Arrive Early??? / Arrive Late???

[BrianD]

If you had a 6.5 hour drive to WDW and you could either arrive very late in the evening or early in the next morning which would you choose? Or would you come in the evening before, stay off-site or at an All Star and then move the next morning?

Thanks for your responses!!!

 

[csmommy]

Brian

I would arrive very early & if your rooms not ready stow your bage & either hit a park or the pool. This wasy you can tell the front desk exactly the type of room you want & perhaps they can hold it for you till you come back & offically check-in.

 

[WDW2000]

With the "rack-rate" Disney charges for their Deluxe hotels, I feel I have to arrive early to get my monies worth!! I'd have a hard time paying $500/nt just to arrive at midnight and go to sleep. I think if I ever had to arrive late, I would stay off-site for the first night unless I was able to get a reasonable rate.

 

[jaygatz]

BrianD,

We have a seven hour drive from Ga., and we always arrive the day before and it is worth to me. I book the "night before the first night" through priceline.com. I input a 4-star minimum in the Disney Resort area, and bid a max of $65.00. In my experience, you will either get the Hilton @ DTD or the Swan/Dolphin as those are the only 4-stars in that area (someone will correct me if I am wrong). Then, you wake up on your 1st day rested, get to the hotel early (hopefully this gives a better chance at special requests, provided you are willing to wait), and you get to leisurely introduce/acclimitize yourself to the Disney mania. If you take this tack, the Animal Kingdom is a great 1st day park as it is quite conducive to a more relaxed touring plan and its early closing forces you to not go haywire on your first day.

 

[BrianD]

We're coming from the Atlanta area and we are actually staying at CBR, so I'm wondering, if we decide to come down the night before, maybe we should just check-in to CBR instead of stay somewhere else first since, depending on the rate, there may not be much of a price difference? My only concern is getting a bad choice of rooms.

Thanks for the votes & replies so far!

 

[jaygatz]

we're from Carrollton. I guess that kinda makes us neighbors If you don't feel like driving the whole way, anywhere from Cordele to Perry realy splits the trip up nicely.

 

[deb305]

I wish I knew how they assign rooms. I have a strong feeling that it is a next available situation, unless you have a special request.(like a crib in the room). If I am staying at a Delux I time our arrival early, for moderate Disney resorts we pay for the extra night. Just remember if you get a bad room (clean, bad view etc) you have the option of talking to the resort manager. If you arrive that option may not be there. I have read some posts that when the management gets involved either they get a better room or transferred to a resort that meets their needs.

 

[Trish5768]

We won't be arriving until around 11 pm on our first night and have decided to stay at the ASMo for our first night. The next morning we will head over to CBR and check in for the rest of our trip. It just made no sense to us to pay the rate for CBR for a day we are not going to be there. Have fun!

 

[Trish5768]

We won't be arriving until around 11 pm on our first night and have decided to stay at the ASMo for our first night. The next morning we will head over to CBR and check in for the rest of our trip. It just made no sense to us to pay the rate for CBR for a day we are not going to be there. Have fun!

 

[clkelley]

When we drive, (we're from North Alabama), we stop in Ocala ($45.00 at Super 8) the first night, and then head out early the next morning and go straight to the parks, then we check in at All-Stars much later that night.

I really, really, despise the check-in lines, and the only disadvantage is not having charging priviledges our first day. We're not real picky about our room location

Also on our last day, we check out of All-Stars, stay at the parks all day, then drive back up to Ocala that night, and finish the drive home the next day. We have found that when we stay the last night at WDW when we drive, we can't seem to get out of the Orlando area before 2pm which makes for a very late night drive home. It is much easier to leave Ocala by 9 am and we already have 2 hours of the drive behind us

Now when we fly, we arrive the night before, go ahead and stay at All-Stars, and take a 5:30 pm flight home the last day.