How do I switch between disney hotels if staying at two during our vacation?

[sarlthom]

Hello All! My husband and I want to stay at two disney hotels during our vacation and I was curious...how do we make the switch? Do we have to take all our luggage with a taxi over to the second one? Or does disney take it for you? I was hoping we could just give our luggage at the poly (our first hotel) for them to transfer to AKL and we could just go straight to a park that AM like normal...and check into AKL later in the day...rather than going to AKL in the AM to check in and losing good park time in the AM. I don't know if I am making any sense, but any help you have is great!

 

[tjmw2727]

Disney will transfer your bags for you but it can take all day - I wouldn't expect to see them at the 2nd resort until well after check in time, probably 4pm.

For us this isn't a problem, if we have items we need I pack a backpack and store it in a locker at the theme park we visit.

So we generally check out of the first resort, hit a theme park for the day and then head to the 2nd resort about 5ish to check in for the remainder of the trip.

 

[sarlthom]

thank you so much! This is my first time posting on here, although I read trip reports and get answers to lots of questions on here. I can't believe how quick I got a reply! Thank you

 

[LaurenT]

It was seamless for us. We checked out of Kidani very early, gave all our stuff to bell services and told them where we were moving to.
Then we headed to Epcot for rope drop, spent the day there and then walked over to the Beach Club, picked up our new key and stopped at Bell services to ask them to send our bags up....we also had groceries from the garden grocer waiting..bell services brought everything up within minutes of asking!

 

[Lancer]

And people always wonder why we keep coming back again and again. Just another reason in a long list of them.

 

[puffkin]

We visit WDW a lot, probably 2-3 times a year. We have done a split stay 3 times using Disney to transfer our bags and it was a huge pain. All times we had to lug all our luggage down to bell services because they were too backed up to send someone to get our bags and it would be a 45-1 hour wait. Twice our bags got "lost" in transit and it took well over an hour to track the down and get them to our room. The third time they were brought to our room, but only after we asked to have them brought up and it still took over 45 minutes. I don't think we were being unreasonable in expecting our luggage to get there by late afternoon after checking out of our other resort at 9 am. In all 3 instances, the earliest we got our bags was 6pm (and in 2 of the 3 times after many calls and effort on our part to retrieve them).

We are DVC and often bookend our stays at other Disney resorts and this is a HUGE reason why we now rent a car every trip. Much easier to do it ourselves. I do think though that if we didn't have a car I would probably just arrange my plans to use a taxi and schlep our bags over to the other resort ourselves. The taxi fare would be about the same as all the bell services tips anyways and then you know your bags are where you want them when you want them.

Keep in mind that it is a FREE service (outside of bell service tips) and Disney doesn't really get anything out of it so it may not be as quick as you would prefer or need. We realize that and just choose to make other arrangements now.

 

[pad406]

We did the exact same split over Christmas/new year last and it was super simple. We arranged with bell hop the night before for the time we wanted. They picked up our bags and we went to AK. That evening we checked into AK gave our room number to the bell hop there and they came up to the room with us. I can understand that stuff might get temporarily misplaced sometimes but we didnt want either the hassle or the wasted time in moving it ourselves (we did have a car). As we had never done it before we had packed a few essentials separately and left them in the car. Thankfully never needed them. Would have no hesitation in doing the same again. Have a great trip and don't try and see everything this time. You'll be back they're both great resorts by the way.

 

[Bowen9475]

One time when we did a split stay we were moving from the cabins at Fort Wilderness to OKW. We called luggage services at FW and they sent a van with a driver who drove us and our bags over to OKW. Very easy!