Had planned on AoA for 10-days with DH and DD5 in March. With Liner tip, I checked with MVT and learned we could stay at Contemporary for $140/night more or BC for $150/night more. Nothing to sneeze at, but much more doable than quote from WDW site for these (which quoted nearly 3x that). Worth it?
Oh yeah. I’d regret not grabbing that CR deal. Why not do a split stay? Split the difference.
Oooh, tough call. AoA in a suite or LM rooms?
Depends on what you want: if your needs are simple (fun pool, okay with a food court with lots of options but at times busy) then you’ll love AoA. If you have a car, easy to drive anywhere from AoA, e.g. for ADRs, to watermarks, or to stroll around the Boardwalk area at night.
If you want to make it a real resort vacation with easy access to a nicer pool, better restaurant options, closer park access (MK or EP/HS), then both CR and BC are great.
You could also consider a split stay - start with a few days at AoA to save money and while you’re going all-out to parks, then, when you’re getting a little tired and ready for a lot of resort time, move to BC.
Last summer we did an AoA/YC split stay during a 10 day trip with DH and DSs 4 & 6 - Nemo suite for abut 5 nights (the extra space and splash pad were great) then YC for (Stormalong Bay was out of this world and we spent hours there every day). My kids loved the theming of our first stay but YC felt so peaceful after the noisy hubbub of AoA. We didn’t have a car and found the buses from AoA good but the convenience of being at Epcot’s back door and a short boat ride to HS really nice.
The transition during the split stay was dead easy - just left our stuff packed up in the room (including backpack full of laptops) and they showed up in our new room like magic. 
That’s a lot of money, IMO. $1400-$1500 for us is half a vacation or more in total. I would pass or maybe consider a split stay.
I appreciate your first hand experience on this! How does a split stay work? Two reservation numbers to put in MDE? How does it affect 180 days for ADR and 60 days for FPP? And what arrangements did you make to have bags magically transfer to location 2?
Can I help with the split stay questions? You put both reservations into MDE. You either purchase tickets from a discounted seller and book two room only or you buy tickets in your first room and add days that will last through both reservations. So if you are staying 4/3 you either buy 7 day tickets from Parksavers or Undercover Tourist or you buy 7 day tickets with your first 4 night stay. You can make FPs for both stays when the first stay hits 60 days but ADRs are two different 180 day counts. On the day you are changing resorts first thing in the morning you call for bell services and tell them you are moving to a new resort. They will get your bags and move them (after 3:00 is when they always tell me). You go to a park and at 3:00 check into new resort. Once in room you call down for bell services for your bags.
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Yep, exactly what she said.
And it was SOOOOO easy.
Because it was a quiet time of year when we were there 1st week September), we arrived at YC at around 1 pm and our room was ready, our groceries (we did a mid-trip garden grocer delivery) were already there. Can’t remember when our luggage arrived - I had bathing suits in my day-pack and we went straight to the pool.
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I would also recommend split stay, probably CR and AoA if you don’t want to spend the money to split between CR and BC (which is pretty much the ideal split stay, in my mind). Once the reservation numbers are in MDE it’s pretty much seamless, except for the delay in ADR date for the second half of the stay.
The moving process is much less hassle than it seems like it might be… you can pack separate bags for each resort (which is probably even easier to do with a 10 day stay, since you’re likely going to have enough stuff to fill that much space to begin with) and then you just pack all of the dirties into one set of bags on your last night and have them all lined up and ready for the bellmen in the morning. We haven’t had any problems with the luggage transfer in any of our split stays. Check-in is easy enough, and you may even get your room number texted to you, so you don’t even have to go to the desk.
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So imagine that we do a split stay with 4 nights at AoA and then 6 nights at CR. For ADR’s, is my first 180 day for 180+4? I’m most concerned about the morning of that hotel change day (which is when we would ideally like to do the elusive BOG breakfast).
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Yes, 180+4, then 180+6 for your second stay, but they’d overlap by one day because the final day of the first booking period is the same as the first day of your second booking period… in short, you’d be able to book for the switch morning on your first ADR date. The one tiny little wrinkle there is that you’re going to have to be ready to go even earlier if you’re dealing with bell services before heading to MK for a pre-RD meal. That’s not a problem for some people, but I usually try to make switch day a later morning for that reason, just because we’re not really early morning people in general.
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We do split stays every trip. Here’s how I get around the split ADR days to make the planning much easier. Book a stay for the whole time period at one resort before the 180 days. At some point after your last day is 180 days out, change your reservations to a split stay. That way you book all ADR’s at one time.
How do you ensure/trust that nothing gets “lost” in the process? Make reservation 1, at 180 days make all ADR’s, after 180+10 has passed, make reservation 2, link reservation 2 on MDE, then adjust reservation 1 appropriately. No problems with the ADR’s attached to that? Just don’t want to mess up anything
Yes, just like that. Wait until the 180 plus 10 days has passed before making adjustments and nothing will be lost. I tend to book a reservation through Disney, and then cancel as needed after booking through Orbitz or MVT for the split stay when they become available. Just always book a new reservation before cancelling the old.
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