New to this and asking for help!

[Wills Mom]

I am so lost with this renting business. If anyone can give me tips or point me in the right direction of where to start I would hugely appreciate it! Our trip is planned for Aug 23rd to Sept 7th possibly 8th next year although our flights (from Ireland) are not yet booked we are pretty much tied to those dates. Travelling are myself and my husband with our two small boys along with my sister in law and her pre-teen son. My sister in law wants to stay offsite for the entire trip in a condo (shared) but I would like to do a split stay, with the first 10 nights being in the condo and then do 3 nights at BWV in two studios. My sister in law flies home on Sept 5th so DH and I would like to stay in a MK view studio at BLT for the last two (or three if I can swing it with flight prices!) nights of our trip. I have DH on board with this plan but we both agree we need to have as much info as possible before we tell his sister so if anyone can help me get started with how to rent, and where to buy the points, how to know if the renter is the real deal, average prices etc I would be so grateful!! Also, am I right in saying we would have all the perks of a "regular" onsite guest like FP+ at 60 days and ADRs at 180+10 and EMH? Presumably we would buy our own Magic Bands though no? Thanks so so so much!

 

[drusba]

My personal advice if you are going to be doing multiple rooms at multiple resorts is to go through a broker like David's, dvcrequest.com, because otherwise you will likely need to personally find more than one owner to do the rentals and the reservations, which he is in a better position to do. His site provides a lot of information incluiding exactly what it would cost.

You would have all the same things as a regular resort quest except you will not get daily room service with a DVC reservation and you cannot do a "package" that itself includes room, park tickets and dining, but you can purchase tickets separately and the Disney Dining Plan. You will be able to set up the reservation in MyDisneyExperience.com (MDE), make FP+ 60 days out as long as you also pre-puchase park tickets, and restaurant reservations 180 days out. You do not "buy" magic bands. Those are supplied to you as long as you have a reservation and set it up on MDE. Note, setting up your MDE site is a separate exercise from renting the room and you will need to do that yourself (which every Disney guest has to do).

 

[agie65]

Cost wise it will be cheaper to stay offsite.

If you want to do split stay, for few days, you can find a owner or broker to get you the accommodation you need.

All perks comes with DVC reservation as PP mentioned.

 

[MAO]

If you stay offsite for the first few days and you *want* a MagicBand for those days, I believe you will have to purchase it. You will receive a MagicBand for every stay at a Disney resort - so if you do a split stay, you'll get multiple MagicBands (assuming things stay as they currently are, of course. Disney may change things by the time your vacation starts, but you can do just the best you can do with what you have.) But each MagicBand seems to be good only once that reservation has started, so while you may receive one prior to your trip it probably won't be useable until you check into that Disney resort.

Note that the MagicBand is similar in concept to a wallet -- it "contains" the information about your resort reservation, your ticket information, any meal reservations, FastPass+ reservations, etc. But you don't get to make FastPass+ reservations unless you have a ticket to connect to it, you don't get to make an ADR reservation unless you have a room reservation (and, thus, can't attach any meal reservations to the MagicBand unless the room information exists,) etc. All that's to say that the MagicBand is not a necessity - the theme park ticket is what's required for FastPass+ and the room reservation is what's required for the ADRs (at least, to my knowledge, to make them as early as you'd like.)

As far as renting goes, try the rent/trade board here on the forums. There was recently a topic I looked through (though I don't remember which board - not the rent/trade but probably within the DVC boards) that left me with the impression that 'average' price is around $15 a point, give or take. BWV will *probably* be cheaper than BLT, particularly at that time of the year and definitely if you want MK view. (In fact, good luck getting MK view this close to your vacation -- something like that probably needed to be snapped up right at the 11 month timeframe and you're just a smidge past that.) There are plenty of posts regarding what to look for and how to go about renting though, honestly, the previous poster's recommendation of a broker such as David's sounds like a very good idea for a first time renter. Usually the restrictions on renting that seem to matter to people are a) no changes to dates or rooms allowed, b) no cancellation allowed, c) no 'free dining' and d) daily housekeeping is available for an extra fee (you get housekeeping every 4 days, but your plans are so short for each stay you'd basically get none.) The price is, of course, the biggest pro.

And, yes, you'd get the ADR window timeframe 'as normal' for a Disney reservation. And, yes, it would be considered to be a valid Disney resort stay, so you could make your FastPass+ reservations 60 days early. Just make sure that you tie everything together via the MyDisneyExperience.com website (the MagicBand is basically the mobile version of this website, one that you can carry with you.)

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

If you stay offsite for the first few days and you *want* a MagicBand for those days, I believe you will have to purchase it. You will receive a MagicBand for every stay at a Disney resort - so if you do a split stay, you'll get multiple MagicBands (assuming things stay as they currently are, of course. Disney may change things by the time your vacation starts, but you can do just the best you can do with what you have.) But each MagicBand seems to be good only once that reservation has started, so while you may receive one prior to your trip it probably won't be useable until you check into that Disney resort.

Note that the MagicBand is similar in concept to a wallet -- it "contains" the information about your resort reservation, your ticket information, any meal reservations, FastPass+ reservations, etc. )

Actually a MagicBand only links back to your account and doesn't contain any information other than that it is assigned to you. So the MB's that would be received by the renter for the 2 resort stays they are considering booking could also be used for entry into the parks even while they are staying offsite. What does seem to have to happen most of the time is that the resort has to activate a particular band to work at the resort and open doors. But I've had them work even without that a couple of times. And I've also had it not work when the resort said they had taken care of it.

As was mentioned OP you have to have some sort of ticket assigned to you in order to make FP reservations. If you are off site then you can reserve 30 days in advance. If you are onsite then you have the 60 day window from your date of check in.

 

[Wills Mom]

Thank you all very much for the replies I will get onto Davids website immediately and see how I can make the multiple reservations. DH said we can make the reservation for the single studio first (preferably for BLT but really any MK area resort will do just fine - BLT is just somewhere I would personally like to stay but I appreciate I am probably a bit late in the game for that now) and once we know how that works we will have more info to present to the sister in law about the BWV part of the trip. We are planning on locking in our flights this weekend so once that is done we can lock in accommodation.
We wanted to purchase MBs for the offsite portion of our stay as we are going to be buying Memory Maker and it would make it easier to make sure all our pictures are linked. We wouldn't be buying them until we get to Disney though so I am sure guest services can instruct me on linking them to MDE etc. But would we get separate MBs for each DVC resort (if we stayed at BWV for 3 nights then BLT or similar for 2 nights) I need to look into this more as the more MBs we end up with the more chance for MDE to glitch and mess up things like FP+ and ADRs!!

So to summarize, if we go through a brokers like Davids I just fill in the details on the reservation form and pay the $98 for him to check availability which would be refunded if the required room choices are not available right? He books the room, I pay the remaining balance and then he sends me the confirmation and details. Once I buy the requisite tickets I can link them on MDE. And I can do that for any and all bookings I make through Davids? Sorry for all the dumb questions, I just want to make sure I have all the details before proceeding

 

[drusba]

I do not perceive you are late in the process for the time period you want, Aug 23 to Sep 7 or 8, which is a fairly low DVC demand time, and much is usually avaialble this far out except potentially BLT standard view if looking at BLT.

As to choosing resorts, as noted above BWV would be significantly less than BLT theme park view. In considering whether you really want BLT theme park view be aware: (a) the studios at BLT are small (about 340 sq ft) in comparison to other DVC studios (about 360 at BWV). Theme park view can be a disappointment unless you get high floor (8 or above), which can be requested but is a non-guaranteed request, because the main thing you will see from lower floors is a large parking lot in front of the building. I am among those who feel that lake view is actually better than theme park view.

Also, as to making dining reservations and FP+, be aware that the 180 day out rule (restaurants) and 60 day out rule FP+ if staying on site and 30 days for offsite applies separately to each room reservation. In other words, for offsite reservation you will be able to do restaurant reservations beginning 180 days out and FP+ 30 days out only for the time of the offsirte reservation. For your first room reservation on site, the 180 day and 60 day period will apply only to its time period and then a new 180 day and 60 day period will apply to your stay at a different DVC resort.

As to what is needed for David's it is best to address any questions to his organization. I have never personally rented from him but have sent 5 people I know to using his organization and all have been pleased with the result.

 

[Wills Mom]

Thanks so much A bit more research has suggested the same about the theme park view being a bit disappointing. We have been in contact with Davids and they have answered a lot of questions about the multiple reservations but in the end we have decided to extend our trip by an extra night (just DH and I with our boys) so essentially we will stay offsite for 13 nights with my sister in law and to round out the trip we will do 3 night at a DVC resort. First choices being BLT or VGF but if we don't get there we will look at BWV. I must look into the sizes at the different resorts of each of the studios, never thought of that and it might be a deal breaker for DH at BLT. He would prefer stay at BWV or VGF, I have just wanted to stay at BLT for a long time now but sure if it doesnt happen this trip it might be the excuse I am looking for to go back the next year

 

[drusba]

At about 372 sq ft, VGF has the second largest studios of the DVC WDW resorts (OKW has the largest) The studios at BWV, BCV, AKV, VWL and SSR are close to the same size (except for the small number of "value" studios at AKV Jambo which are the smallest of all studios at the DVC resorts)..