1. You can enginneer your trip such that you're always close to the parks and restaurants you plan to visit during a particular part of your vacation (and we love the signature resturants in the deluxe resorts). This not only minimizes reliance on buses (and time spent getting to/from parks) but also substitutes in more varied and enjoyable forms of transportation such as boats, Monorails, and walking.
2. You can enjoy firework entertainment at different parks at closing without having to deal with jammed busses and madhouse parking lots afterwards. For example, if staying at the BC, it's a simple 5-10 minute walk back to your room after Iluminations (if you watch from the bridge between England and France). Then, if staying at CR during a different part of the same vacation, it's a simple 10-15 minute walk back to your room after watching MK fireworks.
3. I love the different theming of Disney resorts and staying at more than one resort feels like multiple vacations in one. I particularly enjoy experiencing and exploring the different common areas, especially the pool areas (where we tend to spend most of our afternoons). And as noted above, we love the signature restaurants in the delxue resorts and it's so nice to just be able to walk between your room to the restaurant (or take a short boat or Monorail ride).
That being said, this type of vacation does have some dowsides:
1. Planning is way more complicated. For example, we usually initially book our resorts at rack rate way in advance (because we have our heart set on visiting certain resorts in a certain order) and then wait to apply discounts when they later come out. When you have two or more resort reservations, this ends up being a bit of work.
2. You don't get as much advantage of 180+10 when making ADRs because you can only book from the 180 day mark for each resort and only for the length of stay at that resort. For example, we like having dinner at 'Ohana and have found that it's very hard to get a decent ADR time there unless you're at least about 185 days out. But when we do split stays, we rarely stay at the same resort for 5 or more nights. Along those lines, I wish they'd let you make ADRs for all of your resort nights when you hit the 180 day mark for your first resort.
3. While we sort of live out of our suitcases (and don't spend much time packing/unpacking) and typically use bell services to transport our luggage, there's always the possibility of a lost bag during a resort transfer (fortunately, this has never happened to us but it's something I always somewhat worry about). In addition, you can't count on the bags being at your new resort until after 4 pm, which means taking a bag with swimwear into the park you visit on transfer day.
For us, however, the upsides of split stays outweigh these downsides.
2. You can enjoy firework entertainment at different parks at closing without having to deal with jammed busses and madhouse parking lots afterwards. For example, if staying at the BC, it's a simple 5-10 minute walk back to your room after Iluminations (if you watch from the bridge between England and France). Then, if staying at CR during a different part of the same vacation, it's a simple 10-15 minute walk back to your room after watching MK fireworks.
3. I love the different theming of Disney resorts and staying at more than one resort feels like multiple vacations in one. I particularly enjoy experiencing and exploring the different common areas, especially the pool areas (where we tend to spend most of our afternoons). And as noted above, we love the signature restaurants in the delxue resorts and it's so nice to just be able to walk between your room to the restaurant (or take a short boat or Monorail ride).
That being said, this type of vacation does have some dowsides:
1. Planning is way more complicated. For example, we usually initially book our resorts at rack rate way in advance (because we have our heart set on visiting certain resorts in a certain order) and then wait to apply discounts when they later come out. When you have two or more resort reservations, this ends up being a bit of work.
2. You don't get as much advantage of 180+10 when making ADRs because you can only book from the 180 day mark for each resort and only for the length of stay at that resort. For example, we like having dinner at 'Ohana and have found that it's very hard to get a decent ADR time there unless you're at least about 185 days out. But when we do split stays, we rarely stay at the same resort for 5 or more nights. Along those lines, I wish they'd let you make ADRs for all of your resort nights when you hit the 180 day mark for your first resort.
3. While we sort of live out of our suitcases (and don't spend much time packing/unpacking) and typically use bell services to transport our luggage, there's always the possibility of a lost bag during a resort transfer (fortunately, this has never happened to us but it's something I always somewhat worry about). In addition, you can't count on the bags being at your new resort until after 4 pm, which means taking a bag with swimwear into the park you visit on transfer day.
For us, however, the upsides of split stays outweigh these downsides.
