Disney Food for Families columnist Erin Foster begins this DVC Villas Kitchens series with a look at what you’ll find in your villa kitchen!

My family has been a member of the Disney Vacation Club since 2001. Because of this, we often stay in DVC villa-style rooms when visiting Walt Disney World, which we pay for using our DVC points. While villa rooms are most often used by DVC members, anyone may rent them. And one of the best parts about a villa is the inclusion of a kitchenette in studio villas and a full kitchen in one-bedroom and larger villas!

Over the next few posts, I’m going to discuss the villa kitchens. What do they include? What is easily available to cook in the kitchens? Is is possible to save money by cooking in your villa? Will the villa kitchen save you any time?

Here are a few more details about DVC Villas: There are villa rooms at seven Walt Disney World resort hotels — Animal Kingdom Lodge, Bay Lake Tower (Contemporary), Beach Club, Boardwalk, Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, and Wilderness Lodge.

• Villas are available in studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom versions.
• Studio villas are like regular hotel rooms, with the addition of a small kitchenette area. The kitchenette includes a sink, a dorm-sized refrigerator, a microwave oven, a coffee-maker and a toaster.
• One, two, and three-bedroom villas are like apartments. They include a the requisite number of bedrooms, often several bathrooms, a washer and dryer, plus a living room area and a full kitchen.

The villas are a terrific option for guests with larger families or larger traveling parties, multi-generational families, families where the parents don’t want to sleep in the same room as the children, or for families who want, or need, a kitchen.

The larger space and multiple bathrooms make vacationing with my mirror-loving daughters a breeze — that alone makes the villas worth it for my family. But I must confess that I have a real love/hate relationship with the villa kitchens. Obviously, having a kitchen can be a godsend for guests who need to prepare food for an allergic or special needs family member. But what is the value of the kitchen for the average family? What is the value of the kitchen for the average mom, like me, who finds that one of the best aspects of vacation time is not having to cook?

As a first step in the Villa Kitchen series, I’ll show you what exactly you can expect to find in a Disney Vacation Club Villa kitchen at [Read more…]