Checking out resorts!

Hi Joe, good to hear from you! You know I am seriously contemplating doing exactly that on our next trip down in Nov.
As a matter of fact my annual pass is expired and I do not have any park tickets yet. and the wife and I are discussing doing a "subvet and Jan" type trip with a lot of pool time thrown in. Joe (and everybody) what are your thoughts on this?

We do it all the time and enjoy it. It's a tradition at Christmas, we take all our family who don't have passes and spend the whole day exploring all the resorts which are decorated for the holidays. We look forward to it every year and they all get some Disney magic w/o even fighting the crowds in the parks.

I have a couple ADRs are the resorts and will spend time exploring.

Since we live far and only go once every few years I don't think we'd ever go down and not hit the parks--but we do like to have an day or two built in to do just that. We love relaxing at our resort and visiting others...and of course eating at all of them!!

I think it sounds like a great idea! I bet you'll see all kinds of things, and do all kinds of new things, that you never did before, simply because you never had the time. Let us know if you decide to do it. You can always give it a go, and get your tix once you're here if you find you just have to go to the parks. And there may be a MVMCP date while y'all are here, so you might even get in on that, rather than a traditional ticket. Just a thought.

I love resort hopping!

For us, resort hopping & DTD is a fantastic way to cut down on the number of park days that we buy, it's also something we do on our arrival and departure days. Some of the resorts have such fabulous shopping and activities available that we don't really miss going to the park. Animal Kingdom Lodge is one of the best activity resort hops out there, lots of activities happening in the lobby all the time, the world class art collection, Food & wine tastings, and of course the savanna and it's guides. As a child visiting Disney always included resort hopping days because there was only 1/2 parks to visit. As an adult it's never really been a focus of mine to hit all of the parks on ever trip, if I did I think that I would very much miss my resort hopping.

We usually get park tickets for our arrival day but were not tthis year so that's what we are gig to do the day we get there. And we are leaving later then usual this year so we will probably do it on our last day to

I actually have length of stay passes for the first time ever for our Sept/Oct trip and I'm a little worried that I won't be getting my money's worth. If we don't go on our first or last day, am I going to be upset that I wasted money by adding that extra day? I know, it was only $20, but I think I'm going to feel like I *have* to use it and they will really annoy my husband.

Depending on when you arrive you could always just use the tickets to pop in to a park for dinner and fireworks or the parade. That way you could spend a few hours checking out a resort (you could also do breakfast the morning you leave in a park, ride a few rides and then check out another resort). just a thought

I would love to spend a good amount of time resort hopping! We always say we will and then end up going to a park.

We've got dinner reservations at Citricos on our first night. Our plane gets in a 1:00PM, so I think we're going to drop off my electronics bag at the hotel, head to MK to hit Tiki Room and Adventureland, maybe have a Dole Whip. Then we'll go have dinner at Citricos, and then head back to MK for the Fireworks. Our last day though, we'll be at MNSSHP the night before, so I'm not to sure how early we'll wake up, we'll see. I have an ADR for lunch at Sanaa on our last day so we may just hang out at the hotel depending on how fast we're moving. I think DME will be picking us up around 1:00 to head home.

Any way it happens though, I can't wait! I need this vacation very badly.

Well as our last trip was a cheeky trip that we werent aupposed to have, nor that we could afford we spent one afternoon hopping from one resort to another having a quick nose, most of the time not getting out of the car mind, to see where we would like to stay next year as it will be our first ever onsite stay. The only ones we missed out were the mods and values, we did all the deluxe resorts. We really enjoyed it and i would love to explore more next time!