Nothing would make me happier than to stay at (literally) all the Walt Disney World resort hotels at least once. But, unless I end up taking like 20 trips, this may be kind of a challenge. I live in California, so when I do go to Disney World, it’s usually one 6+ day trip every year or two. Thus, it would take a lot of trips to knock out all the hotels I want to see. For those of us who like to be a little adventurous, though, you can actually stay at different resorts for different parts of your trip! It takes a little coordination but I thought it would be helpful to outline some of the details of resort hopping.

The general idea is to book one hotel for the first part of your stay and a different hotel for the second part. Disney helps facilitate this by providing bag transfers from hotel to hotel. This means that you can arrive to your first hotel and check in like normal. Then, in the middle of your trip, one morning you can drop your bags off at first hotel’s bell service for transfer and check out. Head to the parks and have fun and when you’re done, take the Disney bus to your new resort, pick up your bags at bell service, and check in to your second resort. I’ve never done it (yet) but that part sounds pretty seamless and effective. Thus, I would assume booking the rooms portion of a trip like this is pretty straight forward.

magicband-250

Obviously you need tickets for the entire trip, too, and you probably don’t want to get stuck with two different Magic Bands. For that reason, it’s usually best to purchase the tickets with the first hotel reservation. That way, when you’re making FastPass+ selections and/or Advance Dining Reservations, the timing will begin in alignment with the first part of your stay, and extend through to the very end (since it’s linked to the first day on the reservation and the number of days on the ticket). If you do end up with two Magic Bands, both of them should still be good for the duration of your stay.

dining plan

Dining Plans may be the only place where there is some nuance, as dining credits may only last for each specific hotel duration. Example, the first half of dining credits expires at midnight on final night of the first hotel, and then the second half of dining credits kicks in on the next day. You may be able to modify this so that all your dining credits are good throughout the entire trip if you ask your Disney rep and/or travel agent. Although, if you love Le Cellier and Liberty Tree Tavern as much as I do then having the credits broken up may actually help you pace yourselves a bit.

Have you resort hopped during a stay? We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments! And, if you’re craving more Disney insight be sure to check out these other fun articles:

Thanks for reading!!
— Disney Dork Tom (follow me on Twitter and Facebook, too, for non-stop daily Disney action!)