Standard vs preferred at pop century

New to all of this, and feeling overwhelmed, so all advice is appreciated!

I have a reservation for a preferred room at pop century. I started looking at the rooms on the TP room request finder and noticed some of the standard rooms are just as close to transportation and lobby with better views. For example, one preferred room has a view of another building, but the room a few doors has a partial view of the lake, both only 4 min and 2 min away from bus and lobby. So here are my questions…

  1. Should I request the standard room with the lake view even though I am paying for preferred? Or will it confuse them?
  2. Is it worth paying for preferred, if this room request feature has such a high success rate?
  3. Should I just pick a preferred room, forget the lake, and just trust I am paying extra for good reason?
  4. Any other suggestions or advice on rooms at pop century that I need to know?

1 - If you paid for preferred, you’ll be in preferred barring some massive breakdown of the system.

2 - There is no guarantee of “success” with the fax. For every “I got exactly what I asked for” there is at least one “I got the complete opposite”. Requests are just that. REQUESTS.

3 - If you want a lake view, you should switch to Standard - but recognize that “Lake View” is not a bookable category, so you could well end up with a Standard looking at nothing.

4 - Just again, requests are only requests. They are not guaranteed. And you should not make a request outside of what you have booked - ie: Do not request a Standard room when you have booked Preferred (or a Preferred room when you have booked Standard).

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We stayed at Pop in October in bldg 10, standard room. Prior to this stay, we’ve been there three times, 6-7 years ago. On those trips were were in bldgs 7, 8 and 9. Of those 4, I liked the location of 10 the best and somehow it made the whole resort seem smaller overall than I remembered. There are shortcuts galore. Those are all standard buildings, by the way.

I think the most important thing to request at Pop is 1st floor. Honestly, there is no view to speak of. The upper floors only add time to coming and going.

Thank you. This was really helpful.
I’ve been reading up a lot and everyone says something different. I think I’m just going to stick with my preferred and hope for the best.

@disney1974 thanks! I was going to ask for a higher floor because I heard it could get noisy if you are on the lower floors. Did you ever experience this?

There were some footsteps from the room above us, but it was not during the night when we’d be sleeping. It was tolerable. Without carpets, I’m sure that will be an issue for people.

We returned last week from six nights at Pop Century. Our first night was in a standard room—on the outer edges of the resort. The other five nights were booked in a preferred. I requested, through TP fax, top floor in the 1970s building. We were assigned a first floor room adjacent to the kiddie/splash pool, beside the main pool. A perfect location if you are using the pool area often, just steps between the pool and room.

There is a nightly movie beside the main pool, which started at 7:00 while we there. The volume was very loud and easily heard in our room. We are in early at night and up early in the mornings; no problems with noise, from the movie or adjacent rooms, due to using earplugs. No earplugs and the movie volume would have been an issue.

I love the first floor and have not found it to be loud.