Is it Really Better Staying On Property?

[dragitoff]

I have always been an advocate for staying on-property. From the resort theming to the bus service, I've always felt that was the only way to go. That doesn't mean we haven't done our fair share of trips staying off-site. My family has been looking closely at DVC and even investing into a vacation home offsite lately and as the uber planner in me would do, I began to really analyze whether or not it's worth it in every case.

Let me preface my argument by saying, my family is unusual to most. We are a large family. I have 6 kids ages 3-14 so our resort choices are very limited. We recently adopted 4 so our family just crossed over from "regular rooms" to "Only 2BR Villas or larger will work". Staying in 2 separate rooms is not something we're interested in. We recently stayed at AKL Villas back in May and that was our first trip to WDW with the new members of our family.

I've often lamented over the occasional long wait for a bus and the rides over to the parks, but none more than after this latest trip. Each day, we waited at the bus stop for a minimum of 10-15 minutes. Most days, our bus ride was another 15-25 minutes (depending on which park we headed to). The same was true for our return trip, and sometimes longer depending on what time we left the parks (if we had to wait for a 2nd bus to arrive since the 1st was full). Obviously, if you're staying at the Contemporary or BLT, then there's no question here, but most other resorts those stats hold true.

Some of the off-site properties are less than 15 minutes from the parks and there is no waiting for your transportation to arrive. With that in mind vs. having your own car, isn't the argument valid for staying off-site IF you're looking at a convenience aspect? There are definitely variables such as having your own car, wanting to drive, etc.. and I know the buses drop you off right at the entrance to the MK vs. having to go via monorail or ferry from the TTC, but even then the monorail is kind of an attraction BEFORE the parks so that argument could be a draw.

I've already made my mind up it's not as much of a slam dunk in favor of staying on-site as I used to think, especially in my case. I'm really just curious about other's opinions.

 

[Magpie]

We love staying on property, but I think it really depends on your particular needs as a family. For you, staying off site sounds like it makes good sense.

For my husband and me, we love our little room in the Pop (ideally in the sixties, lake view). We also quite enjoyed our room at Coronado Springs, though the busses weren't as good as they are at Pop. And some day, for some very special occasion, we'd like to get a room at the Boardwalk Inn. We got to stay at the Beach Club once, and being within walking distance of two parks was amazingly fun.

That said, there's usually only two of us. We enjoy the camaraderie of the busses and we have no desire to navigate car rentals and parking lots, etc. We enjoy the convenience of Magical Express. We like being immersed in the Disney Bubble. When we next bring the kids, who are now young adults, we'll likely get two separate, adjoining rooms. The nice about that will be that we won't have to be joined at the hip all the time. They can use the busses to go where ever they like and we can meet up for meals.

 

[Alesia]

You can stay in a 3 bedroom/3 bath house for less than the cost of 1 room at a value resort. I think that free transportation is a great perk, but it's hard to balance that with the money you save by staying offsite if you have more than 2 people.

 

[tileman]

I vote yes I love to stay onsite.

 

[Mikie]

I am wondering about this for my next trip. I have that awkward-for-Disney family of 5, and my single sister often goes with us, making us 6. Comfortable, affordable Disney choices are limited. Further, as my kids get older, the bed-sharing or bathroom sharing gets less comfortable. However, as they age up, they sure would love a little freedom where I'd let them use Disney transport on their own, but couldn't replicate that if staying off site.

My sister has been HUGE into the "Disney bubble" aspect, enjoying MDE, dining plan, magic band charging, etc. BUT I think as my kids get old enough to stay later at the parks, we'll be looking for more rest days/half days in a nice roomy home with a pool.

It's just a hard leap to make when we know that we DO like staying on property, and if we make the leap only to find that we feel it's less convenient, less relaxing, we'll definitely not think it was worth the savings. And we don't do Disney (or any vacations) often enough to feel we can "experiment" and possibly come up short.

 

[Memaw2Wm]

I like to stay onsite. That said I'm usually traveling with my granddaughter and we rent a car so no waiting on the bus for us. And yes, we have to travel from the MK parking lot to MK, but we like the tram and the boat/monorail ride.

If I had such a large family (my sister has 6 kids and usually stays at the Grand Floridian) it would probably come down whether or not I could afford to stay onsite.

 

[alliecat523]

I do enjoy staying on property, but we also love staying off property. A lot of it is cost for us. We will stay at the Hilton Bonnet Creek often times with rates less than those of Pop and others. They have a great lazy river and fabulous charter buses for Disney transport. Even with a town car pick up and return to MCO my total lodging expense is less than Disney with DME almost every time. Plus, we can use the points we earn for other free hotel stays. I'd love to stay at Beach Club and/or Boardwalk some day but whenever I start to consider it, I see the cost and say forget it. I can get more days if I stay at the Hilton.

 

[Masonmj84]

I can only speak from my own experience, where my off property stays were nearly 30 years ago (grew up in a family with 6 kids), whereas my on property stays have all been within the past 5 years.

I have enjoyed our on-property stays as an adult way more than our off-property stays as a child. Just love the theming of the resorts and being in the Disney bubble the whole time. Since we fly in, I also love the convenience of Magical Express and not having to deal with the hassles of baggage claim, rental car, car seats, driving, and parking.

That being said, we tend to go all out with our on-property stays. We usually do split stays at deluxe resorts so we don't have to rely much on buses. We also eat mostly table service meals (growing up, we brown bagged food into the parks). So my on and off site experiences are not really a fair comparison.

In addition, we have a smaller family (2 kids). I don't think we could justify the expense of our on-property vacationing style if we had 6 kids. Along those lines, unless you go the DVC route (either by owning or renting points), I don't think the value prop for staying on-site is as good with a large family.

Interestingly, most of my in-laws have larger families (4-6 kids) and none of them ever stay on site (even the ones who can afford to). They typically rent an off-site house or condo (often with another family) and, at the beginning of their vacation, do a Costco run for food (having larger families, their mindset is very "economies of scale"). But they also typically do stuff like Universal and Sea World in addition to Disney. So I think there are a lot of factors that play into the on-site versus off-site decision.

 

[OBH]

For us (no kids), we lost the relaxing, "just show up and Disney takes care of the rest" feeling when we stayed off-site. Having to fight Orlando traffic (and we were only 10 minutes away distance-wise) made my husband become Grumpy. I cannot imagine, though, navigating Disney transportation during a busy time with a lot of kids. I'd be afraid of losing someone in the crush that can happen at the end of the day.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

IMO, WDW is the only place worth the extra expense and reduced luxury just for a vacation bubble.

 

[dragitoff]

One thing I also failed to mention is we have historically been rope drop until night time park tourers so we didn't spend much time at our resort. We seldom enjoyed the nuances of each resort. This last trip, we spent less time in the parks and more time at the resorts than we ever had and really enjoyed our trip so much more. Having said that, I could see the same being said with a quality off-site property (especially if it's a spacious house with themed rooms,game rooms, etc.) where you could enjoy the space and luxuries and truly relax.

I'm loving all the feedback so far though and it's definitely a matter of preference and everyone's case is subjective. I think it's good back and forth either way!

 

[lroger01]

Keep in mind your family is just now getting into the teen years. Right now you all travel to and from the parks together. As the kids get older, some might want to sleep late, or stay in the parks late, or ride TOT for the 50th time. Onsite buses mean they can do those things.

I'm not sure if this is enough of an advantage against saving money or a larger space. Just something else to think about.

 

[maxiesmom]

I'm not sure where you are getting that there are off site hotels that don't have waits for buses. They do. Plus their bus stops are out in the middle of the parking lots, with no shade or queue lines, unlike the Disney stops. I truly think is is a space vs convenience thing. You gain space staying off site. But you lose convenience. No DME to your resort. No EMHs. No FP+ at 60 days out. No charging everything to your Magic Band. You get longer, more involved transportation to the parks on buses that don't run as often, or charge you for riding them. And if you rent a van, there goes a significant chunk of any money you saved staying off site. Vans are easily double to cost of cars. Easily!

I've stayed off site many times, and had nice vacations. But being closer to the parks, not having to worry about catching a bus and transferring around to get to a park, and not having to stress about driving, is huge! The family being able to split up without stress is huge! On site is so less stressful than staying off site.

 

[loves to dive]

I've only stayed off property once, that was about 25 years ago so I'm sure lots have changed. We didn't stay that close, we were on Idrive because we were also doing Sea World. It was myself, DS who was around 9 or 10 at the time and my step daughter (his sister) who had to have been around 15 or so. That may have been the only time we didn't have park hoppers as well. We did have tickets but drove up to the gate at MK around a hour after opening and got turned away because the park was full. We had been going to WDW for a number of years at that point and always stayed on site so this was an eye opener. We went back to the hotel, right then and there I booked us rooms at what is now Shades of Green, can't remember what it was back then, I think it CR and maybe Poly were the only on site resorts. Anyway, no problems getting a room and since we were now on site, no problem getting into the park. That was it for me, no more of the issue of fighting traffic and parking, Disney transportation all the way.

 

[dragitoff]

Keep in mind your family is just now getting into the teen years. Right now you all travel to and from the parks together. As the kids get older, some might want to sleep late, or stay in the parks late, or ride TOT for the 50th time. Onsite buses mean they can do those things.

I'm not sure if this is enough of an advantage against saving money or a larger space. Just something else to think about.

My DD's (14 and 11) already do a little park touring on their own now (well, they have a little freedom to tour together w/o us), but we still ride over to the parks together. Even though they love sleeping in, there's one place they always beat us up. You guessed it. WDW! lol. That may change as they get older and it's definitely something to consider, but of course, my oldest will be legal driving age in a few years too.

 

[dragitoff]

I'm not sure where you are getting that there are off site hotels that don't have waits for buses. They do. Plus their bus stops are out in the middle of the parking lots, with no shade or queue lines, unlike the Disney stops. I truly think is is a space vs convenience thing. You gain space staying off site. But you lose convenience. No DME to your resort. No EMHs. No FP+ at 60 days out. No charging everything to your Magic Band. You get longer, more involved transportation to the parks on buses that don't run as often, or charge you for riding them. And if you rent a van, there goes a significant chunk of any money you saved staying off site. Vans are easily double to cost of cars. Easily!

I've stayed off site many times, and had nice vacations. But being closer to the parks, not having to worry about catching a bus and transferring around to get to a park, and not having to stress about driving, is huge! The family being able to split up without stress is huge! On site is so less stressful than staying off site.

I wasn't talking about off-site bus services. I was talking about staying off-site IF you have your own transportation. I definitely think off-site bus transportation is probably more of a headache than on-site, although I've never tested that theory out personally. We're fortunate enough to only live about 4 1/2 hours away so we always drive. MDE, EMH, and FP+ extra days are definitely perks that can't be matched for sure!

 

[kj2mom]

We stayed off site in July. Initially we were supposed to be staying with another family but after getting the time share the other family decided to stay on site. That left us with a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom timeshare for the 3 of us (me and my two 13 year olds). We definitely did not take advantage of all the time share had to offer because like you mention we rope dropped and stayed until closing. One night we used the pool because it was our AK day but other than that we slept and showered there. I will say that my children fell in love with Steak N Shake that was right outside our driveway. Seriously, we went almost every day (once for breakfast shakes shhhh we were on vacation) and actually got to know some of the staff and the manager. I know it sounds silly but we would not have had this experience if we stayed on site. I was nervous about the driving because it was the first time I was renting a car and the first time being the only adult on a vacation with my children. I actually loved driving, I loved the convenience of being in the parks a few minutes after leaving our door. The drives were soo easy. There was never any traffic exiting the parks (I had heard horror stories about this especially since we were there for 4th of July) and we were home in no time. it was soo nice that if we ever go and stay on site again I might consider renting a car even though we don't need it. Anyway, after experiencing both I don't really know what I will do if we ever go again but I certainly don't have any negatives about being off site and did have some positives.

 

[JimmyV]

The few times that I have traveled with a "we need a minimum of two rooms" group, we stayed at the Swan/Dolphin for around $149 per room per night. We couldn't come close to that price (and space) at Disney-owned properties. Our other option was going to be off-site. So if you haven't looked into it, you might want to check out those resorts. You get 90% of the perks of Disney hotels. What you lose is Magical Express and the extra 10 day window for booking ADRs. Neither of those things has ever mattered to me. We usually do a one day car rental upon arrival. If you rent from National, you can drop the car off right at the Dolphin when you check in. Once we have the car, we make a side stop at Publix to buy supplies for the week and the money we save on breakfast foods and snacks more than makes up for the cost of the rental car. On the way back to the airport, we arrange for a shuttle through Mears.

I'm not suggesting that you will be able to get a room rate of less than $150 per night, but the Swan and Dolphin often have some really great rates. And you can accumulate Starwood points for your stay, or use Starwood points to book your stay, if you are a member of their program and have any points lying around.

Also, though I haven't stayed there yet, they Bonnet Creek resort area might be useful to you. It takes you out of the middle of the bubble. But you are still in the bubble a bit more than you would be 15 minutes outside of WDW.

All in all, while staying on site is nice, with a family of 6, staying off-site is easy to justify given the price options that are out there. But give the non-Disney hotels that are "on property" a look before you book 20 minutes away.

 

[PAcpl]

I think if cost isn't a factor most people would prefer to stay on property.

 

[Hootch]

Thank you for adopting your children. I know a family that has five kids through adoption, another that have three and several others that have adopted another child.

In your situation, I would stay of site. I don't know your financial situation, but the logistics of getting rooms and having space is important. The family experiece is better for you in a house or condominium than staying in a WDW resort.