This is the second page of this material on deluxe resorts; for the first page, click here.
ROOM QUALITY, FLOOR PLANS AND PRICING AT DISNEY WORLD’S DELUXE RESORTS
All standard Disney World deluxe rooms come with the basics–a couple of queen beds, a TV and a dresser or two, a mini-fridge, a table with a two chairs or a two-part desk and chair, and a closet with a safe.
(For more on what you get, see this.)
What varies is how these are laid out, what more you get, and decor.
The smallest deluxe rooms–at the Wilderness Lodge and the Animal Kingdom Lodge–come with little more than the basics.
See the floor plan. These rooms sleep four, and while not as small as a room that comfortably fits two queens can be, they are not much larger.
Contrast the floor plan for the Grand Floridian.
These are the largest fully-deployed standard rooms at Walt Disney World (rooms in the newer parts of the Polynesian are bigger than Grand Floridian rooms, but not those in the older parts).
Additional width and length creates room for an easy chair, sofa (that sleeps another person), and desk.
Hotel designers prefer adding length to adding width, since added width increases the square footage of interior hallways that needs to be heated, cooled, furnished, cleaned, and walked down, but provides little help for the biggest design challenge–fitting in the split bath.
But without more width, there won’t be enough circulation space to fit the couch.
From a design perspective, the Beach Club and Yacht Club are exemplary for fitting everything in without either excess square footage or any sense of the furniture crowding the room or being hard to get around.
As noted above, the split bath can be the hardest design issue. A split bath separates facilities so that two or three family members can use them at once, but in its most common design creates an eight to ten foot long hallway between the corridor door and the sleeping space–wasted square footage.
Disney’s earliest designs present a curious set of thoughts on how to split a bath.
See the image–the baths in the original smaller rooms at the Polynesian are on the left, and at the Contemporary on the right.
Resorts built since then segregate the sinks into one space, and the bath and toilet into another. This is why the whole bath ensemble can be nine to ten feet long.
So why does all this matter?
More square feet costs you more. It’s a little more complicated than that, so I’ll come back to costs in a second, but for the moment see the image.
It charts standard room square feet on the vertical axis, and standard nightly room price (all prices on this page are pre-tax weekday rates for the Fall price season of 2012) on the horizontal axis.
The charted points show where the deluxe hotels fall, and the red line is added to illustrate the correlation between square footage and nightly rates.
More space means higher capital and operating costs; but it also means more value, value that can be charged for.
But space isn’t the only thing going on here, as there are some correlations within the hotels themselves.
See the image, which orders the Disney World deluxe resorts by nightly price. (This image includes both standard and savanna-view rooms at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.)
- The three most expensive resorts are not only the three with largest rooms; they are also the three monorail resorts, the most convenient hotels to the Magic Kingdom
- The three middle-priced deluxes are not only in the middle of the square footage pack, but are also the three Epcot resorts, the hotels most convenient to Epcot
- The least expensive deluxes not only have the smallest rooms but are also the least convenient of the deluxes.
So the deluxe prices charge for value: for convenience as well as size.
DINING AT DISNEY WORLD’S DELUXE RESORTS
This material continues here. I promise no more talk about square feet…
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2 Comments on "The Deluxe Resorts at Walt Disney World, Continued"
Linda, I don’t understand your first question? All Disney hotels have transport to the parks, mostly by Disney buses.
we are going to dsw with grandkids 3-5 and their parents in November for five days. We are booked at the Carribean but can get a free upgrade to Animal Kingdom Lodge or get money back. What would you suggest? Are there alternative convenient ways to commute to the parks besides a car rental?