Disney World Training Day 4 – Where to stay at Disney World

Welcome to day 4 of Disney World Training. You can catch up on the previous training posts here.

Today we are going to continue the discussion of where to stay at Disney World. Be sure to read Day 3′s post here that talks about the advantages to staying on site. Be sure to read the comments because readers left their opinions of various resorts.

For this discussion, I am going to use my dates: May 22nd – June 2nd. Prices of hotel rooms at Disney vary by the season.

The cost of a hotel room with no discount is referred to as rack rate. That will be what I refer to throught this discussion. You can see the resort prices here.

Now, the biggest factor in deciding where you want to stay is how much you are willing to spend. Disney breaks their resorts into 3 categories: Value, Moderate and Deluxe.

Value Resorts

The Value Resorts are the 4 cheapest hotels at Disney. You have All Star Movies, All Star Sports, All Star Music and Pop Century (where I stay).

The cost of a value room for my dates is $105 during the week and $120 on the weekend.

Moderate Resorts

The moderate resorts are Carribean Beach, Coronado Sprints, Port Orleans French Quarter and Riverside, Fort Wilderness Campground and Fort Wilderness Cabins.

The resort rooms are about $170-$175 during the week and $190-$195 on the weekend. The cabin is $325-$340 a night.

Deluxe Resorts

The deluxe resorts are Animal Kingdom Lodge, Beach Club Resort, Boardwalk Inn, Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge and Yacht Club Resort.

The rooms average $390 during the week and $410 on the weekend or more! There are many different levels of rooms. There is one room that is $3005 a night (and it is not in the Cinderella caste)!

Now with that said, the hotels always have a special. The current special is 30% off Value (makes it $84 a night), 35% off Moderate (makes it $113 a night) and 40% off Moderate (makes it $240 a night).

Now besides costs, you have to consider some facts.

Room Size

The rooms at a Value are going to be smaller. A room at Pop is just 260 square feet, where a room at the Grand Floridian is 403 square feet. How important is elbow room to you?

Resort Size

The more rooms a resort has, the more people it has, the longer you might have to wait for Disney transportation, their food court, etc etc. Keep in mind that Disney does have more buses for the larger resort. Pop has 2,880 rooms but they have a lot of buses. The longest I waited on a bus was 10 minutes and often we would pass a bus going to Pop on the way to our destination. So it isn’t like they only have one Magic Kingdom bus.

Transportation

Do you plan to use Disney transportation? A lot of resorts have other transportation options than just a bus. The Grand Floridian, The Contemporary and The Polynesian are all on the Monorail Loop. This means that you can directly board the Monorail train from your resort. You can then take the monorail directly to the Magic Kingdom or to Epcot (you will have to change monorail trains to do this).

Other resorts offer other means. Wilderness Lodge and the Wilderness campgrounds have boats that take you to the Magic Kingdom.

Disney’s Beach Club, Boardwalk Inn and Disney’s Swan and Dolphin are all within walking distance of Epcot (or by short boat ride) and actually have their own entrance to Epcot called The International Gateway. They also have boat rides to Hollywood studios.

Pop Century is the only resort that never shares a bus. All other resorts either share a bus with other resorts or have multiple internal stops within the resort. Now that doesn’t mean that every single bus is shared, it just happens often.

Restaurant offers

Are you looking to stay at a resort that has it’s own sit down restaurant? The values only have food courts (which I enjoyed) but do not offer any sit down restaurants (such as O’hanas at The Polynesian). If that is important to you, then that is something to consider when choosing your resort.Values also do not have room service (but do have pizza delivery).

Refrigerator

The values charge you $10 a day (or it might of gone up to $12) to rent a little dorm sized fridge. It is free in Moderate and Deluxe resorts. That is a cost to factor in when choosing between the Values and the Moderates. (I suggest just either bringing/buying your own mini fridge or getting a big cooler and filling it with ice and keeping it in the bathroom.)

Pools

All resorts have pools, but they do vary considerably. Value resorts pools are nice, but they do not have water slides. You will only find water slides in the Moderate or Deluxe resorts.

Internet

Internet is $10 per 24 hours in all resorts.

There is just so much to consider when choosing your resort. I suggest you start here on AllEars.net. They have fact sheets on all the resorts as well as picture tours and reviews. Then you can go here on the DisBoards and click on the link for the thread that discusses your resort. There you will find a huge group of people that have stayed at that resort and you can ask specific questions about it.