How Many Square Feet in a Square Foot?

By Dave Shute

OVERVIEW

This page tries to make the square foot numbers associated with Walt Disney World Resorts more understandable and comparable.

HOW LONG IS A SQUARE FOOT?

The different resort classes all have different sizes:

The Value resorts—Pop and the All Stars—are 260 square feet
The Moderates are 314 square feet, and
The Deluxes vary from 344 square feet at the Animal Kingdom and Wilderness Lodges to more than 470 square feet at the Polynesian’s newest rooms in its Tahiti, Rapa Nui, and Tokelau buildings.

Most of us, however, have no idea what this means.

First, most of us don’t normally think in squared dimension—we think in linear distances, not areas.
Second, we don’t usually whip out our tape measures and size up our hotel rooms, so we don’t have a comparison readily at hand for how much difference there really is between 314 square feet at Coronado Springs (at $149 a night in the low season) and 344 square feet for $225 at the Wilderness Lodge.
Finally, most of us lump all these square feet together—but hotel designers know that bedroom square feet make much more of a difference in the livability of a room than the remaining components of square feet (which are the bathroom, and also the access area from the interior corridor to the bedroom, if the hotel has interior corridors), because your family spends much more time in the bedroom area.

Key Links!