My family and I are planning a Magical Gathering for this September.\u00a0 We booked our rooms a year before our vacation to take advantage of the Free Dining Special that was being offered at that time.\u00a0 Because my sister has four children, and we were looking for the least expensive resort accommodations, we booked our rooms at the All-Star Music Resort so that she could take advantage of their family suites.<\/p>\n
We had considered having two of my sister\u2019s children room with their grandparents in order to save some money.\u00a0 This is a great option for families who will be at the resort the same amount of time.\u00a0 However, my parents are staying for 9 nights, while my sister\u2019s family will be staying for only 5 nights.\u00a0 We were told that the guests sharing a room, potentially my parents and nieces, would have to have the same number of park-day tickets, so this cost-saving option was out for us.\u00a0 Or was it?<\/p>\n
I recently (48 days from our vacation) found out about a little-known \u201cwork around\u201d for just this sort of situation.\u00a0 My neighbor is going to Disney World, and her two youngest children will be rooming with their grandparents.\u00a0 The grandparents are not going to the park everyday.\u00a0 Instead they are tending to the youngest two children, who are not quite ready for 4 full days in the parks.\u00a0 My neighbor wanted to be able to take her toddler into the park one extra day and leave the baby with the grandparents.\u00a0 She called Disney and asked if all of the occupants of her parents\u2019 room had to upgrade to another day of tickets or if there was a less expensive way.\u00a0 The Cast Member (CM) told her that once the guests arrive at the resort anyone can upgrade to an extra day of tickets, but it is not the case that everyone must.<\/p>\n
I had never heard of this before, so I called Walt Disney\u2019s vacation reservation number.\u00a0 I asked the CM about this possibility, and he told me that you must book the least common number of tickets as part of the vacation package, but then any individual could upgrade their number of park-ticket days upon arrival.<\/p>\n
As a result of this information, I called our wonderful travel agent and asked her if she would make this change for us.\u00a0 She changed my sister\u2019s room to a standard room and moved her two youngest children into my parents\u2019 room.\u00a0 Because the children are young (3 and 5), their presence did not affect the room rate for my parents for their 9-night reservation.\u00a0 Maureen also changed my parents\u2019 package to 4 days in the parks (but they will upgrade to 4 more days upon arrival).<\/p>\n
This may seem like a lot of changing and tweaking, and many people may wonder if it would be worth it.\u00a0 I know my sister would say that it is definitely worth it because this change saved her $1000!\u00a0 The cost of my parents\u2019 room, because of the addition of the two children\u2019s 4 days of tickets, went up by about $400, which means that my sister\u2019s net savings was around $600.\u00a0 The only downside is that by switching to a standard room, she lost the extra bath that is in the family suites.\u00a0 A second bathroom at a cost of $125 per day was not worth it to her.<\/p>\n
You can be the judge of whether or not it is worth it to you.\u00a0 Either way, this little \u201cwork around\u201d is a handy piece of knowledge for families who need more than one standard room and who have members who want a varied number of park days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My family and I are planning a Magical Gathering for this September.\u00a0 We booked our rooms a year before our vacation to take advantage of the Free Dining Special that was being offered at that time.\u00a0 Because my sister has four children, and we were looking for the least expensive resort accommodations, we booked our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-walt-disney-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86614,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9038\/revisions\/86614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}