Now that Theme Park Tourist has revealed the secret of how to stay at The Walt Disney Company’s most luxurious resorts for cheap, it’s time to plan your next vacation. While Disney Vacation Club experts already know most of the tricks for booking reservations at the DVC properties, you’re still new to this. Don’t worry. We’ve got your back. Here are a few tips that go beyond booking a cheap room at a Disney resort. These tactics will help you pick the RIGHT resort to maximize your vacation enjoyment.
The coast is clear
Image: Disney
The strategizing process is simple if you’re traveling to Hawaii, Hilton Head, or Vero Beach. You simply stay at the DVC property in these cities. Disney built/purchased these three hotels because they understood that sometimes parents want and deserve to have sandy alone time.
Out of the three non-theme park options, Hawaii in particular is a wonderful option. Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa, is a breathtaking facility that enjoys one of the highest scores on TripAdvisor. It’s the proverbial paradise you imagine when you daydream about getting away from it all. People who track cheap airfare in combination with renting DVC points can imagine a dream vacation while potentially saving thousands of dollars on the trip.
Hilton Head is a bit trickier since they tend to book quickly during the prime visitation periods for beachfront properties. Still, clever shoppers have options. Some DVC rental companies will book as many as 11 months out. As long as you know many months ahead of time that you want to stay at Hilton Head, you should be able to get an inexpensive room using DVC rental points.
People traveling to Florida will discover that Disney’s Vero Beach Resort offers a wonderful combination of oceanfront relaxation and (relatively) convenient access to Walt Disney World. The theme park is about two hours away. So, families have split vacation options here, which is divine when parents want to take their kids to Disney but also want to enjoy some sunny downtime as well. When spending a week in Florida, you can start with three or four hectic days at the world’s most popular theme park. After that’s done, you can drive down to Vero Beach to spend the rest of your time with a daiquiri in one hand and a trashy book (or Kindle) in the other. It’s the perfect compromise option.
The obvious choices
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To maximize your enjoyment of the various Disney theme park locations, you’ll want to stay as close to your preferred park as possible. Sometimes, that’s an obvious choice. For Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World, you’d rent points to make a reservation at the two Animal Kingdom Villas options, Jambo House and Kidani. It’s not rocket science. Fortunately, this is one of the easiest places to book right now, although the situation might change once
Along those lines, if you want to visit Disneyland, there is but one option. For reasons primarily due to land limitations, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa is the only DVC resort near the Happiest Place on Earth. Since it’s the only choice for DVC members and people renting points, it is extremely difficult to get a reservation even though the property has over a thousand rooms. Like Hilton Head above, you’ll have to plan far ahead of time.
The way that DVC works, a person can select a Home Resort from one of the 13 options. At this location, they can book up to 11 months in advance. For the other 12 DVC locales, they can make reservations seven months prior to their stay. At the Grand Californian (and also Hilton Head), prime visitation periods usually book more than seven months ahead of time.
The underlying point is that you’ll have to pay a bit more to rent points from people who own at these resorts. It’s still much, much, muuuuuuch cheaper than paying Disney’s regular room rates, though. I simply want to warn you in advance so that you don’t believe you can just go online and get a reservation for next month. It just doesn’t work like that. You’ll have to perform some planning anywhere and even more at the most contested DVC selections. To save on Disney by renting points at DVC resorts, you should start discussing options with rental companies at least eight months ahead of time. That way, you’ll have availability at most places, although there’s an exception I’ll mention in a moment.
Staying near Disney’s Hollywood Studios
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Your two DVC options for this theme park are Disney’s Boardwalk Villas and Disney’s Beach Club Villas. People familiar with this part of Walt Disney world know that the two locales are across the water from one another. Each one offers a panoramic view of Crescent Lake, and they provide plentiful travel options for multiple parks.
For now, let’s focus on Hollywood Studios. Boardwalk is your best bet, assuming you don’t mind walking a bit. While other forms of transportation will take you to Walt Disney World’s third gate, you really don’t need them. Boardwalk is a 10 to 15 minute walk from the entrance. You can also take an enjoyable boat ride, but I don’t recommend that. The boat stops at other resorts along the way, so you’ll be wasting value time that could be spent…well, standing in line for Toy Story Midway Mania! But you get my point.
Despite residing across the bay from Boardwalk Villas, the situation with Beach Club Villas is a bit more complex. In order to walk to Hollywood Studios, you’ll first have to head toward a different theme park, Epcot, and then turn right to cross a bridge to reach Boardwalk Villas. After that, you have to walk even more to reach the appropriate path from Boardwalk to Hollywood Studios. If you do this, your Fitbit will love you but your feet will hate you. So, the boat ride is your best bet, and that again has issues with stopping along the way.
In other words, Beach Club Villas is a decent back-up plan for people going to Hollywood Studios, but Boardwalk Villas is your clear choice if proximity to the park is your only consideration. Personally, I vastly prefer Beach Club Villas, so we stay there anyway and make the transportation work as best we can. As you’ll see in just a moment, staying at Beach Club actually gives you solid access to three of Walt Disney World’s four gates.
Staying near Epcot
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If you spend most of your Walt Disney world vacation time at Epcot, enjoying the fine dining and souvenirs at the World Showcase, you want to rent points at Beach Club Villas. There’s no debate on this. The hotel enjoys the best proximity to a theme park of any option at Walt Disney World. When you exit Beach Club and turn left, you’re only two hundred steps away from the back entrance to Epcot. There’s even a hidden bonus to it. Other than the moment of park opening each day, this entrance is rarely crowded; you get admitted to the park more quickly by using this entrance.
The difference in this discussion as opposed to Hollywood Studios is that Boardwalk Villas is just as good an option for Epcot. The aforementioned bridge is almost right beside the Epcot entrance, which means that the difference in steps is negligible at best. That’s great news since Boardwalk Villas is generally easier to book most of the time.
I want to emphasize that there is one glaring exception. If you’re thinking that you can rent points to stay at Beach Club and Boardwalk during the Food and Wine Festival, please understand that you are not the first person to come up with this strategy. In fact, virtually everyone does it. Some DVC members buy points at Boardwalk and Beach Club specifically for the Food and Wine Festival. These rooms regularly book long before the seven-month window, which means that if you want to attempt this tactic, you’ll need to rent points 11 months ahead of time to guarantee yourself a reservation.
Staying near Magic Kingdom
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This is obviously the big one since we’re discussing the world’s most popular theme park. When you rent DVC points, you’ll have plenty of great options to get to the park easily. Let’s start with the least heralded one. Disney’s Wilderness Lodge was once the unquestioned choice as the best DVC property for Magic Kingdom fans. It’s a short bus ride or boat ride away from the park, and its rustic accommodations are fun for kids and grown-ups alike. From 2000 until 2009, it was a tricky reservation to get for this reason.
Since August of 2009, the situation has changed dramatically. The Walt Disney Company offered three new DVC property options, and all of them are vastly superior to Wilderness Lodge in terms of Magic Kingdom convenience. The explanation is that each one is on the monorail, a short hop away from the park. This has caused Wilderness Lodge to slip from first to fourth in the DVC at Magic Kingdom power rankings. Don’t sleep on this option, though. It’s still a dazzling resort, its cost per stay is the lowest of the Magic Kingdom properties, and it’s an easy reservation to get most of the time. Plus, it’s the facility that Disney is currently upgrading to make it even more attractive.
The other three options are much more impressive if you can afford to splurge a bit. The monorail-based resorts I’m about to discuss will all cost more, but you’ll definitely get what you pay for. Plus, you’ll have the ability to brag to your friends that you stayed at one of the greatest theme park resorts on the planet.
The newest of the three is my favorite, Disney’s Polynesian Resort. This historic property is where John Lennon once signed the legal documents that officially broke up the Beatles, and it was one of the first two Magic Kingdom-adjacent resorts, opening in tandem with the park itself in 1971. Suffice to say that it’s brimming with history as well as a Polynesian flair. And as long as monorail service is operating correctly (note that this is not a given), it’s a quick hop to the Most Magical Place on Earth.
One step down the monorail line is Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. This property has the mystique of being Disney’s finest overall resort, at least on continental American soil. Disney always hosts the crème de la crème of international celebrities and dignitaries here, which means you’ll feel like royalty while possibly hobnobbing with them as well. For my part, the only celeb I’ve ever seen there was Tony Siragusa, and he’s not someone I ever wanted to see in a bathing suit. But I digress. The point is that if you can afford to rent the points at Grand Floridian, you’ll enjoy the trip of a lifetime with convenient access to Magic Kingdom while being pampered like a rock star at the hotel.
My wife would say that I’ve saved the best for last, and I can’t really argue with her. The final option for renting DVC points near Magic Kingdom is Bay Lake Tower. Disney built this standalone structure in 2009 to reside alongside Disney’s Contemporary Resort, the other original Magic Kingdom hotel. The buildings share a lot of amenities thanks to a connecting bridge on the fifth floor of each resort.
Amazingly, Bay Lake Tower is even closer to Magic Kingdom than Contemporary. Yes, you can take the monorail to get there, but you shouldn’t. It’s a huge waste of time. By staying at Bay Lake Tower, you provide your family with the option to walk a few hundred steps to the front gate of the most popular theme park in the world. It took me one song on my iPhone the last time I checked. You’re basically right there. So, if convenience matters the most to you and Magic Kingdom is your favorite park, rent points at Bay Lake Tower. I suspect you’ll love it so much that you start considering membership in DVC.
