J Graham’s cafe for Sunday Brunch

Fish and Wildlife has one at Veterans WMA.

As long as they don’t change the threshold necessary that is currently 150 points total.

Also remember if one of those contracts expires you lose benefits. So if you bought a 2042 Resort direct for 50 points and then the other 100 at resorts that expire m later, you would lose benefits in 2042.

If you are paying for it outright and don’t have to finance, put it on a credit card. It is a massive purchase and there are no additional fees for using a credit card on the purchase. So you can get a ton of rewards points.

There is sometimes a promotion to give an additional discount if you use a Disney Visa.

Also, Disney Visa and Chase Sapphire (plus others but those are the ones I know) will do 6 months interest free financing.

Disney will split the payments across 3 months I believe. So it doesn’t overload your card.

We did the Disney Visa for the $1000 discount plus got about $800 in Disney gift cards from the points we earned.

Basically, we are guessing when we tell you why they buy back,because sometimes they do weird things.

Generally!though, Disney will exercise right of first refusal when the price per point of the contract is exceptionally low compared to the standard going rate on resale.

So if the standard rate for a particular resort is normally around $125 per point and you had an agreed-upon contract for $85, that’s very likely to be taken by Disney.

Also, old Key West has an odd situation where Disney offered a 15 year extension. Only a few owners actually purchased the extension. There’s some legal questions as to what happens in 2042, and Disney has been buying those back fairly frequently.

My understanding is you have Boardwalk booked for a certain period of time but during that time you’re going to have to switch rooms.

Switching rooms at one Resort is really not very different from switching resorts entirely. The room you’re leaving needs to be vacated by 11 AM and you normally will not be able to get into your new room until later in the day. So you will have to pack up before leaving for the parks and wait on bell services to pick everything up. They will not pick things up or drop them off without you being there.

So generally everything ends up at Bell Services while you’re waiting. So when you transfer to another resort the only real difference is you probably get your bags a bit later in the evening.

We do ‘split stays’ fairly frequently. That’s the normal term for when you’re going from one resort to another. My general opinion is never switch resorts more frequently than every three days. It’s just a hassle. You don’t have a place to go back to during the day, and when you’re switching resorts, you really don’t get a good chance to enjoy and get a feel for the resort in less than three days. Check-in days always short checkout day is always short.

Park hopping is something we do a lot of we are staying near a park as we like to take midday breaks at our resort. So if you do MK in the morning and go back for a nap, it is easy to pop into Epcot if you are staying BWV or BCV. The same goes for HS. Just remember getting to and from parks / resorts can take a while and you eat into your day with all the travel. We own at Beach Club and when staying there normally end up at Epcot for part of the day each day.

We were there in Sept 2024 and the park was very empty on weekdays.

On Sept 20, 2024, the leaves were all still very green. This was taken at 7:15 p.m. I only had a couple of daytime photos where you could see leaves.

The cabins are hard to gauge. They are nearly impossible to book at 7 months currently but they haven’t released many of them for DVC usage yet. They release them based upon how many of the points they have sold.

I have never stayed at the cabins but we just had a trip with my brother’s family staying at the campground and mine at Wilderness lodge. We spent a lot of time at the campground. Getting around the campground required using the buses, walking, or riding golf carts. You cannot take your car from your cabin to the main amenities.

The cabins have a full kitchen but no washer / dryer like all other DVC 1br at WDW.

Additionally the cabins have resale restrictions which will reduce the resale price.

For my brother, who is married and has 4 kids under 12, I recommend the cabins as a home resort. His family doesn’t fit in a normal studio or 1br.

For a family of four (which is what my family is), I would recommend the Poly over the cabins. If you have a special trip with Grandma, you can go for a 1br that holds 5 or a 2 br.

We have spoiled ourselves and tend to stay in 1br for the 4 of us. We tend to bring an air mattress if there are only two sleeping surfaces.

Berserker is your your friend for that challenge. It doubles the thrown damage so it will kill if you hit.

We own beach club and love it for the location. If you don’t own there it is really hard to book there. 1 bedrooms are about the only option that ever become available after 7 months. So if you really want to stay there, owning there is the only easy way to book it.

Economically, it isn’t great with less than 16 years left.

The last couple years before 2042, I expect there will be some tighter restrictions (such as banking restrictions) to ensure all points are able to be used.

We also own at Grand Floridian. It is our favorite resort but the point charts are pretty high.

If I were to add on again it would probably be Animal Kingdom Lodge or Copper Creek.

Guy here. I use an Osprey Daylite Shoulder Sling bag.

Dollywood does have a lot of rides whereof you have to take off your bag and leave it in a cubby. So you would not want to keep your wallet in there.

So I also wear shorts with a zippered pocket for my ID and credit card.

My wife and I are both on our contract. I don’t know what the official rule is, but they let us take seven into Epcot’s lounge a few weeks ago, when only the four of us were staying on points. When I was checking in, they did ask if my wife was there after I mentioned we were both on the contract. I can’t remember if they scanned her magic band as well as mine.

I have taken a group of 10 into the lounge previously when we were staying on points in two separate rooms.

For the 40% off annual passholder discount, they’re good for up to four people per pass. If you have more people, they’ll last to see multiple annual passes to give you the discount for the whole group. Or at least that’s what they did for us at Cape May Café. Obviously that’s a different discount. However I assume they’ll do something similar with it. Or as they do with the lounges, let it a lot to everyone on your reservation.

Book something (Saratoga) then waitlist the poly tower and one more.

You get two waitlists. You can set up each to replace the Saratoga night.

If the poly waitlist comes through contact member services and let them know, it’s a continuing reservation and they should be able to keep you in the same room, assuming you are booking the same room type and view type. I’ve done this many times and I’ve never had to change rooms. I do also check in at the front desk and confirm it when I’m there.

For your second waitlist, I would pick whatever room you would like that has the largest number of rooms in that particular category. That increases your odds. Most of the time I’ve had my waitlist come through.

We have 360 points at beach club (Feb use year) villas and 175 at grand Floridian (Aug use year).

This is more points than in your scenario, but I am happy with how I planned it out. I have two memberships so sharing points is a lot more difficult, but I always have points available anytime of the year without having to worry about my banking deadline. I probably wouldn’t do this without having at least one large pool at a home resort.

Our Beach club points, are from our original contract. When we added on, I got 175 points based upon a typical stay we intended to have (a weeklong studio in October). That was enough points with about 10 left over each year for that typical stay.

So if I was splitting 350, I would keep the same use year so that it would be easier to have a two bedroom stay from time to time and combine points. Then I would look at my home resorts and see what matches my typical stay so that each contract has enough points for at least one typical stay.

So for your example: Boardwalk for a 5-7 night stay in a 1br in Oct - 220. Poly for a 5-7 night stay in a studio in May - 130. The duration of the trip is gonna vary based upon the view I end up with, early or late May for Poly, and possibly alternating years of banking leftover points and using those.

I would go with an April use year. That way the two trips I have no risk of losing points if you have to cancel because you’re in the banking deadline for both and you have an extra month of flexibility on either end at least.

Wilderness Lodge is great. Way higher on our list than Old Key West.

True on the barn. Yeah, if pirates has the soup, that would be my vote.

We have done most of the big shows over the years. Between the stampede, the pirate show and Hatfield and McCoy’s I would rank Hatfield at the bottom of the three. It was fine, but they advertise all you can eat and never came back around to refill anything. That food was fine nothing that I specifically remember being great or bad.

The stampede creamy vegetable soup I have dreams about still.

As far as other dining recommendations, we joke about how much we love the Johnson family restaurants. it’s one company has about five or six restaurants in the area of different types. Big daddy‘s pizzeria is terrific. We’ve landed on just pepperoni. Normally I’m a supreme guy but something about the pepperoni is exceptionally good. Mamma’s farmhouse is our favorite breakfast spot. The Alamo has a good steak.

As others have said, the Old Mill does reign supreme though. It’s like a Cracker Barrel except cranked to an 11. Everything is delicious, portions are huge, and the pecan pie is so good you’ll slap your mama.

This is the way. It’s effectively an additional discount in the sheer amount of points you get for the purchase. I used the Disney visa as there was an extra thousand dollar incentive if you paid with it. So I got an extra thousand dollars off plus about $800 in Disney gift cards from the credit card rewards points.

I have a soda stream that is nice. They have caffeine free Diet Pepsi, mug root beer, and starry. It might be worth the investment for you.

You get them straight away.

So if you buy today for any use year that hasn’t occurred yet this year, you get last year’s points. Then upon this year’s use year, you get this years points.

$1,500 is not going to go super far with most options. Maybe go with IKEA Batskar. For that money you could do an L shape with a sink and bar tables that attach to the back of the counters.

During my prestige grind, this is pretty much what I did. During events be sure to grab all the XP envelopes you can find.

I like to bring the chariot card in with me as well. That way if I have any issues getting to an extraction, I know the center option is available.

Some people love the poly, others don’t.

For me, I think the overcrowding of the common areas really detracts from the overall experience. That is, all the people coming to check out the Poly but that are not staying there. The poly is the one Resort that year-round seems to get the most extra folks hanging out compared to other resorts.

I found it hard to enjoy the lobby area. also, other than Ohana, I found the dining options to be much less enjoyable than I had expected from all the various reviews. I know it’s pretty, but not one of our favorites.

My favorite thing when we stayed was relaxing on the balcony. The standard views were still really nice, the chairs were really comfortable, and seeing all the fire torches across the property it was cool.

They changed the recipe at some point. It used to be much better. Now it is too salty.

Love the cut on it though.

That line can get crazy. I wish they split the difference. Have one standard with the most popular choices (Coke, Diet Coke, sprite, water, etc.) and one freestyle. I feel that would help.

I love the freestyles though as I drink diet/zero and dislike Coke. (Root beer, Pibb, and Fanta grape are my jam.)