Split Stay at New Year's?

[brandyleeann]

Hi everyone!

We are currently scheduled to be in WDW starting January 1 until our 7-night Western Caribbean cruise with DCL on January 6. We have rented points through a broker at Beach Club for our WDW stay and have only been to WDW one other time (AKL with rented points through the same broker for two quick nights).
My family will be heading to Orlando from Edmonton, and the flight times are pretty challenging. We would be flying from Edmonton to Toronto, 1:00 am to 7:00 am local, and then Toronto to Orlando, getting in at 1:30 pm local. 12 hours and basically overnight. My kids are not super young - they will be 7 and 5 - but they do not stay up late very often. They are great sleepers and definitely function best on 10+ hours sleep a night. I am worried that this first stretch will be really hard and throw them off enough to make our first few days at WDW a struggle. We could just not do a park the first day, but I don't love that idea either. Sigh.

Sorry for all the backstory, and here is where we get to what I see as a solution. We could take a direct flight out if we left on December 30 instead. We would get in around 7:30 pm local time, so would get to the hotel late, but then we could sleep and have a whole day at the resort to just hang out and get our bearings since I think December 31 would be a mad house at the parks anyways.

I checked with the broker and they don't have availability for Beach Club December 30 and 31, but could do either: AKL, OKW, or SS. Here are some questions I would love your feedback on:

1) Do these resorts have activities for New Year's Eve or is everything pretty much in one of the parks?

2) Which of these would offer the best activities for kids, or if there are not activities, would be in best proximity to some activities/fireworks etc...?

3) How do you get your luggage from resort to resort? We are not renting a vehicle and will do a car service from MCO to WDW to DCL, and expect to have four suitcases and two carry-ons. Our kids still need a car seat and booster.

4) Can we leave resort #1 early and go to drop off luggage at resort #2 and then hit a park? Likely we would do Epcot our first parks day (Jan 1) since it is walking distance from Beach Club.

5) Is this all crazy thinking and I should just stick with our current plans?

Thank you so much for reading my long post and thanks for your feedback and insights!!!

Brandy

 

[kmb584]

1) Do these resorts have activities for New Year's Eve or is everything pretty much in one of the parks?

2) Which of these would offer the best activities for kids, or if there are not activities, would be in best proximity to some activities/fireworks etc...?

3) How do you get your luggage from resort to resort? We are not renting a vehicle and will do a car service from MCO to WDW to DCL, and expect to have four suitcases and two carry-ons. Our kids still need a car seat and booster.

4) Can we leave resort #1 early and go to drop off luggage at resort #2 and then hit a park? Likely we would do Epcot our first parks day (Jan 1) since it is walking distance from Beach Club.

5) Is this all crazy thinking and I should just stick with our current plans?

Thank you so much for reading my long post and thanks for your feedback and insights!!!

Brandy

I don't think it's a crazy plan, I think it's smart to take the direct flight instead of parsing it into 12 hours of travel time. In regard to your luggage, Disney will transfer it to your new resort. All you need to do is contact Bell Services and tell them which resort you'll be moving to. Just know that it won't be transferred immediately. It will be that day, but possibly not until the late afternoon or evening. If that will present an issue, you can always transfer it yourself via taxi or Uber.

As for resort activities, I'm not aware of any aside from select resort restaurants offering a special dining menu. If you'd like to see the NYE Fantasy in the Sky fireworks, they're displayed on both December 30th & 31st and can be seen from areas outside of MK (TTC, CR Observation Deck, Poly Beach [though they sometimes require you to be staying at the resort to gain access to the beach], boat dock at GF).