DVC split stay - help me plan the rest

[Tony]

OK, to make the most of our DVC membership, we've decided to split the stay so we're not on site over the weekend when the points are much higher.

However, I'm wondering what we should do with the other days...

Plan so far

Friday - fly into Orlando, arriving about 6pm
Sunday - check into DVC
Thursday - check out of DVC
Sunday - check into DVC
Wednesday - check out & fly home.

That gives us two nights at the start and three nights in the middle.

Am thinking that we might spend the first day at Sea World as the kids liked that in San Diego, and the bit in the middle either at Universal or on the beach.

It's an August trip so the weather might be nicer at the coast.

We're a party of 7 in all so any suggestions as to where we might want to stay would be appreciated too.

Thanks

Tony

 

[dis-happy]

I'm questiong your check-in, check-out days for DVC. We also like to conserve points, but we can check in on Sunday and out on Friday, not Thursday. Not sure if that's what you meant (Sun night - Thurs. night stay) or not.

The days we do off-site we always stat at one of the area Marriotts, either on free points or through a cash deal (Mousesavers has been offering some good ones lately). One nice thing about most of the Marriotts (not the Courtyard) is the free breakfast for everyone. The locations at Marriott Village and the ones on Palm are nice and make it easy to get places including Sea World. However, since we plan around our AP's we just do WDW. Miniature Golf at WDW is really fun if you haven't tried that yet.


PS. Party of 7: check out one of the Resdence Inns; they have 2 b/r suites that are nice and would fit all of you.

 

[swilshire]

This would be a lot of trouble for my family. We stayed at a Disney hotel once for three or four days before moving to a Summer Bay pool house. The day we moved seemed like a totally wasted vacation day. Of course, we were five that trip and we've never been accused of travelling light. I guess it would be OK if you basically just threw your suitcases in the car and didn't have a lot of other stuff to deal with.

One of the reasons I enjoy timesharing so much is we can unpack, buy groceries for the week and really settle in. I wouldn't feel rested and organized if I had to move twice. But that's just me.

Our kids always seemed to be like that also. They really like to check in and get all their toys situated just so.

Sheila

 

[joesemo]

Have you checked out disney vero beach, maybe you could rent some points and stay there.

How about heading down to Keys for a few days, if you have not seen key west and all of the islands this might be your chance.

Sometimes we stay at Old Towne suites on route 192 in Kissimmee. It is right next to old town amusement area and is only three miles from disney main gate

Also ALL- STAR Resorts in disney have great deals, and may be a cheaper option

 

[bluenosemickey]

We are DVC members and have done similar split stays in the past. I have stayed at the best western DTD over the weekend. Not bad, it was a great rate so I felt overall I was satisfied. I would prefer the Regal Sun for the location, truly within walking distance to DTD. Have stayed at a few other off site hotels, none that I would recommend.

Now, we had our own car for come of these split stay trips, that makes a difference. This summer we flew down and I crunched the numbers every which way I could. Finally decided to just stay at a POR (we are family of 5) on an AP rate of $89/night. A few things we had to consider:

1. DME transportation from Airport (saves you the price of one night possibly)

2. Bell services moves your luggage and food etc. to new resort and stores refrigerated items, otherwise you incur cab costs.

3. Dining plan added for the weekend. Without a kitchen, we found the 2 days of dining plan credits we stretched out to three days almost and so we were covered for food from friday lunch until sunday dinner pretty much. So we felt that the dining plan paid for 2 days saved us money. Paid for the odd thing OOP and shared some of the larger CS meals.

4. EMH if you like to stay late at whatever park is open, you can't if you are staying off site. We love to do Epcot late and it was one of the ones over the weekend with EMH.

5. We like to come back to the hotel for the afternoon and rest and have pool time, much more difficult if you are staying off site.

So if you want to stay off site to save money, you may find out that it doesn't unless you already have a car. If you want to do it for a change of pace, then I would go for a DTD hotel for the convenience. If you are off site, obviously you would schedule your non-disney stuff at that time, we did SW. The other thing that is good to do is the water parks if you are planning on going. August is great for the WP. I found other times of the year I actually got chilled being wet all day, not in August.

Anyway, my advise would be to pack as light as possible, have bags to transport any food items you might have (we used insulated zip top bags), prepare for lots of tips to bell services. We did this with a group of 11 and had it down to a science from all of our previous split stays. Made out fine. A little hectic at times, but we really liked the change of scenery, kids had a blast with 4 different pools over the course of the vacation.