Keep Checking Those Specials!

Earlier this week I took advantage of something that everyone planning a Disney wedding, honeymoon, or even just a Disney vacation should know about: special rates! Yes, on Monday, Disney made available special room rates for many resorts. This is something that I've known was coming for a while, but I thought it would be worth mentioning again briefly. You see, I booked our hotel rooms nearly a year in advance simply to reserve them; thanks to Disney's generous cancellation policy on hotels and the courteous nature of their staff, I knew that making modifications and even changing lengths of stay or dates would be something I could do several times as the wedding gets closer. With the initial reservations in place with a year to go, I wasn't taking any chances.

The only Disney-related gambling I can endorse.

Then, when Disney made a new room rate available this week, I was able to call up the reservations hotline, speak with a very nice representative, and asked them to change my reservation over from the rate I had (which did have a modest discount on it, for being a AAA member) to the promotional rate that they had released earlier in the week. The customer service rep was able to find my reservation, and the promotional rate, with no issues, and made the change in a matter of minutes. All told, the new rate is about a 15% improvement over the rate I had previously, which, on a 14-night stay at a Deluxe resort, is no small chunk of our budget. This was also simply a modification to our existing reservation, and the representative had no need to cancel and re-book or anything like that; accordingly, our confirmation number did not change, everything remains linked to our MyDisneyExperience accounts, and there seem to have been no issues thus far. I'm also keeping my eye out for a better discount for Annual Passholders, which has not yet been released, but for which I'm hoping we qualify (given that we'll be Annual Passholders by virtue of getting married there).

I highly recommend booking well in advance to reserve your room, then asking for the reservation to be modified when a new rate comes out. That way, you have the peace of mind knowing that, at the bare minimum, your hotel stay is reserved, even if it's not at the rate you want. You can find the current specials by logging into MyDisneyExperience and going to Places to Stay, then clicking on View Special Offers. Or, just follow this link, which is probably easier right now, though I doubt you'll want to have to route through this blog in the future.

Right there, on the bottom of the right-hand column.

If you've booked your stay (or are about to) but have not yet seen any discounted rates released, you probably want to take a look at this MouseSavers page, which shows when discounts have been historically released. In the case of the Annual Passholder discount I'm looking for, for example, those seem to not show up until March or thereabouts, so I'll be keeping an eye out toward the end of next month. I also spend some time keeping an eye on the Dis Boards resort discount codes forum, and subscribed to the thread pertaining to the time period of our stay. I actually was aware that the discount special was coming some weeks ago, thanks to intrepid Dis board members, so once a thread gets created for the month of your trip, don't be afraid to subscribe to the thread. As it turns out, having a lot of folks looking for the same thing is a lot easier than trying to do it by yourself.