A visit with minimal park days?

[smw]

We’re toying with the idea of a 4/5-day visit at the end of Sept with just a couple days in the parks. I’m curious as to what’s available at the resorts for bouncing around. Can we freely take the monorail for drinks at those 3 resorts? Are restaurant reservations required to enter? Can we just head to AKL for a snack and a stroll? I heard boat rentals are still offline?

Trying to gauge what to expect. For the record we visit annually so we don’t have the need to do everything on any given trip.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

We’re toying with the idea of a 4/5-day visit at the end of Sept with just a couple days in the parks. I’m curious as to what’s available at the resorts for bouncing around. Can we freely take the monorail for drinks at those 3 resorts? Are restaurant reservations required to enter? Can we just head to AKL for a snack and a stroll? I heard boat rentals are still offline?

Trying to gauge what to expect. For the record we visit annually so we don’t have the need to do everything on any given trip.

You can access any resort via Disney transportation, you just can't drive/park f you're not a guest of that resort or don't have an ADR. But walking, bus, monorail, etc, no worries at all.

Boat rentals are still closed, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[cvjw]

We just spent a week at Disney this month. I would not do a resorts only trip right now unless you wanted to spend a lot of time at the pool and dining at the very few restaurants that aren’t inside a theme park. We were amazed at the number of things that were closed - things that we just normally take for granted.

 

[nkereina]

We just spent a week at Disney this month. I would not do a resorts only trip right now unless you wanted to spend a lot of time at the pool and dining at the very few restaurants that aren’t inside a theme park. We were amazed at the number of things that were closed - things that we just normally take for granted.

Agree, I've seen a lot of reports of things closed or operating with limited hours at the resorts that are actually open. I know at some (all?) resorts that are open, you also have to use mobile order for QS dining and you're not permitted inside the QS location until you receive confirmation your order is ready.

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

We’re toying with the idea of a 4/5-day visit at the end of Sept with just a couple days in the parks. I’m curious as to what’s available at the resorts for bouncing around. Can we freely take the monorail for drinks at those 3 resorts? Are restaurant reservations required to enter? Can we just head to AKL for a snack and a stroll? I heard boat rentals are still offline?

Trying to gauge what to expect. For the record we visit annually so we don’t have the need to do everything on any given trip.

I think you can certainly have an enjoyable trip but you just have to be prepared that not everything is open and available. I also think your enjoyment of resort time will be totally dependent on where you choose to stay and your vacation style. As PP mentioned, yes you can take disney transport to other resorts to eat, get a drink, walk around but unless you have an ADR, you cannot drive into the resort. We enjoyed our off day on our trip a few weeks back and we also visited disney springs and did a monorail crawl. Do keep in mind that if you want to get to AKL, the only buses will be from DS or the parks, there are no resort to resort buses so that idea of having a snack and a stroll while great, won't really work unless you don't mind some bus time.

We did a 5 night, 6 day stay and visited all 4 parks with one day off. We drive in, we're a family of 4, kids are 13 and 12. I think if we had anymore than one off day with resort/down time, we would have been bored. I felt like this trip was overall very low key and relaxing since rope dropping and fast passes are not a thing right now and ADR's were able to be secured a few days prior, if not day of. But I really think it just depends on how you like to vacation and where you choose to stay.

 

[Deb & Bill]

We’re toying with the idea of a 4/5-day visit at the end of Sept with just a couple days in the parks. I’m curious as to what’s available at the resorts for bouncing around. Can we freely take the monorail for drinks at those 3 resorts? Are restaurant reservations required to enter? Can we just head to AKL for a snack and a stroll? I heard boat rentals are still offline?

Trying to gauge what to expect. For the record we visit annually so we don’t have the need to do everything on any given trip.

There aren't a lot of snacking places at AKL/AKV other than the pool bar and the store at Kidani Village. If you don't have an ADR, they might not let you enter the resort unless you enter the resort on Disney Transportation.