And yeah the $450 a night for 4 guests with pass holder rate is definitely not a thing anymore. When I just rechecked the rate it’s now $800+ per night. Would have been a hard pass…
Curious though multiple reports on social media saying that at this point all 3 Epic hotels are no longer waving the incidental hold. Supposedly the hold is $200 a day not per reservation is now mandatory? This was not the case when we stayed at SN in January but…they changed the parking rules while we were there so who knows???
For early January, I just booked Portofino for less than $300 a night, and Helios is priced around $550. Those are AP rates. It seems like it shouldn’t be almost twice as much money as Portofino.
When I booked the rates were lower than the rates are currently. I would not have booked that room at Helios at the current rate.
That said, if someone chooses to book Helios at the current rates for whatever reason, I don’t see anything wrong with it (and I don’t see it as a reflection of how much sense they have). I wouldn’t get on a 9 hour flight for a theme park vacation because it wouldn’t be worth it for me, but you and many others do. People see value/costs differently.
I think the point is fair that we shouldn’t judge people’s intelligence or sanity for spending money on stuff. I think @FelisLachesis wasn’t intending to do that but let it slip. On the other hand, it is fair to lament the insanity of the prices themselves or to balk at value propositions.
We love it there so much. Taking the boat back from the parks and rounding that bend, and seeing the hotel is one of my favorite things in Orlando. Stunning property,
Just piping in again to say that I’m not really sure how to “value” Helios, and I agree that everyone puts a different value on their vacation hotels.
That being said, the downsides of everything at the hotel, money aside, made me not want to stay there again or recommend it to folks. I’ve stayed at most other hotels on property and have never run into the amount of issues we did opening weekend (and yes I understand it was opening weekend and there will be growing pains, but they can’t materially fix half the issues we had, AND the hotel has been open for a month before we arrived, so it’s not like we were the first guests to stay there).
In the interest of full disclosure, we booked Helios when they released rates for the hotel and paid about $400/night during opening weekend. I feel like that’s a “fair” value for the hotel itself looking at it objectively, but we didn’t have a good time, and that would have been the case whether we paid $200 or $700/night.
I think we will end up doing Cabana Bay so we can hop over to valcano bay, but I am very tempted by Portifino, especially of I get those four park park hoppers - which means we are more likely to go to the other parks.
I won’t do the original parks without express passes (spoiled, I know) so a deluxe was needed for at least a few nights. We are going to split stay at this point, 2 nights at Stella Nova and 2 at Portofino. We love VB, but it is closed in January.
We made our pilgrimage on Saturday! It was fantastic, as expected. My only beef was that you don’t really buy Hiccup’s actor (pictured upthread) being unpopular and clumsy. But he’s a sweetheart. We got all the collectables.
Good. So it’s built now. Store it carefully and I’ll collect it in December. (It’s obviously highly inappropriate for a young child to own what is clearly an adult collectible.)
Those are AP rates. It seems like it shouldn’t be almost twice as much money as Portofino.
that’s insanity. I’d choose portofino every time, huge rooms, huge bathrooms, beautiful property (my fave aestheticly). and express.
It was a build a bear!