There are six people in our family. We always get two connecting rooms at a value. I was also told that because of the age of our children we WERE guaranteed connecting rooms and have always been given connecting rooms.
Disney tries hard but Disney does not book connecting rooms as a seperate category. They do NOT block of certain connecting rooms ahead of time.
That means they fill the connecting rooms as the families check in. It is petty much first come first serve until they run out of connecting rooms.
A lot of connecting rooms have a handicapped accessible rooms as one the rooms. If a guest needs a HA room than
that guest takes priority over a family who needs connecting rooms.
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As a mother of 4 (All grown now. My oldest is in her 30's and my youngest is 22) I often wished Disney had more options for larger families.
When the children were younger and we would go to Disney they did not have DVC or the family suites. In fact Disney did not have a Moderate until CBR opened in the late 1980's so if we wanted to stay onsite we either rented 2 rooms at a deluxe or stayed in the cabins.
I wrote to Disney many times over the years asking for more options for families so when I heard they were building the New Family Suites at All Star Music it just made me so happy!
In the late 80's I booked 2 connecting rooms at CBR for my family.
When we checked in there were no connecting rooms left but we were able to get rooms next to each other on the second floor.
Our two oldest were teens so I put them in one room and the 2 little ones who were 5 and 7 stayed with us. It worked for us because our older children were able to stay in a room without us but if they were younger DH and I would have had to split up.
Disney may say they guarantee connecting rooms but in reality Disney does not guarantee connecting rooms.
If there are 2 adults Disney can split the adults and children into two rooms that are not connecting. They try hard not to do this but it can and does happen sometimes. If however it is one adult with 5 children Disney should try harder to find connecting rooms since some of the children cannot be left in a room without an adult. But if you look at the threads posted below you will see that sometimes even Disney mixes up.
It does happen. Far too often IMHO.
From this thread;
http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1145289
mydogisbo said:
Just wanted to re-iterate what others have said:
We requesting connecting rooms at CBR in January--not really a busy time & we were early for check-in. They did not have us in connecting rooms. They said they could accommodate us, but it would be smoking rooms--which was our #1 request non-smoking.
We were side-by-side, so we just went outside to go next door, so it wasn't a huge deal for us. But if you definitely want to be together--I would go with a suite. You could also look into renting DVC points for a villa.
Here are a couple more threads about guests not getting connecting rooms:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1095679
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=785797&page=1&pp=15
From this thread:
http://disboards.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=13528958
taximomfor4 said:
One of the threads that Linda posted a link to was my experience last March. I had many conversations with the higher-ups at Guest Services and was told that even if it says "guaranteed" it is not truly "guaranteed." It just has higher priority over the "requests." Because on a given day, there might only be 25 connecting room sets opening up, but 27 "guaranteed connecting rooms for families" ressies checking in. 2 of those families are not going to get their "guarantee."
I know, I was shocked that we had to fight so hard to get put in rooms that had just been fumigated for lice (they were taken out of the inventory, but re-opened because we insisted we needed rooms.) I sort of assumed that if they didn't have the rooms for us, they'd find rooms elsewhere on Disney property. For that stay, we were sometimes 2 adults and sometimes only 1. Now we will book offsite if we need to do that again. If there are 2 of us adults, we book connecting and hope for the best. Otherwise, we'll split the kids.
My point is to make backup plans if you are depending on connecting rooms.
That is one of the main reasons if my family were young I would choose a Suite over 2 connecting rooms or I would be prepared that I may need to split the family up and sleep in a different room than DH.
