Last day logistics

Walk me through this—We have a 7pm flight home. Should we use the resort airline checkin service if our flight isn’t until 7pm? Does the resort hold on to the checked luggage or does it go to the airport ahead of us? I am assuming we can leave our carry on bags with bell services and retrieve them when it’s time for us to take DME to MCO at around 3 or 4 PM.
Also, what’s the best way to spend the last day of a 10 day stay? Family of 4 with myself, DH, DS13, and DD10.

You can use the hotel luggage check which is open from 5a-12p (IIRC). You’ll need your ID and boarding passes to do this. You could then store carry on luggage with bell services for the day if you wanted to.

You could also just place all of your luggage with bell services while you go out for the day, and retrieve it to bring with you on DME when you return. If you choose this option, consider arriving back at resort 45 minutes ahead of DME pickup time so as to allow for luggage retrieval. Note that this will require you checking luggage on arrival at airport.

For that last day, I would do your best not to make it a RD. Our plans last trip necessitated that we leave the hotel by 0700 and it was a little stressful to do final packing, check luggage, and be ready to go for such an early hour. I’d plan to have a later start if at all possible.

Personally, we liked it best when we arranged for late checkout (1pm vs 11am), slept in, had a nice breakfast at our resort, and then enjoyed the pool for the day. We kept one carry on for the wet things to go in for the return trip home and changed in the poolside restrooms which had changing spaces. That was a far more relaxing way to end the trip (although I have to say that Wild Africa Trek made the stressful early morning welllllllllllll worth it.)

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Yes, we went in April and had an evening flight. They gave us our boarding passes in the middle of the night (just some airlines I think, we were on alaska) we used resort airline check at Boardwalk in the morning for our checked luggage. Not to be seen again until 10pm in Seattle. That part was great. We had a park day planned, AK FOP starting at 10:30. We left our carryons, including a change of dry non sweaty clothes in with that, at bell services. Headed to AK. Didn’t have to be ready for DME until 3:30. After FOP and EE, family decided they were done. We had a 3rd FPP for dinosaur but had done already the day before. If we could have grabbed a Tower, RnRC, or TT, we’d have done so. But couldn’t. So headed back to Epcot for lunch and last minute shopping. Via Napoli didn’t have any ADR but we got seated right away. Still ended up back at Boardwalk well before 3, got our stuff, changed into dry clothes and waited in the lobby.

But as mentioned above, we would try really hard not to do a park day on our last day next time. We have had the same problem on our DL trips. Just keep trying to squeeze in a little more. And when planning in advance, it’s hard to think how we might feel by then. Also, with a long flight home, I’d hope to have an earlier afternoon flight, no rushing to more rides, and not have to do all of our packing at midnight the night before. Since we didn’t stop much our last full day either.

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Yes. your plans will work just fine.
We were there in May, with a 8:30pm flight home. Did resort check-in to the airline (closes at noon). Because of TSA rules, you have to have ID and check them in at the resort counter. You cannot simply call bell services to pick up checked luggage. We also Left carry-on with bell services - we made sure these had locks on them. We then meandered around a park for several hours, and finished off left over snack credits. Then back to the resort, got carry-ons, and the Magic Express bus to the airport. Resort Airline checked luggage will be at your home airport.

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