Split Stay Tips

[SDSorority]

What are your best tips in regards to split stays? We will have a car so that's helpful, but do you have suggestions as to making the transition between hotels easy? How does doing a split stay affect your touring?

 

[AngiTN]

We do ours sans a car but really, they don't impact our days at all.
I plan our longest park days for moving day.
We get up, send our bags off to bell services for moving, head to the bus stop, get on bus to park.
Stay in park all day, hop, etc. Whatever our park plans are.
When we are done for the day, we get on the bus for our new resort and head to the new room.
By this time our bags have made it to the resort so we just call for them and settle in.
This way, we loose no park time at all and we aren't missing or needing our bags while they are moved.

 

[dansdad]

We do ours sans a car but really, they don't impact our days at all.
I plan our longest park days for moving day.
We get up, send our bags off to bell services for moving, head to the bus stop, get on bus to park.
Stay in park all day, hop, etc. Whatever our park plans are.
When we are done for the day, we get on the bus for our new resort and head to the new room.
By this time our bags have made it to the resort so we just call for them and settle in.
This way, we loose no park time at all and we aren't missing or needing our bags while they are moved.

This is us exactly. Easy peasy.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

We do ours sans a car but really, they don't impact our days at all.
I plan our longest park days for moving day.
We get up, send our bags off to bell services for moving, head to the bus stop, get on bus to park.
Stay in park all day, hop, etc. Whatever our park plans are.
When we are done for the day, we get on the bus for our new resort and head to the new room.
By this time our bags have made it to the resort so we just call for them and settle in.
This way, we loose no park time at all and we aren't missing or needing our bags while they are moved.

This is what we do as well! With a car, I would still transfer the luggage through bell services (so it doesn't sit in your car all day), drive to the park you want to tour and simply drive to your second resort when you're ready.

 

[loves to dive]

We pretty much do it same way as AngiTN and dansdad except we drive so we take the luggage and drop it off at bell services at resort #2 and go ahead and check in at the front desk just to let them know we are there then head to a park. Since we drive I tend to pack two bags. I have a hanging toiletry bag that goes in a tote bag with my laptop and kindle that doesn't need to be unpacked, we just hang it from the hook in the bathroom and put stuff back in it after we use it, that way no clutter on the bathroom counters and we don't forget anything. That tote bag goes into both resorts (it has zippers so no problem leaving it with bell services).

 

[arminnie]

We recently did our first split stay. We were at the Poly Bungalows which are not easy to access. If we'd been at a resort like SSR we would have just moved our stuff ourselves.

We called bell services to pick up our bags We had to deliver them to bell services and not just leave them to be picked up. We moved to SSR.

Our bags were not available to be delivered to our room until late afternoon. So do not expect them any time soon. It was still much better than taking them ourselves, but just do not expect it to happen semi automatically.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Lots of good advice above.

FWIW, in April we did a split stay where we did a water park on switch day and that ended up working very well for us / our style. Since they (mostly) open at 10AM we could have a late/lazy morning, finish packing, etc, and make it to RD in plenty of time. We headed back at 3PM and got the room ready text while on the bus. Easy peasy!

That plan could have backfired on me with bad weather, but on this day we were a happy family.

 

[DisneyFansInNYC]

Lots of great advice - but another reason for having them move the luggage is that they will keep all of your perishables cold. We do split stays all the time and tell them how many bags need to be refrigerated. We always have food in our refrigerator. Great advice from everyone - we do the same - pack, have luggage picked up and head to the parks. One time there were 10 of us and we had 25 pieces to be moved. There was a lot of shopping that trip plus a case of water. We gave bell services a big tip.

 

[kberries86]

Lots of great advice - but another reason for having them move the luggage is that they will keep all of your perishables cold. We do split stays all the time and tell them how many bags need to be refrigerated. We always have food in our refrigerator. Great advice from everyone - we do the same - pack, have luggage picked up and head to the parks. One time there were 10 of us and we had 25 pieces to be moved. There was a lot of shopping that trip plus a case of water. We gave bell services a big tip.

What kind of bags do you pack your food in? Coolers or grocery bags or what? It looks like we will have to do a split stay because of limited availability during the week we are rescheduling to but we will have all our breakfast food to keep cold.

 

[dansdad]

What kind of bags do you pack your food in? Coolers or grocery bags or what? It looks like we will have to do a split stay because of limited availability during the week we are rescheduling to but we will have all our breakfast food to keep cold.

We just use whatever bags our groceries were delivered in.

 

[Deanie1]

Do you worry about your medications making it ok? This trip will be our first split stay, moving from Pop to POR without a car. When you cal bell services, do you wait unti they come and pick up your bags before you leave the room? Or is it better to take them to bell services at the first resort yourself? And, yes, we do want to make rope drop!

 

[dansdad]

Do you worry about your medications making it ok?

I don't and haven't been let down yet.

This trip will be our first split stay, moving from Pop to POR without a car. When you cal bell services, do you wait unti they come and pick up your bags before you leave the room?

Yes, you have to. And they will give you a receipt/claim ticket for what they are taking.

Or is it better to take them to bell services at the first resort yourself? And, yes, we do want to make rope drop!

We always call the night before and set up a time for them to come get them the next morning. But you could take them yourself if you want to.

 

[Babsy]

We do ours sans a car but really, they don't impact our days at all.
I plan our longest park days for moving day.
We get up, send our bags off to bell services for moving, head to the bus stop, get on bus to park.
Stay in park all day, hop, etc. Whatever our park plans are.
When we are done for the day, we get on the bus for our new resort and head to the new room.
By this time our bags have made it to the resort so we just call for them and settle in.
This way, we loose no park time at all and we aren't missing or needing our bags while they are moved.

Typically, this is what we do as well.

Although, sometimes we grab an Uber or taxi and head to the next resort first thing in the am. This is usually if we may need access to our stuff earlier in the day or if we are hoping to get into the room early for some reason. The method AngiTN cited is the best one for minimizing disruption to your day, however.

 

[Silvermist999]

We have done two split stays so far. We also had a rental car both times, and I would suggest checking out and heading over to your second Resort as early as possible in the morning. Both times we've gotten our room before 10 am.

 

[ColoradoMom12]

Do you worry about your medications making it ok?

I was kind of worried the first time we did it, but it's been fine for us. If you're worried, you could put your medications into a backpack that you could carry with you. My "medication" is a CPAP machine. Honestly, I would worry more about it if I brought it along to a park than if I just put it into its case and packed that into a suitcase. I do lock our luggage with TSA locks. It's probably not necessary (we don't lock our groceries, and those have been fine, but I feel safer doing it.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

Tips?

Pack light. And don't unpack. Live out of your suitcases. Otherwise you have to pack and unpack multiple times.

 

[AngiTN]

Do you worry about your medications making it ok? This trip will be our first split stay, moving from Pop to POR without a car. When you cal bell services, do you wait unti they come and pick up your bags before you leave the room? Or is it better to take them to bell services at the first resort yourself? And, yes, we do want to make rope drop!

You have to be there and get the receipt for your bags. We rarely worry about rope drop on moving day, it's going to be a long day so rope drop isn't important on this day.
If you are wanting to be in control of the time, take them to bell services yourself. This is the quickest for sure. Otherwise, you can always give them a call when you've got 10 or so more minutes to go to get ready. I've not had them take more than 5/10 min to get there to get bags.

Tips?

Pack light. And don't unpack. Live out of your suitcases. Otherwise you have to pack and unpack multiple times.

This is our normal, split stay or not. I hate packing so I don't unpack needlessly

 

[DisneyFansInNYC]

What kind of bags do you pack your food in? Coolers or grocery bags or what? It looks like we will have to do a split stay because of limited availability during the week we are rescheduling to but we will have all our breakfast food to keep cold.

We use a cooler but they will put whatever you say in their refrigerator. So if you have a bag and say you need this to stay cold, they will put it in. It is a great service.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

We did it last trip. Poly to the BC. It was August so we did a midday break at the pool. We dropped our bags with bell services at 7:30 am but didn't get them until closer to 4 which we knew could happen. Also our room wasn't ready until closer to 2. I hate changing in locker rooms or bathrooms (and I didn't pack a separate bag with our swim clothes anyway) so we just took a short nap instead.

In the future, if it were during the summer months when we like to use the pool, I would probably Uber it and take my own bags or at least one of my bags and let bell services do the rest. Our next trip will most likely be November and just with DD. If we do a split stay our plan will depend on our plans for the day. If I make it a long park day I will let bell services take care of all the bags. If it's something different I will just get an Uber and transport my bags myself.

Either way we really enjoyed doing a split stay. It wasn't a big deal and we got to enjoy two resorts.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

This is our normal, split stay or not. I hate packing so I don't unpack needlessly

But for those that do unpack, not unpacking would be a tip.