Arriving close to DME Luggage Cutoff

[herrmannpt]

We fly out next Tuesday with an arrival time in Orlando at 9:45 pm. I know the luggage pick up cutoff time is 10pm. We are staying at AKV. The thing is we have a standard studio booked at Jambo for the first night and a value studio for the remainder of the trip, so we'll be switching rooms after that first night anyways. What should we do with our luggage? We'll have what we need for the next day in our carry on bags. Can we just let the luggage be picked up by DME and hopefully held by Bell Services to deliver to our new room the next day? We have two kids (one with special needs) so not having to deal with picking up luggage at the airport would be a plus.

 

[Hopefully]

That’s close. In theory you can do what you want. During DME hours you can have them pick up your luggage, deliver it to the resort and have it held to deliver the next day. But with a scheduled 9:45 landing I would retrieve my luggage myself. DME staff leave promptly at 10:00 PM. If anything is delayed your luggage will be circling on the carousel unattended. I wouldn’t risk it.

 

[kristenrice]

You might want to not only consider picking up your checked bags when you arrive, but when you get to AKV, I would suggest checking them with bell services right away. That way, you won't have to deal with bringing them back down to bell services in the morning. Since you are switching rooms the next day, you will have to either bring them to bell services or have them picked up anyways, so I would simply drop them off when I arrive and save a step.

 

[bumbershoot]

I wouldn’t tag them. I would let them come to the cariusel, and I would find a porter to handle them for you. The porters we have had help us get the bags off the belt for us and they out the bags on their cart, and then we just follow the porter to dme. They go to the front of the line and wait for us, and then hand the bags off to the driver when we head to the bus.

Then when you get to the resort find a Bell Services person to either store the bags or bring them to your room. You can talk to them at that time about how to have them sent to your room the next morning.

It does mean tipping the porter, driver, and bell person. But it’s money well spent to not have to touch the bags (except maybe once they are off the bus and before you find a Bell Services person) but also without worrying that they made it.

 

[herrmannpt]

Thanks for the input everyone. Sounds like we should deal with the hassle of retrieving our own luggage rather than use DME luggage delivery. Are there usually porters still around the airport at 10pm? Good point to check the luggage into Bell Services right away when we arrive at the resort. That will save a couple of steps the next day when we are switching rooms.