The Orlando World Center Marriott may be the largest Marriott property in the world, but despite having more than 2,000 rooms and 450,000 square feet of meeting space, the AAA four-diamond property nonetheless manages to keep guests from feeling lost in a giant convention hotel.
Just 1.5 miles from Walt Disney World and minutes from SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Studios, the resort recently wrapped a multimillion-dollar renovation that included a complete overhaul of the North Tower's 504 guest rooms and 10 suites, as well as its 13 meeting rooms, with 14,000 square feet of meeting space. In addition, the 14 Hall of Cities meeting rooms that lead to the property's 230,000 square feet of ballroom space were freshened, and 110 suites were remodeled.
The 105,000-square-foot Cypress Ballroom is the largest column-free ballroom in the state, and can connect to the 50,000-square-foot Palms Ballroom. There's a great deal of natural light throughout the meeting facilities, as well as outdoor spaces for groups of several hundred to several thousand.
The hotel faces the expansive Falls Pool Oasis area, which also added a new waterslide tower. A 104-step climb gives you options: two winding, 200-foot-long water slides and a 90-foot speed slide, which sends riders into a separate splashdown pool. The newly redesigned pool deck is now tiered, with a layout that provides better views, and connects the outer tier of lounges to the event lawns, which can be roped off for groups.
The real star of the resort, however, is the food and beverage offerings. This starts with the new Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen, which offers excellent pizza, pasta, and small plates that include but go beyond antipasto: fried squash blossoms with rock shrimp and ricotta was one of the particularly memorable dishes. It was recently awarded the Golden Spoon as best new restaurant in Central Florida, an award rarely given to hotel restaurants.
The resort's Hawks Landing Golf Course is home to Bill Madonna Golf Academy, and a group lesson is a great way to start a tournament. One of the best teachers in the game -- and one of a handful of PGA Master Teaching Professionals certified to teach other instructors -- Madonna kept our diverse group interested and in less than an hour had me hitting consistently straight drives off the tee, as oppose to my usual hooks, slices, and flat-out misses.
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This article appears in the November 2014 issue of Successful Meetings.