staying offsite?

[WAMUMOF4]

After looking at all the vacation homes with all the space that they offer I really need to be convinced to stay onsite!
We stayed offsite at DL last year and said we would only ever stay onsite but DW is so different and you dont actutaly have the benefit of being right there like you do at DL.
We are booked into the cabins because there are 6 of us our places to stay are limited and as we will spend all available time in the park i dont see the point in paying for a deluxe, but I am figuring that it would be nice at that stage of our holiday to have the space of a home since we will be in hotel rooms for all but 8 nights of our trip and to also be able to go for a swim when we get back from the parks.
Has anyone stayed offsite at DW and did it work for you?
The other thing is even if we chose a hotel it is so much less offsite!
HELP I am so I am giving myself a

 

[Jade+3]

We stayed in a condo at Windsor Hills. We are staying on-site this year, so I can't give you a comparison, but these are my thoughts on staying off-site.

Pro's:
So much cheaper (but you do need a car, so more $$).
Space - 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
Kitchen, though we did not cook a single meal.
3 Televisions
Free internet
Loved having a laundry.
Nice pool area.

Con's:
Transport to WDW. We would usually come home from the parks late afternoon. There were some evenings when DD and I would have loved to go back, but it was too much of a hassle for DH (the driver), to drop us off and pick us up.
Nothing within walking distance of Windsor Hills.
Paying for parking at WDW.
No EMH or 180+10 window for ADR's.
Still had to do the household chores - washing towels and linen, vacuuming, taking out the garbage, cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, going to the supermarket etc.

The two main reasons we are staying on-site this year is being able to use Disney Transportation, and, not having to do any cleaning while I am on holiday!

 

[marvel]

Hey WAMUM, i am going through the exact same decision right now.

I have looked into renting a house, but recently I am leaning towards Wyndham Bonnet Creek. It is closer to disney than the windsor hills homes, has a great pool set up,and the people that stay there love it.

And the prices for 2 and 3 bedroom condos/apartments range from $100 - 180 which is pretty reasonable. We will have a car during our stay and they say that getting to the parks is very easy and not really an issue. Even the $14 parking fee is worth it.

We like onsite, but when WL is $300 a night for a small room, we would rather the kids had a bed each.

Have a look at threads on bonnet creek. We are most likely going to stay there.

 

[WAMUMOF4]

Thanks
Jade+3 we will have a car so that makes life easier it's not an added cost.

Marvel thanks for that i have now started looking at Bonnet Creek it looks great have emailed off for a quote but we are now seriously thinking of buying some Wyndham points to keep!

 

[marvel]

so how does the wyndham points thing work??

 

[WAMUMOF4]

so how does the wyndham points thing work??

you are buyng a timeshare with Wyndham(not from them) and you can transfer the points to aonther resort to use them i guess it is only useful if you plan on more than one trip to the USA you can bank the points for 3 years so we figure by the time we go back we would have a nice amount to holiday with.
The bonnet creek thread ahs sites that explain it all if you cant find them i can PM you the links.

 

[marvel]

yeah, that would be great. I tried looking through all 190 pages ! we have been a few times across the past few years so maybe worth thinking about.

did you read about construction at bonnet creek? I haven't been able to find any more details about it.

 

[austraveler]

I would stay onsite BECAUSE you are hardly in your room. The size of the room does not really matter if you are hardly in it, and we think the other advantages of staying onsite outweigh the cost. We are a family of 5 and book 2 moderate connecting rooms. This works pretty well (2 bathrooms etc) and the ability just to pop back to the park after a swim and dinner is worth the money. We brought our own laundry powder and put the laundry in while we wer having a swim. It was done and dry by the time we needed to get changed for dinner.

 

[marvel]

hey austraveler, what resort are you staying at? At the moment there are not discounts on codes that I can find, only if you have a pin which seems like some magical thing they only send to those that travelled recently.

I am getting only high prices for Disney resorts for oct, hence we are thinking of bonnet creek or similar. but two rooms at a moderate would be good if the price was reasonable.

 

[austraveler]

We stayed at port Orleans French quarter last year. This year we are splurging and going deluxe at the beach club. It is a bit of a once in a lifetime experience. Pofq was fabulous. I thought there were discounts on the website right now....

 

[WAMUMOF4]

We stayed at port Orleans French quarter last year. This year we are splurging and going deluxe at the beach club. It is a bit of a once in a lifetime experience. Pofq was fabulous. I thought there were discounts on the website right now....

There are discounts but because there are 6 of us we only have a choice of the cabins or Saratoga at one stage Old Keys as well at the moment we are booked into the cabins but we are pretty sure we are going to stay at Bonnet Creek instead.
The other thing is this is only a small part of our trip not the main part and i know from DL last year we really spent minimal time in our room which is why I am questioning paying so much to just sleep. $220 to stay in a cabin seems a bit over the top to me even a Disney one when we can pay $125 a night at Bonnet Creek for a 2 bedroom apartment. I just cant make up my mind what to do

 

[PrincessInOz]

WAMUM - Pop has family rooms that sleep 6 as well. But have you considered getting 2 rooms at a Value?

WFIW - I've stayed both off-site and on-site. Whichever you decide, it will be right for you and your family because you'll have fun at Orlando either way.

 

[battymum]

We are family of five and have two rooms booked at Pop - we got free dining which definitely tipped the decision Disney's way -I dont know if that offer will come about again.! I figure that this is worth $250 - $300 per day for our family, although if we were staying off site we would have been making our own meals more, so never would spend this much money OOP. It definitely adds to our holiday, being able to eat out every night.

As it is our first time, we have a tight schedule so I cant see us being at the resort much at all. I would like to upgrade to POR, POP looks like it lacks any sort of gardens and looks really hot around the pool area, all concrete and no trees, but I cant justify the extra cost.

 

[WAMUMOF4]

Well i acted on a whim cancelled the whole package with DW with a very rude CM and have now booked and paid for 2 rooms at POP with Hotels.com Australia for Aus$752.80
I just decided that
1 we wouldn't really be in the room
2 I wanted the extra magic hours
3 I wanted a Disney style resort which POP seems to have the statues and stuff that my 10 year old is after.

Only thing is that we can't cook but we will survive I am sure.
So now apart from the dining reservations we are all paid for for our DW part of the trip