Where My Split Stay Folks At?

Split stays are all a positive experience except when making dining reservations. Disney looks at them as standalone reservations. You have to wait 60 days from the date of each reservation. Otherwise, they are easy and fun to see the different resorts. The reason why I do it is to stay near the park you are going to that day. (i.e., going to MK - stay at BLT; going to Epot - stay at Riviera, etc). Shorter commute in the morning for rope drop! I'm over 60 but my kids (and their kids) still like going with me.

Love doing split stays but usually not more than 2. My favorite split stay is similar to Nancy, we want to be close to different parks. A Monorail Resort + a Crescent Lake resort puts you within walking distance of 3 out of 4 theme parks. BLT + BCV is my norm as I own at both! :)

I still love split stays even with a toddler in tow! My favorite is BWV paired with either VGF or BLT to get the best transportation options with our stroller--plus, those are just my favorite resorts. I purposely plan split stays for longer trips, and this time I am taking advantage of the split stay to do the dining plan for half of it.

We love to do split stays with a couple days at either a MK or Epcot resort, then a 4-5 night DCL, and then 4-5 days at MK or Epcot resort (the opposite of the first stay). That is our very favorite. Gives us a lot of variety and feels like multiple vacations.

I love split stays! You get a clean and freshly supplied room, a new choice of restaurants, and I like to pair the resort with a park or for a resort-only portion of the trip, including a drive out to Vero Beach!

Love to split. Last summer we split BWV and Riviera. We live close less than 5 hours away. So driving makes split kind of seamless.

We have our first split stay coming up this summer - 4 nights at Riviera and 5 at Grand Floridian. I have so many questions, and I'd love any tips you guys have for this!

I know we can leave our luggage with bell services and they will move it for us. Do they deliver it straight to our room, or do we have to go pick it up at bell services?

I know we can go to the waterpark for free on changeover day. Any tips for which waterpark to go to, when to try to go, or how to best approach the waterparks?

I have another stay booked where I added on one night by renting points for a booking at the same resort and room type. I know I can note this as a continuing stay so I won't have to move rooms. Is there anything else I should know about for this? I don't have to pack up and vacate the room, right?

Another person who enjoys the split stays here 😊

Disney will move your luggage but ensure you have what you need until 4-5pm as that is approx when they say it will be at your new resort. I rely on Apple tag to know when it arrives and if you are in your room they will bring it if you call bell services and are in your room but it is not delivered to your room unless you call for it.

I sometimes use the service and other times find uber easier depending on my plans for the day.

Re water parks, just check as it is not always the case that both are open at the same time so you may not have choice. Since this offer is available they seem very busy so it means an early start if you want to have loungers, enjoy the pools and rides plus then lunch (which can also be very busy). Good perk though.

I was once in a ‘continuing reservation’ scenario at Copper Creek and they automatically merged the stay even though the first two nights was on family contract and the third night on mine - they matched the names in the room. I did have to go down to reset charging privileges at the change over. As it may not work perfectly I would still recommended checking at the desk at the first check in.

Enjoy your trip!

They don't automatically deliver the luggage to your room. What you do is call Bell Services when you get to your room and they will bring up your luggage. We rent a car usually so depending on my schedule, sometimes I will opt to load the luggage into the car and then bring it up to the room from the car once the room is ready because bell services can take awhile to deliver your bags (depends on the resort).

Often only 1 water park is open, so you won't have a choice. Between Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon, I prefer Typhoon Lagoon. If we go on our checkin day it is usually in the morning and if we want to go to the parks we will leave once our room is ready and then shower / change and head into the parks for the evening (or just hangout at the resort).

Continuing stays usually you just visit the front desk on the morning of your check out / check in so they can update the reservation and magicbands and you're all set.

I forgot to mention, we get the dining plan for our first resort. The mug is good for the duration, and dining points can be used on check in day of the second resort.

Grand Floridian and Boardwalk.

Best of all worlds with that combo.

My favourite also, though I do like some Jambo on occasion 😊

Thanks so much for these tips! I love the idea about the airtag to just track luggage!

Thanks! This is really helpful. For the continuing stays - do you have to call the front desk before you arrive for the first one, or note it in your reservation/room request? Or do you just walk down to the desk on check out day and ask them to just roll you right into your next reservation? Do they need to scan everyone's magic band, or just the lead guest's?

It probably doesn't hurt to call or chat to get both reservations linked together. But not absolutely necessary.

For me, I've just told the front desk when checking in on my first reservation and then they usually link the 2 reservations together right then and there. Then on the checkout day of my first reservation, I tell the front desk that I have a continuing reservation and its the checkout day of my first stay and they usually know what to do.

I'm trying to remember if they needed to scan everyone's magic bands or not - in theory they all should just continue working because of the way MDE ties your identity to your hotel room but I think I brought everyone's magic bands down to the front desk just in case. I just don't remember if they actually needed them.

We couldn't decide where we wanted to stay, as have our 'favourites', so staying at 4 seperate resorts this summer. Trying AK Kidani for the first time. We'll be at AK, OKW, the Poly then BR! It may well be my first and last 4 split stay 🫣

As you can see from my signature, we do split stays frequently. And this summer we have another coming up with AKV and BCV.

Can't remember the last time I didn't do a split stay... oh wait, I didn't in Dec. We stayed the entire time camping at the Fort.

We do have one coming up in a few weeks for my son's 18th Birthday!!!!

Bolder Ridge -> Boardwalk -> Animal Kingdom

Have a split day coming up for our 20th anniversary. Staying at poly then kidani gonna be our first vacation without kids so me and wife are kind of excited but it is gonna be weird not looking over my shoulder at check in to see if kiddos are doing something outlandish

Yes, i do enjoy a split stay! we have done the Poly/GF double stack. we did BCV/AKV also. I would like to do a Poly/Boardwalk one day for ultimate relaxation although we did do CCV/AKV once and it was also amazing. being close to MK for part of the trip is always awesome.

We did a split stay last year - Poly Tower to Riviera to Saratoga Springs. We typically go to Disney for a week. I would not recommend doing more than two changes in a week unless you really like doing it. We just wanted to try some of the other resorts that weren’t our home resort.

We’re doing the Poly to Grand Floridian this June. I think two resorts in a week is going to be our game plan going forward. We definitely want to try a split stay between a monorail resort and Boardwalk in the future.

We have two split stays coming up this year.

The first in September will our first Disney trip ever that is just my wife and I. This one will be at two non-home resorts: Boulder Ridge and Riviera (4 nights each).

December will be with the family and will be at our two WDW home resorts: Grand Floridian and Animal Kingdom Villas (6 nights each).

We love split stays! It allows our family to try more resorts and to utilize locations strategically for park transportation types. It can almost feel like two different vacations in one! For split stays, I would recommend 3 night minimum stays for each resort, in order to get a better “feel” for what each resort offers. We have done 2 night splits before, and it was fine, but just a little too short for our liking.

I would definitely call Member Services in advance to try to merge your continuing stays. It will likely make for a smoother process. It might help to reiterate any specific room requests for the continual stay, so they don’t get lost in the mix, as well. Requests are never a guarantee but it’s good to have them in place and established. Also, it good to note that not switching rooms works best for all parties. Disney would prefer to not move you into another room to avoid additional Housekeeping. It should be pretty seamless!

We use the luggage transfer all of the time and Bell Services takes care everything wonderfully! We have never experienced any issues with the process. Our plan is always to make those transfer days park days or plan other activities that will soak up most of the day. It’s fun!

Also, Grand Floridian and Riviera are our favorite split combos. They are both beautiful resorts and stays! We love being able to walk, boat, or monorail to MK, and using the monorail to EPCOT is smooth from GF. Then, access to the Skyliner for EPCOT and HS is the awesome! Skyliner is absolutely the best! Really, combining any MK area resort and EPCOT area resort, in our experience, provides great transportation options and variety. We highly recommend it! Whatever your cup of tea is wonderful!

On another note, Skyliner is a beautiful means of transportation! ! I hope we get Skyliner access to AK park in the future!

For what it’s worth, I hope this helps!

For about 8 February's now we have been doing split stays of a different kind. We fly to Orlando, stay on property using DVC for 3-4 nights...then Uber over to somewhere on the Gulf coast like Bradenton Beach or Gulfport or Dunedin for 3 more nights...then fly home from Tampa.

STRONGLY recommend giving it a try!

Love it! WDW and Vero is a great split we’ve done before too! Highly recommend that type of split!

WDW and cruise combos are great too! So many wonderful options.

I love to do split stays so I can try out more resorts! I do typically a 3 day/4 day split or a 4/4 split. Our next trip in May will be BLT and Poly Tower. We've never been to either and am excited to do both.

We tend to book late so most times a split stay is necessary for us... I end up piecing together a few different reservations for anywhere from a 4-7 night stay... However in just a couple years of DVC ownership our splits stays have allowed us to stay at Poly, Beach Club, Boardwalk, Boulder Ridge, Copper Creek, Bay Lake Tower and Saratoga Springs... Prior to owning DVC we never imagined we would be able to stay at all of these resorts.

Wrote we moved down we almost always did split stays. It’s like 2 vacations in one:) we loved it

We've done this twice and it was super fun. A little tiring and tricky to pack for though - we ended up deciding we will probably stick to one or the other in the future.

Love split stays. We are from Northern Ireland and usually come for 3-4 weeks rather than multiple times per year. Split stays enable us to try different resorts and it honestly feels like a different holiday each time we move resorts. We get so excited choosing resorts to stay at each year. We try for 3 resorts per stay. Would not do it any other way.

This year we are staying at Riveria, The Poly Tower and Saratoga Springs

I usually visit for 12 nights at a time (yep, I'm retired). The first 5 nights are usually in a Magic Kingdom resort studio. Next 7 days are near the other parks in a 1 bedroom for the washer/dryer. From that second phase, I usually also explore the Orlando area: Morse Museum (largest collection of original Louis Comfort Tiffany glass in the world), outlet malls, Universal, Seaworld and various gardens are among my favorite destinations.