This has been a fascinating discussion! I made a very long post up-thread but omitted a couple of points that I meant to include...
When we were younger, we would go out in the morning, spend the whole day out then come back at night and crash. As we get older we can’t physically do that any more so we have several different ‘plans’:
1) Eat breakfast in our villa (or at Boma or The Mara when we stayed at AKL), go out until early afternoon, then come back and relax
2) As above but if we had a late night planned, not leave our accommodation until lunchtime or even later
3) Go ’out’ for breakfast or brunch and come back late afternoon or early evening
The key here is that any hotel room, whether onsite at WDW or anywhere else, has much the same facilities - one or two beds, a table, one (or two) upright hard chairs, a bathroom. There’s nowhere comfortable to just lounge around (particularly if you’re still in your nightwear - I’d probably frighten the horses
), and we’re not comfortable just sitting around a hotel lobby for a couple of hours. We’re not ‘pool’ people - I don’t swim and DW isn’t comfortable doing so in a public setting. We actually looked at renting DVC points for various 1-bedroom ‘suites‘ (as I think of them) for the additional space and seating, and more room for DW’s
ECV, through one of the brokers that gets good reviews but the cost was mind-boggling and we didn’t go down that route in the end. So that also plays a part in where we choose to stay. We always rent a cottage or apartment when vacationing in the UK and even did so on our last couple of trips to Italy (just don’t talk about driving in Italy, which was a whole other experience
).
And finally (than goodness I hear everyone cry
) re the
DDP (legitimate here as an on-site benefit, I think) we actually took that when we stayed at AKL; it was pretty obvious to us that it would cost more overall than not doing so because without it we would tailor our meals a bit - more meals in the villa if we had stayed in one (I enjoy cooking) and more eating offsite (DW is still hoping IHOP will open up in the UK) but having paid up front for our meals we were comfortable doing ’2 credit’ choices we would never have done if paying OOP - CRT, the Hoop-de-doo, the evening show at the Polynesian) as well as breakfasts at places like Akershus, Crystal Palace, and a whole bunch of times at Boma (our favourite). The shortfall in TS credits was OK; we always look to have one ‘proper’ meal each day (Disney QS meals don’t quite meet that standard for DW and it was QS credits we had left over when we came home as our cases were full of snack credit stuff) because we always expect to eat offsite as well when we’re out and about. So the DDP was a reason in favour of staying onsite for us, as it happens, but I’m not sure it would counter the lack of in-room amenities another time (assuming it comes back at all, of course).
Just my two penn’orth...
You have AP’s, don’t you? You’d have to be a pretty frequent guest to need them too, correct??? My comment was in regards to the above poster saying ‘the magic is completely gone and people have zero reason to stay on property.’ To quote your reply to me “Doesn't mean it's that way for everyone!” I feel differently and expressed that. The magic is still there for our family.
).
