This November we are staying at the Poly resort and we are driving from New York so we are getting into Orlando the night before at a Hotel to rest up and visit some friends. The next morning on our check-in date we plan to head to Disney first thing in the morning and try to at least check into the Poly and let them know we are there and ready when they are for a room. Then head out for the day into the parks until I am notified our room is ready.
So considering that I have a room request fax in place and our itinerary above, would it be wise to still do the online check-in or just show up like I plan to and hope for the best with my room request fax? Or do any of you have any suggestions on the best course of action here as to get the best results for our room requests?
It depends on what you want. If access to a room when you arrive trumps all, I’d do online check-in and indicate you’d like a room ASAP. If you prefer a room with the perfect view/location then I’d do online check-in and just match your requests to what’s on your FAX - don’t contradict anything. But there’s no real reason to not do online check-in although if you plan to hit the lobby anyway to talk to someone there may be no gain to do it…
What’s the motivation to gain access to your room early instead of just hitting the parks?
Thanks! Ya in our past visits we have always gone up to a cast member and checked in at the front desk which gave us the chance to ask for upgrades and see if we could get a little extra magic which seems to have worked in our favor.
I just did not know if the online check-in and or the fax yielded better results than face to face interaction?
In July we did online check-in for BC and got upgraded to a water view room from standard (oddly they tried to charge us for this, so if you do get a “free” upgrade make sure it stays free when you get the bill - a visit to the front desk on the last day cleared it up relatively easily - although having access to my travel agent emails to show I’d booked standard view helped). I could see the upgrade in the App a couple days prior to arrival.
Upon arrival off Magical Express we got a text with our room number so we were planning on just heading to our room to drop off our carry-ons, but of course we didn’t really know where it was. A CM offered to help, double-checked all was good with the room and that our Magic Band pins were set etc. He also noted a B-Day and gave us some pixie dust with bonus any time fast passes for the B-Day.
I guess the moral of the story is you can still get extra dust and upgrades even using the online check-in. Heading to the lobby to get the lay of the land at a resort isn’t a bad idea. If you’re always going to hit the lobby hoping for pixie dust though, perhaps there’s no point to on-line check-in for you?
My fear with arriving super early and looking for a room is that you’ll just get an empty room that may not be ideal for the rest of the week. Now if you have a need for the room ASAP, it may not matter…
Thanks for the replies. I am not really looking to get into our room super early or anything, that really does not matter to me since we are just planning to park in the resort parking lot early in the morning and leave all our stuff in the car until we are able to actually check into our room.
What is most important to me is the room location and just not having a view of a parking lot, which is why I am using the room request fax feature here on touringplans to hopeful get a room with a partial view of the castle or even the pool.
I guess I was just wondering if any of you have had better experiences and luck with rooms by checking in in person or online and if one is better over the other when using the fax feature? Especially considering we are doing the whole DVC rental thing this time around.
I am personally leaning towards checking in face to face but did not know if there was an advantage over the online check-in?
Your room will have been allocated around 5 days ahead of your arrival day.
Thee is no disadvantage of checking in early, and it doesn’t stop you going to the desk anyway. You may not get a text, in which case you may want to go to the desk when you arrive (you could just wait to see if a text comes while you’re in the park). Even if you do get a text before you arrive, there is nothing stopping you going to the desk anyway. Ask about the view from the room before you get into it.