Thank you! Very helpful!
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Yep no reason to be terrified. Save that for your elevator ride up to your room Hollywood Tower Hotel. 
Agree the downside is not hanging the 60 plus advantage on dining, and losing a few hours here and there in your room on checkout/checkin day, but if you’re going to a park anyway, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t like unpacking more than once though, so I’d get organized on that front.
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Note: i have never done a split stay at Disney but have hotel hopped in a few large cities to be closer to certain things. Sorry for the length.
How I hotel hop:
- I mapped it along with all the places I wanted to go (batchgeocode.com, not that its necessary for Disney). I group everything by location and find a hotel central to each little grouping. Seems simple but putting it on paper can really make a difference. In your case, I would make Rivera days your HS and AK days (all 3 days if u can). BLT is great for MK, so 2 days there and the last day HS or AK whichever you didnt do 2 days of before. Poly is awesome for EP and MK. But since BLT is the MK resort in this theoretical plan, do EP 2 day and departure day is up in the air, up to you. Alternatively, on your switch days, you could do hotel/ resort property and DS things and just visit the parks a few days less.
- Smart packing. Normally on one destination trips everyone gets their own suitcase. Thats not the case in this scenario. I put each “leg” in its own bag, with a master bag for things we will need all parts of the trip. Packing up and moving on is so much easier if you didn’t unpack everything. Dirty clothes and souvenirs go into the suitcase we used for that “leg”.
- Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. I have flexible plans on “travel days”, nothing with a time set in stone. The standard plan for the afternoon is check in, dinner, activity- but it can easily be activity, check in, dinner or activity, dinner, check in. The activity is the same, dinner place the same. Having those 2 things figured out ahead of time truly lowers my anxiety. Knowing in my head, ex., (no big deal, we’ll go bowling before check in. If it’s still not ready, we’ll go to Harbor Seafood then go back to check in).
- Small towel in toiletries bag. Bottles, washes, body poofs may not be 100% dry before putting in toiletries bag. Not a big deal if u only have to dry everything once for packup but its also easy to wrap it all up in a towel during transfer.
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We’ve done a few split stays with our first being the worst.
Most important lesson: souvenirs.
We did not think of souvenirs. Shoulda brought - and subsequently do bring - a bag for all those new belongings that appear during a WDW trip. 
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Just be aware though that they will no longer transfer chilled or frozen groceries for you. So if you need to transfer those you’ll need to Uber over to the new resort and leave stuff with Bell Services there.
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When did this change? Just for Value or for Deluxe as well?
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All resorts, it changed quickly without real notice a few months ago. It has been reported there was ruined medication that caused the change.
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Yes, I think this due to the liability issue from incorrectly stored items, because of the time they would not be chilled / frozen during transfer. Bell Services will still refrigerate or freeze items, but they will not transfer them between resorts.
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Like many here, we use packing cubes. I like to have a cube or two for all the things that we will use at all the hotels (toiletries, bathing suits, etc.), and then a cube for what we will wear at each hotel. That way it’s just 2 or 3 cubes that we need at each stop. The other cubes can stay in the bag.
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Thank you, I like how you divide them up. I am going to buy some packing cubes. I currently have 7 different windows open with 7 different brands of packing cubes - it would be so much easier if there were fewer choices. I’m leaning towards the Alameda compression cubes.
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Choice overload is the bane of my existence! I constantly find myself in analysis paralysis!
These are the cubes I have. They’re the only ones I’ve ever had, so I have no idea how they compare, but they work for us! We have several colors.
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sigh
Currently paralyzed over well house heaters.
Instead of making brownies. Serious decision making matrix upgrade necessary.
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