Hilton bonnet creek looking for tips

Hi All,
I am new to this and I must say I am in awe of all the great knowledge and tips you all have!! Thank you !!

My latest question is this: I will be staying at the Hilton Bonnet Creek… does anyone have any tips for me?? Can I walk from there to …lets say Epcot?

As well, I don’t think the Magical Express goes there, and I was wondering if I got to a neighbouring hotel would they take me to the airport on my departure date? I am not looking for a ride from the airport, just back to the airport at the end of my trip. Any thoughts??

We have rented timeshares at Bonnet Creek. It is a big resort and I don’t believe you could walk from there to any park or Disney resort. But it is close to the parks. I would just plan to Uber/Lyft as needed if you don’t have a car.

I’ve stayed at the hotel. It has a very nice pool area and lazy river. Also, one side of the hotel faces Epcot and you can see the fireworks (my room didn’t face that direction). It’s connected to the Waldorf and also has a nice golf course I played. Didn’t see any alligators.

You won’t be able to walk to any of the park’s. However, they do provide shuttles at certain times.

Magical Express is a perk for Disney Resort guests not an open-to-all part of Disney transportation. We had to book a reservation and they were checking names/parties.

We just stayed there in December. It is a beautiful and clean resort and the rooms are spacious. We could see Epcot and Hollywood Studios from our window. But it is far away.

Getting around

It is too far to walk to any park. There were 4 of us.

When you check in, they will give you a bus schedule for their bus. It appears that one bus services all of the parks and DS in a loop. We always took Lyft to the parks because of RD and only took the shuttle from HS because the hotel is the next stop. You need to show your room key or your app reservation to use their bus. It is not convenient to take the hotel shuttle to or from MK because the pick up and drop off is at the TTC. We had the Lyft driver drop us off at the Contemporary parking lot just to the left of the guard once the guard lets you enter. To catch Lyft back to the hotel, we had to walk up to the Contemporary lobby. Ride share drop off and pick up at the other 3 parks is near the Disney bus drop off area. Lyft was fairly inexpensive. Lyft offered us a deal, pay $4.99 and get $4 off of 10 rides. We bought the deal. Each ride costed $8-$12. Lyft from the airport was $40 one way. Once at DS or a park, you can freely use the Disney Transportation System.

Meals

The hotel has a number of restaurants but we never ate at any of them. We are Hilton Gold members and we should have gotten 2 free continental breakfast each morning. We were told at check in that we would get a $10 credit each day for breakfast. We were ticked but most mornings, we were in a hurry to rope drop and didn’t have time for breakfast.

Other

The hotel has a 24-hour cafe, which also has a microwave and toaster you can use for free. The rooms do have mini fridges but no microwaves.

The hotel also has a Disney store. It included a small over the counter medicine area, which we used a few times.

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thanks so much everyone for the all great info!!

Is this hotel a “good neighbor hotel”? Do you get the 60 day FPP if you stay there?

yes it is!!

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The hotel had its own shuttle when we were there.

Awesome,thanks! I’ve been trying to convince myself that I will survive if I stay off site, this one looks pretty nice, I may have to try it in the future.

BUT you can’t get other things such as DDP and 180+ days of ADR. If those are important to you…

I guess the only way to tell if it’s worth it is to take a “test trip” to check it out. We have a short trip in May staying at BWI, and are planning to skip 2021, so we can go big in 2022 for DS’s senior year spring break trip… I’ll tell DH I need to book something in 2021 that it is purely for research purposes. :laughing:

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We’ve stayed off site happily (Hilton BVP x2 and Doubletree DS) on points, 60 day FPP. We planned to use the shuttle but never did. It was just easier to Uber, maybe $10 incl tip each way to the parks. Uber to airport is more like $40-50 each way. 180 ADR is for everyone (just not the +). With res finder too, it’s never been an issue for us. I’d only worry if you have an exceptionally large group. Good luck!

For people who want a TS everyday, staying offsite means they would have to get online to make the ADRs exactly at 180 days for each day of their trip. That can be a hassle, especially those of us on a different time zone. Reservation finder works for many people but it never worked for me. :sob: I was always too late. It worked better for me to stalk the site here and there.

We didn’t need a TS everyday but for the days we wanted a TS, we woke up at 2:55 AM PDT because we had some popular and hard ones!

Staying at Bonnet Creek for 10 nights on points worked in many ways. The staff were very friendly and helpful, just like the CMs. We would be happy to stay there again.