Anyone done this???

[3happydancers]

Staying at AKL on points, my home but we are spending a few days doing Universal toward the end of our vacation. We booked a room at HRH (like staying onsite). We were thinking of:

Staying at AKL, keeping our room but hopping over to Universal for a night then returning to AKL the day before our departure. I like the idea of having our last night at Disney and keeping our Magical Express transportation. I realize our room will be unoccupied for one night and I don't mind using points for this purpose. Has anyone ever done this? Thoughts...

 

[Cinderpamela]

We did this exact thing for our Christmas trip back in 2011. It was so nice to not have to pack up our entire room and move, we just packed for overnight and left everything else in the villa.

We stayed one night at the Royal Pacific at Universal so we could get early entry perks.

In hindsight I would only change one thing, I didn't realize that by staying one night at Universal it actually qualified us for early entry on the day of check in, as well as the day of check out (a huge advantage for Harry Potter stuff). So we arrived in the evening of check in and then did early entry the next morning.

Next time I would arrive super early to check in, before early entry started, and check our bags with bell services and get our keys for early entry, even though our room wasn't ready, to take advantage of early entry on both mornings.

 

[paults]

Staying at AKL on points, my home but we are spending a few days doing Universal toward the end of our vacation. We booked a room at HRH (like staying onsite). We were thinking of:

Staying at AKL, keeping our room but hopping over to Universal for a night then returning to AKL the day before our departure. I like the idea of having our last night at Disney and keeping our Magical Express transportation. I realize our room will be unoccupied for one night and I don't mind using points for this purpose. Has anyone ever done this? Thoughts...

You paying room rate for the night your not there or are you staying in the AKV on pts. big difference. I guess your staying in the villas since this is a DVC board but your post says lodge. I would not hold a lodge room
but that's just me. If it's a pt room I would differently hold it.

 

[3happydancers]

We did this exact thing for our Christmas trip back in 2011. It was so nice to not have to pack up our entire room and move, we just packed for overnight and left everything else in the villa.

We stayed one night at the Royal Pacific at Universal so we could get early entry perks.

In hindsight I would only change one thing, I didn't realize that by staying one night at Universal it actually qualified us for early entry on the day of check in, as well as the day of check out (a huge advantage for Harry Potter stuff). So we arrived in the evening of check in and then did early entry the next morning.

Next time I would arrive super early to check in, before early entry started, and check our bags with bell services and get our keys for early entry, even though our room wasn't ready, to take advantage of early entry on both mornings.

Great to know! I thought maybe my idea was a little crazy for using points to hold my room even though we would not be there. We would want to take advantage of both mornings for early entry. We would need Mears transportation. How much time do you think we would need between travel, checking our bags (more likely back packs for the few items we would need), and standing on line for our keys? Oh, I would also have to pick up 1 annual pass.

 

[3happydancers]

You paying room rate for the night your not there or are you staying in the AKV on pts. big difference. I guess your staying in the villas since this is a DVC board but your post says lodge. I would not hold a lodge room
but that's just me. If it's a pt room I would differently hold it.

Silly, you didn't see that I mentioned we would be staying on points. We just like staying at the Jambo House instead of the Kidani Villas. We like the feel of the larger building and easy access to the Mara food court.

 

[Cinderpamela]

Great to know! I thought maybe my idea was a little crazy for using points to hold my room even though we would not be there. We would want to take advantage of both mornings for early entry. We would need Mears transportation. How much time do you think we would need between travel, checking our bags (more likely back packs for the few items we would need), and standing on line for our keys? Oh, I would also have to pick up 1 annual pass.

Hmmm, there were folks doing their check in that early morning when we were heading out to the park and that was at least an hour before the park opened. The check in line was not that bad at the time... 2 check in desks open and both helping families but no line behind.

We drove our rental car to and from... and it took somewhere around 20-25 minutes to get from WDW to the Universal hotel, so I would say to depart at least 2 hours before you need to be in line for early entry, to allow for Mears and checking in to happen. You may be able to do it in less, but I always like to be early. It was "O-dark thirty" when we headed to the park for the early entry.

 

[3happydancers]

Hmmm, there were folks doing their check in that early morning when we were heading out to the park and that was at least an hour before the park opened. The check in line was not that bad at the time... 2 check in desks open and both helping families but no line behind.

We drove our rental car to and from... and it took somewhere around 20-25 minutes to get from WDW to the Universal hotel, so I would say to depart at least 2 hours before you need to be in line for early entry, to allow for Mears and checking in to happen. You may be able to do it in less, but I always like to be early. It was "O-dark thirty" when we headed to the park for the early entry.

Thanks Pam! I think we may take a private Mears car but I still have to call for rates. Taking a car may be much quicker than taking their shuttle bus. But I agree that we should give ourselves extra time. I'd prefer being early too.

 

[paults]

Silly, you didn't see that I mentioned we would be staying on points. We just like staying at the Jambo House instead of the Kidani Villas. We like the feel of the larger building and easy access to the Mara food court.

I did see your staying on pts at AKL you said. AKL is in the Disney collection (lots of pts). I only answered your ? because staying at AKL on pts (what you said) or cash is a lot more than staying at AKV(which is also at Jambo house). By using AKL(letters) instead of AKV I thought that's where you were staying.
Sorry for the confusion

 

[3happydancers]

I did see your staying on pts at AKL you said. AKL is in the Disney collection (lots of pts). I only answered your ? because staying at AKL on pts (what you said) or cash is a lot more than staying at AKV(which is also at Jambo house). By using AKL(letters) instead of AKV I thought that's where you were staying.
Sorry for the confusion

No problem!!!

 

[Anal Annie]

Staying at AKL on points, my home but we are spending a few days doing Universal toward the end of our vacation. We booked a room at HRH (like staying onsite). We were thinking of:

Staying at AKL, keeping our room but hopping over to Universal for a night then returning to AKL the day before our departure. I like the idea of having our last night at Disney and keeping our Magical Express transportation. I realize our room will be unoccupied for one night and I don't mind using points for this purpose. Has anyone ever done this? Thoughts...

We did this 2 summers ago when we were staying at BWV. We built in 2 extra days for this when we planned the trip and we did it in the middle of the trip. I even pre-packed a small duffle bag for the one night before we left home with a change of clothes and swim suits (I use packing cubes so it was super easy to just use the smaller cubes). All I had to do then was throw in our meds & a few toiletries. We use DME so we just took a taxi over EARLY on our first morning - planned to get there in time to use the early opening feature that day too. We felt that the taxi was worthwhile to not have to pay for a rental for 2 days plus parking at the HRH. IIRC it was about $45 or so each way.

Here's where we ran into a snag. I had purchased 3-day Universal tix at Costco before we went that were supposed to be good for like 2 years. Our thought was that we'd use 2 days on that trip and save the last day to use on another trip. Well, we got to the HRH (very nice BTW - HUGE rooms), checked in and stored our duffle with bell services. We get to the parks almost exactly at opening and our tix WOULDN'T WORK!! We had to go to their Cust. Service line and waited there for like 30 min. When we finally got up there they scanned the tix and said they'd already been used!! Apparently dumb Costco let somebody RETURN the tix or something. I was BEYOND pissed. But the Universal people were really nice and understanding and wanted to help us. It took awhile but they printed out some stuff for me to take back to Costco to show that the tix were no good then they sold us 2-day passes at their "employee rate" which was about as good as it was going to get at that point. And since we wasted the whole early entry thing they gave us some special passes of some sort to use on a couple of rides. I forget exactly what that deal was. So we had to buy tix again out of pocket but since we were THERE already and had already checked in to the hotel we sort of didn't have any choice about it. When we got home I marched straight over to Costco and had to talk to a manager but they refunded me our money for those tix. I blame the whole fiasco on the particular Costco that I bought them at. I went to the one closest to where we live to buy these tix but it is a MESS of a place. It is SOOO crowded and both the employees and the customers are of what I would call "questionable" abilities. I nearly hyperventilate just trying to PARK there. I get along much better if I go to the one in the next county. It's really only about 10 minutes further away via the highway and it is so much nicer and "normal". I will never buy anything like that again at this one Costco. I will only go there for the basics.

Anyway, tix problems aside we then took a taxi back to the BWV at the end of our 2nd day once we felt we'd had our fill of the place. It had stormed that day and a lot of stuff closed due to lightening so we were kind of "done". But the plan worked out just fine and I would definitely recommend doing it like this because of their early entry and their front of the line access by staying onsite. That was INVALUABLE and very much worth the cost of the hotel room for the 1 night.

 

[3happydancers]

We did this 2 summers ago when we were staying at BWV. We built in 2 extra days for this when we planned the trip and we did it in the middle of the trip. I even pre-packed a small duffle bag for the one night before we left home with a change of clothes and swim suits (I use packing cubes so it was super easy to just use the smaller cubes). All I had to do then was throw in our meds & a few toiletries. We use DME so we just took a taxi over EARLY on our first morning - planned to get there in time to use the early opening feature that day too. We felt that the taxi was worthwhile to not have to pay for a rental for 2 days plus parking at the HRH. IIRC it was about $45 or so each way.

Here's where we ran into a snag. I had purchased 3-day Universal tix at Costco before we went that were supposed to be good for like 2 years. Our thought was that we'd use 2 days on that trip and save the last day to use on another trip. Well, we got to the HRH (very nice BTW - HUGE rooms), checked in and stored our duffle with bell services. We get to the parks almost exactly at opening and our tix WOULDN'T WORK!! We had to go to their Cust. Service line and waited there for like 30 min. When we finally got up there they scanned the tix and said they'd already been used!! Apparently dumb Costco let somebody RETURN the tix or something. I was BEYOND pissed. But the Universal people were really nice and understanding and wanted to help us. It took awhile but they printed out some stuff for me to take back to Costco to show that the tix were no good then they sold us 2-day passes at their "employee rate" which was about as good as it was going to get at that point. And since we wasted the whole early entry thing they gave us some special passes of some sort to use on a couple of rides. I forget exactly what that deal was. So we had to buy tix again out of pocket but since we were THERE already and had already checked in to the hotel we sort of didn't have any choice about it. When we got home I marched straight over to Costco and had to talk to a manager but they refunded me our money for those tix. I blame the whole fiasco on the particular Costco that I bought them at. I went to the one closest to where we live to buy these tix but it is a MESS of a place. It is SOOO crowded and both the employees and the customers are of what I would call "questionable" abilities. I nearly hyperventilate just trying to PARK there. I get along much better if I go to the one in the next county. It's really only about 10 minutes further away via the highway and it is so much nicer and "normal". I will never buy anything like that again at this one Costco. I will only go there for the basics.

Anyway, tix problems aside we then took a taxi back to the BWV at the end of our 2nd day once we felt we'd had our fill of the place. It had stormed that day and a lot of stuff closed due to lightening so we were kind of "done". But the plan worked out just fine and I would definitely recommend doing it like this because of their early entry and their front of the line access by staying onsite. That was INVALUABLE and very much worth the cost of the hotel room for the 1 night.

Wow, what an experience to say the least. Sounds like Universal did the best they could for you especially since the tixs were purchased else where. I have to share that I was going to purchase our UO passes from Costco this year for our trip but it turns out, our local store is not carrying them this year. In a way, after reading your experience, I'm better off. Thanks for sharing and for confirming that holding my room is not a little off the wall!

 

[goofy4tink]

My friend and I did the same thing a few years ago. We each had a BWV studio...a whopping 10pts a night. We got a great AP rate at RPR, which we split. We took the Mears shuttle over to US/IoA about 7:15ish...got there at about 8 and got checked in and over to the IoA gate by 8:30...had time to do some early entry stuff before the crowds got there. We left the next afternoon....just called Mears and they gave us a pickup time that matched the time we would be ready to leave.
It all worked out great.

 

[3happydancers]

My friend and I did the same thing a few years ago. We each had a BWV studio...a whopping 10pts a night. We got a great AP rate at RPR, which we split. We took the Mears shuttle over to US/IoA about 7:15ish...got there at about 8 and got checked in and over to the IoA gate by 8:30...had time to do some early entry stuff before the crowds got there. We left the next afternoon....just called Mears and they gave us a pickup time that matched the time we would be ready to leave.
It all worked out great.

I see many have had no problems hopping back and forth! That was our original plan but now it seems we may just stay at UO. We are thinking about going to UO on a Tuesday around noon time. Check in and enjoy the parks and pool (no early entry this day). Get up Early on Wednesday to do early entry and enjoy our day. Go to Sea World Thursday (a friend is treating us ) and then early entry the park for a second time on Friday morning. Our flight is not until 8:20 that evening so we'll go back to our room after early entry, finish packing, have a breakfast and check out. We'll have plenty of time to do what ever (especially the teens). Maybe I'll sit by the pool with a nice drink! We'll even have time to have an early dinner before departing to MCO.

That's today's plan but it keeps changing!