Large Family Trip

How much time do you plan on spending at the resort? How different are your schedules going to be? If one part of the family is going to the parks earlier then everyone else or staying later then everyone else, then maybe one room might not be enough. If you do the rooms at the values, you can only get two conjoining rooms together. You can try and get all four rooms next each other but two and two will be conjoined. I hope that makes sense. If you're not worried about schedule conflicts between family groups then I say go with the 3 bedroom villa.

Hi coreyp! We're doing a family trip in December 2014 and are going to stay at Boardwalk Villas. Love the pool, the laid back atmosphere, and the short walk to Epcot and DHS.

Have you considered Art of Animation resort? Wasn't the aim of that resort to cater to large families without busting a budget of a villa?

Zz.

There are nine of us going next week! - eight adults and a one year old. We have 4 rooms at POFQ.
Value doesn't appeal to us and deluxe was too expensive for that many people. Moderate seemed to sit just right.
Also we would drive each other crazy if we were all in the same villa.
We plan to meet regularly in the bar if we have been doing different things during the day. The resort is quite compact so even if we are all in different buildings it will be easy to meet at the pool/food hall/bar.

This was our outcome after a similar thought process to the one you are having at the moment.

Hope this helps.

When I was doing some research for a potential family trip, the 3 bedroom villa seed to have the best value for what I was looking at. Plus, that way, you can bring your own food for breakfast/afternoon or late night snacks and save $ in the parks

Oh true, I didn't think about the timing

Things are going great, hope your little Penny is doing fabulous! We've gotten to take our Penny to the park a few times, but we also got her a little blowup swimming pool that hasn't even blownup yet this year since we haven't had warm enough weather to justify it.

We've got 5 adults and 1 child who will be just under 2-1/2 years so a bit smaller then your group. We're still debating whether we should do two seperate rooms (with BIL over with MIL and FIL and Penny in our room) or spring for the 2 bedroom suite.

If the price isn't a limiting factor, I'm a big fan of the 3 bedroom Villa idea.

The room is HUGE, they usually are placed with amazing views, there's both public space for people to gather and chat in, as well as the private space of the bedrooms to get some alone time. You can make use of the full kitchen for some meals (even if it's just more space to keep grab and go breakfasts and keeping things to drink cold) and I am always in love with having an in room washer/dryer if for no other reason than never having to put on a wet swim suit. Everyone staying in the villa also means that sharing the child watching responsibilities will be easier because no one has to go to some other room and the kids can just go to sleep in their beds without having to be moved around in the middle. Plus, with the villa you are sure that everyone is near each other vs. rooms which may or may not be next to each other.

My personal opinion on sharing accommodations with other adults is that each set of married or otherwise paired-off adults, or each single non-paired off adult, needs a private room. And eight or nine adults aren't going to get that in a three-bedroom villa. Not everyone feels as strongly about it as I do. In fact, we once put seven adults in a three bedroom offsite villa that accommodated six people in private bedrooms and two people (one in our case) on the sleeper sofa in the living room. But hubby and I footed the full bill for the villa (on a timeshare exchange). The other five were staying on our dime, and they were all quite happy to have a free place to sleep, so the fact that someone had to sleep on the sofa wasn't an issue. It was a free bed, yay! If your group is splitting the bill amongst you, how do you divide it fairly when once couple is in the luxurious and spacious master bedroom with a Jacuzzi tub, and another couple is sharing the sofa with whoever walks past to use the bathroom or raid the refrigerator? So, my personal choice would be the appropriate number of hotel rooms in whatever category you want, or a FOUR bedroom villa if you can find one.