Split stay (room size) at same resort?

[Dtw002]

Family of 5 (3 little kids) to conserve some points I was thinking about doing a studio for 2 days and then a 1 bedroom for 3 days. I wanted to see if anyone has done that, and if so how easy is it to make the room move? I think it will be easy, my wife thinks it will be a pain. Interested in anyone's experience.

Also, would you do the bigger room on the beginning of the trip or end?

Thanks!

 

[supersnoop]

The more you unpack, the more painful it will be. You'll be homeless for at least 5 hours, so you'll have to pack everything up and leave it will bell services (or in your car). Consider your plans for the day. Will you be going to a park at rope drop? Then you'll need to be packed up very early.

We switched from a studio to a one bedroom at BLT. It was either NYE or the day before. We had to call bell services for our bags at 1:30AM when we finally returned from the parks. I'm my case, i somehow snagged a couple last-minute cancellations, so it was the best itinerary I could put together. I didn't have any regrets.

 

[El&Asmom]

We've done a bunch of split stays including once when we had a 6, 3 year olds and a 5 month old. (That trip we moved twice). Totally easy. We just planned for a park day and came back when we knew we could check in. Sometimes we delay check out so we don't have to be homeless for very long but Disney makes it easy. They'll even store your perishables in the fridge/freezer if you have food to move. Now that we have tried most of the resorts out and know where we like to stay, we don't do split stays anymore but it was nice to get a feel for each of the resorts quickly.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I don't think it will be too bad. I would definitely do the studio to start. By the end of the trip with three little kids you are going to want more space rather than less.

Be sure to pack a separate bag of swimming stuff if that is usually part of your plans.

Perhaps pack a suitcase specific to the first two days, and not even touch the second until you get to the larger room. That's what we do and it works out great. We also pack a duffel to throw laundry in so when we move we don't have to pack a bunch of dirty clothes in with our clean ones.

 

[Meriweather]

I would also do the smaller villa at the beginning.
We pack one bag for each part of a trip and then just don't unpack one at all...............other than toiletries

 

[alldiz]

Just a thought.... If you were planning a park day on switch day. Packing a moving to a new room is same effort as changing resorts.
Bell services will transfer your stuff to different hotel.
Now you can feel like you have 2 vacations.
Check out...go to park take bus to new hotel and luggage will be delivered to new room in new hotel. I love split stays
Happy planning
Kerri

 

[kristenrice]

We do this same thing all the time. splitting between a studio and a 1BR. We have 2 kids who are now 11 and 13 (both girls) but we started doing it in 2009 when they were 4 and 6. On "change" day, we plan to be in a park until at least 4. Then, we plan dinner at our resort. Before we leave for the park in the morning, we drop our luggage off at Bell Services and tell them to hold it until we get back because we are changing rooms. When we get back, if the room isn't ready (never experienced this), we'd head to dinner. If it is, we grab the luggage and drop it off in the new room before heading to dinner. If there's time, I'd always start a load of laundry before dinner and then toss it in the dryer after dinner.

As far as packing goes, with the laundry facilities available, we can pack a LOT lighter. We take two rolling bags (both are small enough to qualify as carry-ons) in addition to a backpack for each of us. We pack the stuff for the first 2 days in one of the rolling bags and the rest in the other bag. This limits the amount of packing and re-packing that we need to do. Before the kids became "adults", we would add a dining plan for our first (studio) stay and then have groceries delivered for our 1BR stay with no dining plan.

Once we got the hang of it, we are now comfortable doing split stays between different resorts. It really lets us change things up an try new things. At 7 months, it is easier to find 2 night stays and 3 night stays than it is to find 5 consecutive nights in one room. This past October, we did something totally different...we split a week, starting with 5 nights at the BWV and then 2 nights at AKV. I don't typically like the longer stay on the front end, but I was pleasantly surprised. We had to pack up everything out of the BWV but when we moved to AKV, we didn't really unpack too much, making it much easier on check-out and go home day. It was much better than I expected. I won't intentionally split that way again, but I wouldn't completely rule it out either.

 

[com_op_2000]

We have done multiple split stays within the same resort:
going from an GV to a studio
going from AKL-C to standard AKL
going from a 1 BDRM to a studio
We have our own car, so for us we did not have to store anything, go the front desk early and check in, they might just have a room left over from last night that they can move you into, just pack up the car, go do whatever we were planning that day, and when we get the text and finish doing what we had planned move into the new room.

 

[CarolMN]

Family of 5 (3 little kids) to conserve some points I was thinking about doing a studio for 2 days and then a 1 bedroom for 3 days. I wanted to see if anyone has done that, and if so how easy is it to make the room move? I think it will be easy, my wife thinks it will be a pain. Interested in anyone's experience.

Also, would you do the bigger room on the beginning of the trip or end?

Thanks!

Allow me to give you another perspective - we recently traveled with 4 adults & 5 year old twins & no way would it have been at all desirable to switch resorts in the middle of our stay - and we had 4 adults and were in a 2 bedroom for a week, not a studio or one bedroom for a total of 5 nights.

If your wife doesn't want to do it, my advice is don't! You aren't going to convince her it won't be a pain and if she ends up unhappy dealing with the move, it won't be a pleasant experience for any of you. As you probably know, Disney vacations can be stressful, and with 3 little ones, changing rooms will just add to it.

You and she know your kids - my guess is that she doesn't want to pack and unpack and have to deal with 3 excited (and maybe over- tired) children while she's doing it. Especially true if you are dealing with a toddler/infant and kids who are used to taking naps and a regular routine. Just my opinion & experience. If you go ahead, make sure you are prepared to take the kids off her hands while the packing / unpacking is gong on and to be a big help help if/when one or more of the kids needs a nap / downtime on the day you are homeless for several hours.

Please forgive me if I have made some assumptions that aren't true for your family. I do know Dads who would be the ones packing and dealing with the kids, but there are still many who leave that mostly to their wives.