We are thinking about doing a split stay with AKL CL and maybe Yacht or beach club. What is everyone’s experience with split stays?
Spilt stays are not for everyone but I love them. I love to try multiple resorts. I also like the flexibility to decide if I want the dining plan for a couple of days. A few lessons I learned, especially if you are starting with AKL. 1. If you want Disney to transfer your luggage call bell services from your room. That call open a “ticket”. If AKL sends your luggage to the wrong resort, or forgets to send it ( don’t ask) the phone call makes it easier to track. 2. Don’t expect your luggage to be delivered to your 2nd resort under at least 3:00. 3. You do have to tip bell services at both ends. 4. I have always had to call from my second room and have my luggage delivered.
Also, you must be careful on how you buy your tickets. You should not purchase package tickets.
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We have a split stay coming up in December, one thing I did not expect was that I could not make ADRs for our entire stay, I had to wait until the ADR date for the second reservation to make them for those later dates, even though they are back to back stays and booked direct through Disney. (Called on the first day of our ADRs and CM confirmed that was the case). Really threw me into a panic that first morning when I couldn’t select the days I wanted.
Just curious. What is the reason for not buying package tickets? We considered a split stay if we don’t get any discounts. I doubt that we would, but it’s something we talked about.
With the new date based tickets there are issues making FPs with tickets purchased in packages. You cannot do it if your tickets are associated with your second stay ( they are not available during your first stay).
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@Jennifer_B_568600 This is the same reason for the issue with ADRs; basically, the system doesn’t recognize that a split stay is a single visit, it sees them as 2 separate trips and therefore requires you to make ADRs/FPPs reservations at the start of the date of your second resort stay (for the days of that stay) rather than the start date of the resort for the first part of your visit.
AFAIK, there’s no way around the ADR issue, but if you use non-date-specific tickets (in our case, we’re using military tix) and activate them for the first day of your trip, you can make FPP for the duration of the tickets/trip.
I like split stays for the same reasons as @PrincipalTinker. Staying at different resorts is fun and the ability to do a dining plan for only part of the stay is nice. We did the deluxe dining plan for two nights at the beginning of one trip and it was great because we essentially had 3 days to use it.
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