Hey everyone, Those Caribbean Beach and Yacht Club deals in November are over on Hotwire now too… new TP blog post!
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Ok, these are great tips, but I’m also a bit confused. I’m seeing 4.5 and 4 star resorts for bonnet creek area. How can I tell if I’m going to get a Disney resort ca one of the others in the area? I got a pop up that said someone recently booked the Wyndham.
I realize there can be a lot of moving parts when checking out PE deals, but mostly it comes down to comparing the combination of star & guest ratings, location, review counts, and whether there is a mandatory (resort) fee on the deal.
If you are a glutton for punishment, I have a super long forum thread where I started putting together tips on the process from other Liners, plus things I discovered on my own: Hotel Deals Research. Things have changed over time, so the most useful posts in there now are probably the first one and the last bunch.
In the first post in that thread are some tables to help you see all of the, say 4* resorts in BC if you want to compare things manually. But, more useful and likely more up to date: I have a spreadsheet that can help you identify all of the possible resorts that match a PE deal.
For example, if you see a deal for a 4* 9-guest rated resort in Bonnet Creek, there are only 3 that match.
They round down review counts on hidden deals, so if the one you are looking at said it had 60 reviews, it would have to be YC. The Notes section of my sheet also gives tips on likely resort fee amounts etc.
If the deal doesn’t show you the review counts, you can use other things like amenities as tie breakers, but that’s a bit more work. (YC has a Spa listed in hidden deal amenities, while BW and BR Villas do not.)
Some of the more quick useful tips:
- None of the Disney resorts have resort fees, so if you see a deal has one, then it is definitely not Disney.
- I’d ignore the “the last person got X” hint - for non-Disney resort deals it might be correct, but it is almost always wrong when the deal is actually for a Disney resort.
- For 4.5* resorts specifically: there are only 3 of those in either BC or Disney Springs, so they are pretty easy to ID: They all have significantly different review counts, plus the Swan will have a resort fee. (Swan is very common on Express Deals, the others are much rarer.)
Hope that helps! If you have a specific deal you’d like a second opinion on, just post a link or info and dates and I’d be glad to take a look. 
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Oh, I also try to put a tip or three on identifying things in each post, so you also might want to scan through some of my past TP blog posts if you have time.
…and I realized I forgot to mention I have a separate matcher for Hotwire Hot Rate deals.
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Wow!! Thank you so much!! This is all so helpful! Ill definitely be checking out these charts and forum posts. I’m new to the whole Priceline/Hotwire hotel prediction thing so I’m game for all the help I can get!! This is for a last minute trip in early December that might not even happen, so I’m really still trying to even figure out if I’m going or not. I can’t wait to start digging into all this hotel minutiae. 
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FYI: I was running around a lot at work today so no time to check it out much, but there are now some Hotwire deals for Pop in early December (I saw one for $75) and Yacht Club deals for around $252.
If time allows I’ll be trying to get a TP blog post out there with more details, but you might want to look around a little!
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