Moms of Autistic kids- can you pick apart this plan?

[Kebby]

Hi all!

I need some opinions of other moms of autsitic little ones about my WDW plan. My son will be 5 on this trip. He is autistic and has global delays, although he functions at about a 2-3 yr old now. He is not totally ridgid in routine, but he does like to know what is going on, and he does expect things to stay the same. If they change, he definitely adapts, but with a little bit of difficulty. He needs his sleep in order to function, and this trip will be stressful for him so getting rest is going to be key. We have three other kids, age 8, 2 and 17 mos at the time of the trip

Right now we are looking at doing one of two plans.

A) Stay at the Beach club resort Sept 18-20 for non park days, and then check into the poly from Sept 20-27 with FD

b) stay at the poly with FD Sept 18-21 ( two non park days and then MK on the 20) and then check into BLT two bedroom from 21-26. The little glitch here is that we would have to stay in a LV room at BLT from Sept 21-24 and then switch to a TPV for the last two nights. We could waitlist to stay in the same room, but not a garuntee.

If it were you, what would you do? I love the poly, but I am really worried about all 6 of us being in one room for 9 nights. I am worried that my young toddler and 2 yr old would wake up the others in the night, especially Gavin who needs rest. But then I also worry he will have a hard time switching hotels. Having laundry, extra room, and a kitchen for my kids who are up at 5 am and hungry every day is soooo tempting, BUT should I just stick with the poly for more consistency for Gavin?

Booking a second room at the poly is not an option as it will cost us over 2K.

 

[lanejudy]

Would you be able to swing 2 rooms at a moderate, instead of the deluxe? With the ages of your kids, though, you'd need to be prepared that the parents might need to split - WDW will do their best to provide connecting rooms on request but it cannot be guaranteed. Or what about a cabin at FW? Those sleep 6 and have a full kitchen, plus boat service to MK and a lot of activities for "resort time." There's also the family suites at ASMu or AoA that have a kitchenette and 2 bathrooms.

My DD would not do well with the hotel change. I would opt for 1 location that would be acceptable for the full vacation. The transitions of packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, packing are too much.

Enjoy your vacation!

 

[FortForever]

My DD would not do well with the hotel change. I would opt for 1 location that would be acceptable for the full vacation. The transitions of packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, packing are too much.

Enjoy your vacation!

I have to agree 100%. Although my autistic son is now grown, I would have not considered changing resorts or rooms with him.

With almost any autistic child, it would be preferable to choose a room and stay there for the duration. Maybe a family suite at AoA?

 

[clanmcculloch]

I third the opinion that the hotel changes will be difficult. We've done split stays with 2 resorts total. Our 15yo Aspie did fine with that but she's older and it sounds like she's higher functioning than your DS so she could cope with it after having had it explained to her. If she was a lot younger OR not as high functioning it would have been a lot more difficult.

Are there no 2br BLT rooms that you can get the whole time regardless of view? What about BCV? Have you looked into any of the other villas? Your family can fit in a 1br at BLT, OKW or AKV. If you're willing to squish into a single room at BC or Poly then I can't imagine that a 1br at any of these would be a problem so maybe check into a 1br at one of these resorts for the duration of your trip? This would give you the full kitchen the whole trip as well as a separate bedroom and laundry facilities.

 

[kirstenb1]

Our 7 yr old dd has ASD. We're DVCr's and love the accomodations!!! We really like that we have a kitchen so we can stock dd's "back up" favorite foods, in case she seems out of sorts. WE also love that she has lots of room to set up her Legos, Barbies, etc. We take a break back in the room right after lunch, and it's nice to have the room to leave the toys out. Finally, dd has sleep issues, so she can have her own bedroom if need be.

My point is....can you just stay at a DVC resort for the entire trip? Or is it too many points?

Our dd seems to really value her downtime, away from us as well as the rest of the world. Every kid is different, but if your child needs that downtime, I'd try to get the largest square footage/layout.

 

[Kebby]

Thanks everyone for the tips and help. to answer, I would love to stay at DVC the whole trip, but sadly, BLT is all booked up for the first few days of the trip, as is WLV. I really need to be near MK as that is where we will spend most of our time, and we plan on taking naps mid day. I don't want to be travelling long distances with two cranky, overtired toddler. I am going to try and waitlist the other days at BLT and hope it comes through!!

 

[Brer Shay]

Sounds like you are already there, but I'm another vote for staying in one location. DS was six on his first trip and we spent a chunk of our arrival day getting him used to the resort in hopes of encouraging sleep that night. We stayed at POFQ because it is the smallest moderate. We went through the room, the walk from the room to the busstop, the walk to the pool, and the walk to the food court several times over. Seeing it all and feeling like he knew where everything was made a significant difference in his anxiety level. We also did two interior connected rooms so that there was adequate space for everyone to sleep and move around for play. It worked for us, even doing midday naps each day using bus transportation to the resort. I know every family structure, particularly one including autism, is different. On an encouraging note, one of the reasons we've vacationed repeatedly at Disney is because our DS has made significant strides on each trip in overcoming some challenge, or improving some ability while we're there. I hope that your trip is magical.

 

[tinkerpea]

I don't know if you have already booked now but I have a autistic child who is 10 and can deal
With change but really hates to have to do it!

We had to split stay last trip due to not being enough rooms for the whole trip so we did 15 nights SSR then 3 nights AOA and 4 nights off site, I really thought our son was going to melt down BUT because we went and visited AOA whole staying at SSR and we showed him around for half an hour and ate at the food court, when it came to changing hotels he was excited to stay at the new place we had visited!!

I think as long as its not a surprise the change will be ok.
Either way I wish you luck

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

Hi! I'm an almost 18 year old with autism. With the exception of my last trip, I stayed in one hotel. I would do that. I was sort of like your son when I was his age although my first WDW trip was at age 7 (10 years ago).