $500 per night before discounts. To the best of my knowledge, this is the biggest price differential of any regular room to Club Level at Walt Disney World.

On the plus side, there is usually discounted Club Level availability for this exact reason (in fact, this is precisely what led to us finally doing Royal Palm Club–it was one of the very few options available in all of WDW when booking last minute).

It’s also fair to point out that we’re comparing Main Building Club Level rooms to Outer Building standard rooms, which is the only way to do it–but also not apples to apples. There is definitely value in staying in the Main Building, with easy access to all of the amenities and monorail.

We usually give a cop out “it depends” answer when it comes to questions of value for money or whether it’s “worth it.” In recent years, we’ve deviated from that, giving Innkeeper’s Club a thumbs down. (Spoiler alert: when re-reviewing or reviewing other upcoming Club Level stays, the same is going to happen again.)

However, we’re going to go in the other direction here. This is in equal parts because the Grand Floridian is now the clear flagship and Royal Palm Club has been far and away our best Club Level experience in a while.

Yes, the price tag is astronomical, but this very clearly feels like a ‘treat yo self’ splurge. Or the kind of thing being booked primarily by people for whom money is no object.

Royal Palm Club is more “worth it” than other Club Levels at Walt Disney World, even the cheaper ones. This was more expensive than our other recent Club Level stays, but at the same time, the value felt more commensurate with the cost. This was closer to a real world club level–and a good one–than anything else we’ve done lately at Walt Disney World.

With that said, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to “which Club Level at Walt Disney World is best?” What I’ve learned over the years is that each of these has its diehard fans. Guests who have been staying at a certain Club Level–and only that Club Level–for years, maybe even decades. And although Royal Palm is now our favorite, it’s not something we’ll be doing often due to cost.

As always, we highly recommend requesting a quote from Be Our Guest Vacations, a no-fee Authorized Disney Vacation Planner. The agents there will not only assist with choosing the best room and resort for you, assist with personalized planning, book your vacation with the best-available special offer, and monitor your package for future discounts that can be applied retroactively.

Ultimately, we loved our stay at Royal Palm Club. If money is no object or you want to splurge on the very best place to stay at Walt Disney World, this is it. Royal Palm is the best Club Level and Grand Floridian is once again worthy of its flagship status.

Even as someone who historically found the Grand Floridian a bit overrated, I have to admit that this is the clear #1 resort and room category combo at Walt Disney World. My personal preference is still with the lodges, but I’d take a stay at Royal Palm Club over all else if we won the lottery. And it’s not even a close call for Sarah–this is #1 by a wide margin.

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

Your Thoughts

What do you think of Royal Palm Club Level at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa? Are you a fan of this, or do you prefer other concierge lounges at Walt Disney World? Do you agree or disagree with our review? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!