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Old 24 Mar 21, 09:21 PM  
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#1
spoonarama
Getting Excited
 
Join Date: Feb 17
Split Stay Tips

So, super excited for our first DVC stay this October. We are doing a 3 way split stay 4 nights BLT / 5 nights Swan / 5 nights Saratoga.

Previously we've always been on free dining so only ever stayed at 1 resort per visit. We haven't done a split stay trip since our honeymoon and then it was just the two of us.

What are your top tips for making a split stay as smooth as possible, particularly with a 4 year old in tow? Do you take any useful organising stuff? What do you do on moving days? Do you get bell services to move luggage or do it yourself (we have a car)? Do you check into the next resort first thing, even if the room isn't ready? SO many questions
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Old 25 Mar 21, 01:04 AM  
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Talland 2016
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I use packing cubes to take my clothes in so when we are getting ready to move to a different resort I can just take the cubes out of the drawers and put back into the case.
We get Bell services to transfer the luggage to the new DVC resort
If you have any food items including frozen and refrigerated they will also store those for you in between DVC resorts. I’m not sure whether Bell services would be able to transfer to Swan and Dolphin
Sounds like a fantastic trip
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Old 25 Mar 21, 08:53 AM  
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nothingless
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Check my trip report in my siggy - the last one, '5-week Split Stay in Florida' features just that! We did 21 days in Disney and stayed at SSR, AKL, Poly, OKW, and AoA in those 21 days - just us plus our 3.5 year old!

I made heavy use of packing cubes (as featured in my trip report). I had a set of 6 for each of us, each of the 6 a different size so they were easy to tell apart, and each set a different color. One for underwear, one for socks, one for tops, one for shorts/skirts and so on. So when I was unpacking, it was a matter of throwing the right cubes into the right drawers, and done! When packing, it was a matter of zipping up the packing cubes from the drawers (with only the occasional refolding needed - we didn't empty the cubes into the drawers, just set them down and unzipped them) and throwing them into the cases. I had to re-fold very rarely, it just saved so much time! Then about halfway through the trip, I took one morning to reorganize and used 1 of the set of cubes for all the dirty laundry we wouldn't be washing anymore, so those colored cubes stayed in the cases the whole rest of the trip.

For a few of the shorter stays (a few nights AKL, 1 night AoA), I just used 1 cube for each of us with only the things we'd need for those few nights, so literally everything else stayed in the cases. It made moving a total breeze for us!

On moving day, we'd get up and sorted as normal, I'd take an extra half hour maybe to pack and check the room for any leftover toys under the beds etc. My husband would take my daughter out of the room while I was doing this, to the playground or the lobby or whatever, as it's so much faster to get ready and sorted without her around lol. I'd then text him when I was done and call bell services to collect the cases. We'd normally leave the hotel around 10AM - I learnt not to schedule any early FPs on moving days just so we wouldn't be under time pressure and everything was nice and relaxed. Then we'd go to whatever park we had planned, and always without fail I got a text message sometime between 2-4PM to say our new room was ready. We'd then wrap up whatever we were doing in the park, take the bus to our new hotel, go straight to our room which we could then open with our MagicBands, and call bell services from our room. Our cases would then be delivered to us within 15-20 minutes usually.

This is using Mobile Check In via the Disney Experience app, I'd HIGHLY recommend this. It just means you can skip the entire front desk and go straight from your old hotel room to the park to the new one. Very easy and frictionless.

The only time we hit a snag with this, was moving from AKL to the Poly. We did get the text message that our room was ready, but when we arrived at the Poly, nothing worked with our MagicBands, we couldn't even get into the pool area. That was the only time we had to go to the front desk and they had to manually reset our bands as they were still stuck on AKL for some reason. This wasn't a huge deal and didn't take too long though. And the lady helping us got my daughter a coloring book and crayons to occupy her while we were sorting it out!

My daughter absolutely loved moving hotels. Every time was like a little adventure, yay we're going to a new hotel! We'd be wondering together what it'd look like, what the pool would be like, which Disney characters we may find, etc. (of course *I* knew the answers to all that, but I pretended not to so we could 'guess' together) And she loved exploring a new hotel once we'd arrived - it really was like a new little holiday every time!

This type of stay really suited us, and we'd def be looking to do this again next time. If you have any questions, ask away - I feel like a proper pro at this now haha!
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Old 25 Mar 21, 10:02 AM  
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spoonarama
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Getting Excited
 
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Originally Posted by nothingless View Post
Check my trip report in my siggy - the last one, '5-week Split Stay in Florida' features just that! We did 21 days in Disney and stayed at SSR, AKL, Poly, OKW, and AoA in those 21 days - just us plus our 3.5 year old!

Wow that sounds amazing! thanks so much for the tips, really reassuring that you found it easy with a little one in tow. I laughed at the checking for toys, my biggest fear is we leave one of his stuffed toys behind!

Can I ask what you did with toiletries? We usually end up with a right counter full of medicines, different face creams, sun creams, contacts, make up etc. etc. thinking of trying to have a large washbag each that we don't empty maybe?

Also did you wash clothes at each DVC stay? We normally take a weeks worth of stuff and wash at the end of week 1 and just before flying home.

I feel I'm going to have to keep bugging you with questions lol
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Old 25 Mar 21, 10:04 AM  
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#5
spoonarama
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Getting Excited
 
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Originally Posted by Talland 2016 View Post
I use packing cubes to take my clothes in so when we are getting ready to move to a different resort I can just take the cubes out of the drawers and put back into the case.
We get Bell services to transfer the luggage to the new DVC resort
If you have any food items including frozen and refrigerated they will also store those for you in between DVC resorts. I’m not sure whether Bell services would be able to transfer to Swan and Dolphin
Sounds like a fantastic trip
Awesome thanks, we did think about the food thing (mainly for my folks who are doing BLT / SSR / SSR). Did you need to label anything for bell services to know its fridge / freezer stuff in the bags?
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Old 25 Mar 21, 10:19 AM  
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Talland 2016
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Originally Posted by spoonarama View Post
Awesome thanks, we did think about the food thing (mainly for my folks who are doing BLT / SSR / SSR). Did you need to label anything for bell services to know its fridge / freezer stuff in the bags?
Yep
We had saved a couple of the brown food bags & wrote on them but also told the person who collected from our room
Toiletries / sun cream etc we just put into a plastic bag & knotted & bell services bought it to room with luggage
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Old 25 Mar 21, 04:41 PM  
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nothingless
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Originally Posted by spoonarama View Post
Wow that sounds amazing! thanks so much for the tips, really reassuring that you found it easy with a little one in tow. I laughed at the checking for toys, my biggest fear is we leave one of his stuffed toys behind!

Can I ask what you did with toiletries? We usually end up with a right counter full of medicines, different face creams, sun creams, contacts, make up etc. etc. thinking of trying to have a large washbag each that we don't empty maybe?

Also did you wash clothes at each DVC stay? We normally take a weeks worth of stuff and wash at the end of week 1 and just before flying home.

I feel I'm going to have to keep bugging you with questions lol
Haha yes that was my worry too, that one of her beloved stuffed animals would get left behind! And with little kids, it always pays to check literally everywhere haha! But yeah, we found it really easy with a young kid. The most important things really were that my husband took her out while I was finishing packing (the first time we moved, he did not do this and omg. She would grab everything I'd just packed and was driving me nuts!) and to not make any early plans on moving day, as it made us all a bit more relaxed. But yeah, it wasn't hard at all!

Toiletries - we did it like this: I had 2 different distinct toiletry bags, plus one drawstring washbag. All 3 just got lifted in and out of suitcases at every room, but we didn't touch them unless we needed something out of them. Toiletry bag 1 was a red check color, and contained all the medication. Everything from paracetemol to calpol to rennies to nasal spray. It just stayed closed unless we needed something out of it. Toiletry bag 2 was a hot pink color, and contained my makeup and creams. Only I used this, so it was easy to keep it tidy and put everything straight back in after using it. These bags would both sit side by side somewhere near the sink, closed over 90% of the time.

The drawstring washbag was a larger waterproof bag that I got out of Boots once upon a time many years ago (but a plastic Tesco bag would probably do the job too!)! This is where the shower gel for us, shower gel for my daughter, shampoo for us, shampoo for my daughter, sunscreen, body lotion, toothbrushes and toothpaste etc lived. When we got to a new room, I'd take everything out and put it into the shower/beside the sink. When we were packing up, I'd have my shower and get ready after my husband took my daughter out, and would tidy everything away into this bag after I'd used it. So by the time I was ready, the bag would also be ready haha!

This worked well for us - the medicine bag we hardly ever needed to open, my makeup bag I kept track of it, and the wash bag was easy enough to empty and pack again. I hope that makes sense?

As for washing, we were in Florida for 5 weeks, so I had around 10 days worth of clothes for each of us. We stayed off-site in a villa for the first 2 weeks, and I made sure that when we left there to check into Disney, everything was washed. We then washed everything once halfway into our trip, and that was enough to make us last till home time. I hate doing laundry on holiday so my aim is always to do it as little as possible!
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Old 25 Mar 21, 09:30 PM  
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YorkshireT
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Go over to the new hotel early and check in asking if they can get you a good room.
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