So Disney just announced its “Gift of Magic” discounts for the first part of next year, and they seem far more limited than a couple of years ago. At POR the only room offered at a discount, is the Royal Guest with a pool view. At WL only rooms on the club level are available at a discount. I checked different dates, and several other resorts and found much the same thing. I held off booking a trip until these were announced, and now I’m pretty bummed. Is this normal, or more restricted than in years past?
I don’t know how limited they are compared to previous years, but I was definitely disappointed with the lack of selection on room types. I ended up changing my reservation to get a discounted rate, but not thrilled with the choice.
I’m not sure how the discounts usually play out as I know Disney has really been changing things up a bit lately. I believe that this might have something to do with them trying to get rid of the resort categories. I know there’s long been talk of Disney removing the “Value, Moderate, Deluxe, etc” categories and I believe we’ll soon start seeing those ways of slowly doing away with those categories and therefore, discounts will become more scattered and sporadic.
I was very disappointed with WL discounts. I am happy now that I at least had a reservation or the trip would be ruined. We had to cancel because of Irma already.
There are Visa cardholder discounts as well. I was able to get one on my original type of room.
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers/visa-room-booking/
I was able to move from POFQ garden view room to a river view for our Feb/March vacation. So for me, it worked out very well.