We're going in October and my first choice was to use points (36-38 points per night) to stay at the Hollywood Hotel. Unfortunately they were sold out so I decided to splurge on the
Disneyland Hotel (53 - 60 points per night). Since I don't have enough points for 2 nights, I am using 53 points for a Thursday night and paying cash for a Friday night. The 53 points include 4 park tickets (2 adults + 2 kids for my party) which I can use from check-in Thursday through midnight Friday. To me, it's a good use of points since park tickets are included.
I choose to pay cash on Friday as the cash rates do not differentiate between Sun-Thurs vs. Fri-Sat, unlike the point system. It's OK I don't have park tickets for Saturday as we are leaving for the airport shortly after check-out anyway. We also prepaid for the character breakfast at the hotel for Saturday (another reason why we don't need park tickets). You get a 30% discount if you prepay for character meals.
I then called HK Disneyland Hotel to link the two reservations as I do not want to switch rooms after the first night. They assurred me it would not be a problem as long as the same category of rooms was booked, which I did.
Hope that helps! One thing to be prepared that when you call MS, they have to do this manually, which means you have no idea whether there is availability until days later. They tell you standard turnaround time was between 5 - 7 working days, but they did send me e-mail notification after 2 working days after the long Labor Day weekend.
