Resort Hopping at Walt Disney World
By Dave Shute
Starting tonight, I’ll be visiting Walt Disney World for six nights, and over that time have five different rooms booked for a total of ten nights…
As Lucy said to Ricky, I have some explaining to do…and I’m not exactly recommending this!
Long-time readers will know that I’m one of the few people crazy enough to have recently stayed for multiple nights at every single Walt Disney World resort hotel, and for those with significantly different room types, in almost every single major distinct room type as well.
Reviews resulting from all these stays can be found beginning here.
In the early years of this site, four to six times a year I’d just book a Disney World resort hotel room for three or four nights, go down, stay at and experience the resort, work on the real job, work on this site, play in the parks, and head home and write everything up.
It never crossed my mind to stay at two hotels on the same visit until I realized that it was a lot more efficient use of airfare and travel time to visit for longer and check out more hotels on each visit. Because I can do much of my real job remotely, longer trips are generally fine, so I’m still going to Disney World 4-6 times a year, just staying longer and seeing more—both in the parks and the hotels–while I’m there.
I think a full review of a hotel can’t be done without a three or four night stay. But if I’m revisiting just to check out a different room type that’s not much different from rooms I’ve already been in recently, not so many nights are needed.
So both are what’s going on in this visit. I’m spending multiple nights at each of All-Star Sports and All-Star Movies, to re-experience these in full, and out of that create all-new reviews. That’s the core purpose (on the hotel side) of this visit.
But there’s also three other room variants that I’ll be seeing on this trip, so that I can post for you about their specific features.
Two are at Art of Animation. I stayed in the family suites in the Finding Nemo section the week Art of Animation opened, and in the standard rooms in Little Mermaid the week that those opened.
But I haven’t stayed yet at either the Lion King or Cars sections at Art of Animation, so I’ll be doing that on this trip, and publishing photo-tours of each suite.
With that done, I’ll have visited (if new) or re-visited (if old) all of the values and their major room variants between June 2012 and August 2013, and all the value resort reviews will thus be updated and fresh. (I did the same set of re-visits and rewrites for the moderates between March 2012 and March 2013.)
The third extra night is at the Polynesian. I stayed there on a re-visit in May 2013, and totally re-did the Polynesian review coming out of that. But I stayed in one of the Poly’s smaller (but still huge) rooms on that visit, so on this visit I’ve requested Tokelau, so that if I get the room request, I’ll be able to re-do the floor plan for these larger rooms and post a photo-tour of the larger Poly rooms.
And the last resort hop? Well the day I switch from Sports to Movies, I’m double booked. That way I’m not homeless between the 11a check-out time and the 3p check in time!
Like I said, for normal people, I don’t particularly recommend resort-hopping. But for me, it’s a great help in creating and updating the material for this site!
Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook!
8 comments
Dave~ I’m glad that you make it quite clear that you are not “normal”. What is normal, anyway? You know I envy you!
Yeah like it was a surprise, Heidi, that I’m not normal lol 🙂
Geeee, what kind of “work” you have that you can be at a park and in your profession at the same day? 😉 Lucky you!
Oh I can’t be in the parks and working at the same time! But I can be in the hotels and working! So right now I’m working in the kissimmee Starbucks, and will be heading back to my room soon for a conference call…
Dave- I’m with Heidi and Tom…I’m a “not normal” for Disney too and envy you! I also want to know how I can get signed up for a flexible working environment like yours! LOL! 🙂 Can’t wait to see the reviews! 4 more months until our trip and I’m getting more excited by the day!
🙂
I have some questions about the resort hopping, we leave in 100 days and have now found out that Wilderness Lodge doesn’t’t have the 30% discount for all of the days of our stay (12/2-12/13). If we move to Animal Kingdom Lodge we can save almost $1200, but we had our hearts set on WL for two years. So now my travel agent is checking on splitting the stay, six nights at AKL then moving to WL for the remainder of our stay. How many people other than yourself, really do this? And what is the best way to pull it off? Is there any chance Disney will transport our luggage, we aren’t renting a car. Would it be best to purchase all but one of our park tickets with the first half of the stay, to save some money? It says they expire 14 days from the first day used. Looks like we have to buy at least one ticket with the 2nd stay to do dining for that part. We realize that we will need to use 6 days of dining all in each half of the stay, we might even do the first half regular dining plan and the second half quick service dining plan, I still have to crunch some numbers and look at some reservations to see what I can move. Any thing else that you encounter in your hops that I’m not even thinking of, our travel agent has done this for over 25 years and hasn’t had this happen yet. Thanks in advance!
Crystal, I don’t know how many do it, but it’s not at all uncommon. Search “Disney World Split Stay” on your favorite search engine and you will get a ton of hits.
Disney will move your luggage for you.
The main negative–besides having to check in twice–is being homeless the day you move until the check-in time.
Note that if you skip the dining plan on the second stay, you won’t have to re-buy tickets at the incredibly expensive day one price. The dining plans save little if any money as it is these days, and that saving will be blown out by paying day 1 prices for another set of tix…
Hope this helps!
Leave a Comment | Ask a Question | Note a Problem