Split stay onsite/offsite? Anyone done it?

[englishteacha]

Has anyone had good experience with staying onsite for half of a trip and offsite for half? I'd love to hear first hand accounts.

We're looking at a 10 day vacation next year, to Disney parks, but 10 days in a hotel room seems a bit much to me. I was hoping to convince my hubby to do half of the trip onsite and half in a condo/house at Windsor Hills or the like. DH really liked not having to drive to parks on our one onsite trip last year.

Disney's making it difficult to stay offsite these days, with early booking for FP+ and such, so I thought it might be a good compromise to do some of our time onsite and some off. It's nice to have room to spread out, and with a small child, it would be nice to be able to put her to bed in her own space rather than go to bed at her bedtime!

I did some number crunching, and for next summer, even figuring in the parking price increase and a rental car, staying offsite at Windsor Hills (using numbers for condos and town homes from VRBO) costs the same as a value resort for the same time period! Hard to stomach 10 days at All Stars or Pop in a hotel room when I can have 2-3 bedrooms and baths for the same cost, and in a town home my own splash pool!

 

[hiroMYhero]

For onsite to offsite stays, you will benefit from early booking of FPs.

Your FP booking window will open for check-in day through check-out day of your onsite stay. Then, you will have a rolling 60-day window to book for each of your offsite park days. You will have to book 60 days out from each park day but it is much better than only having a 30-day window.

We enjoy offsite stays and do combine them with onsite stays. Happy planning!!

 

[TeamSy]

We typically do this and have had nothing but great experiences! We do our onsite stay first so we can take advantage of all the booking windows. Then, we move offsite and use that as our "relaxing time" - spend days at the offsite hotels amazing spa's and pools. When we move offsite we utilize Mears private transfer options, which have been amazing.

 

[kathy884]

We've done POR (overflow for seminar DH had at the Contemporary) followed by the Sheraton Vistana Resort. I was definitely happier with the offsite week. If I were to do a split stay I'd do offsite at the end to enjoy more space and the kitchen after you are tired of a hotel room, assuming it's hotel at Disney and house or condo offsite.

 

[Sunnywho]

We spent one night at AoA before moving to Staybridge suites. It made a big impression on my then six-year-old. It's one of the things he tells us about the trip, that we stayed by the big Ursula.

 

[Mrs Doubtfire]

We have done this many times. We normally stay at Disney anything from 5 to 10 nights and then move to a condo or TH at Windsor Hills. My DD loves the hotel but we all enjoy the extra bedrooms, space and bathrooms at our offsite property. Also when staying for up yo 3 weeks I would be too enclosed in a hotel room for all that time.

I would go ahead and try it

 

[sdsatl]

Yesss. In February, we stayed at AoA for three nights and ChampionsGate for a week. Loved it. Highly recommend it. It was nice to be immersed in Disney for a long weekend and then slowly emerge from the bubble, before returning home.

 

[pepperandchips]

Just returned from 7 nights at Wyndham Bonnet Creek followed by 2 nights at Animal Kingdom Lodge - definitely think you should try the split stay! Our 7 nights at WBC divided by two familys was less than 2 nights at AKL.

 

[mickeysimba]

Call us crazy but we had a 9 day trip last year and split TWICE. Three days on site three days off three days on site. We always stayed nicely on the non park days in a big villa in the middle of the trip and stayed at value resorts the first block to get the FP, then we stayed monorail for the last block foro ur MK day. It made the whoel trip more affordable and the monorail resort easier to afford. This worked great as we rented a car from the Disney Alamo location for three days and had Magical express for airport transfers.