Walt Disney World hotels

Disney sorts its own hotels into four tiers, and learning them saves you an enormous amount of comparing. Value resorts are the entry level, Moderate resorts sit in the middle, Deluxe resorts are the top of the standard range, and Deluxe Villas are apartment style units with kitchens attached to several of the Deluxe resorts.

Value resorts are All Star Movies, All Star Music, All Star Sports, Pop Century and Art of Animation. Large, colourful, motel style properties with exterior corridors, food courts rather than restaurants, and enormous themed statues in the courtyards that small children stand in front of for twenty minutes. Rooms are compact, and the family suites at Art of Animation and All Star Music are the exception that sleep six.

Moderate resorts are Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans French Quarter, Port Orleans Riverside and the Cabins at Fort Wilderness. Rooms are larger, there is table service dining on site, the pools are more elaborate, and the grounds are landscaped rather than merely laid out. Port Orleans Riverside and Caribbean Beach both have rooms sleeping five, which matters a great deal to a family of five who would otherwise be booking two.

Deluxe resorts are the ones you have already pictured. Grand Floridian, Polynesian Village, Contemporary, Wilderness Lodge, Animal Kingdom Lodge, Beach Club, Yacht Club and BoardWalk Inn. What you are paying for is location and transport as much as the room, because most of them either sit on the monorail loop, walk to a park entrance, or look out over a savannah with giraffe standing on it.

Villas are the tier UK families most often overlook and most often love once they try it. Bay Lake Tower, Boulder Ridge, Copper Creek, Beach Club Villas, BoardWalk Villas, Animal Kingdom Villas at Jambo House and Kidani Village, the Villas at Grand Floridian, Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, Riviera, Old Key West and Saratoga Springs. Studios sleep four or five with a kitchenette, and one and two bedroom villas have full kitchens, washing machines and separate living space, which changes a fortnight with young children completely.

Party size is the first filter and it clears most of the list away quickly. Standard rooms across Value, Moderate and Deluxe tiers generally sleep four, sometimes five. A family of five or six should go straight to the family suites at Art of Animation and All Star Music, the five person rooms at Port Orleans Riverside and Caribbean Beach, the Cabins at Fort Wilderness, or a one or two bedroom Deluxe Villa. Two Value rooms for six people usually costs more than one villa and puts half your family on the other side of a corridor.

Transport is the second filter and it matters more than the room does. Stay at the Crescent Lake resorts, meaning Beach Club, Yacht Club, BoardWalk Inn and BoardWalk Villas, and you walk into EPCOT through the International Gateway in five to ten minutes and to Hollywood Studios in about twenty. Contemporary and Bay Lake Tower walk to Magic Kingdom. The monorail loop connects Grand Floridian, Polynesian and Contemporary to Magic Kingdom directly. The Skyliner gondola links Caribbean Beach, Riviera, Pop Century and Art of Animation to EPCOT and Hollywood Studios. Everything else runs on buses, which are reliable and free and slower than all of the above.

Length of stay changes what is worth paying for. A four night Disney stay before you move on is largely about location, so a Deluxe near a park gate earns its money. A fourteen night stay is about the room, the space to spread out and somewhere to do the laundry, which is exactly what a Deluxe Villa hands you.

Self catering is the argument for the Villa tier that nobody makes loudly enough. A full kitchen means breakfast in the room instead of a food court queue at eight in the morning, and a washing machine means packing for a week rather than a fortnight. Families with a baby or a toddler find both worth more than any lobby.

Theming is a proper reason to choose, not a frivolous one. Animal Kingdom Lodge has savannah view rooms with zebra and giraffe outside the window. Wilderness Lodge is a vast timber lodge that feels nothing like Florida the moment you walk in. Art of Animation puts you inside Cars, Finding Nemo and The Lion King. If the hotel is part of the holiday rather than a place to sleep, that changes the calculation entirely.

Budget honestly against what you will actually use. A Value resort guest and a Deluxe guest get the same park tickets, the same Early Theme Park Entry and the same free transport. If your days run 8am to 10pm inside the parks, the extra spent on a Deluxe buys you a nicer walk back from the bus stop.

Hiring a car alongside a Disney hotel stay is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default. Disney transport reaches every park, water park and Disney Springs for free, so a family staying on site for a fortnight and never leaving the property genuinely does not need one. If you want Universal, SeaWorld, Kennedy Space Center, an outlet mall or a supermarket, you do, and the free resort and park parking makes it cheaper to run than it first looks.

Villa communities and off site hotels compete directly with the Value and Moderate tiers on price, and they win on space every time. A three or four bedroom villa with a private pool in Davenport or Kissimmee costs less than two Value rooms and gives you five times the floor area. What it does not give you is Early Theme Park Entry, free park parking or the walk home under the Magic Kingdom fireworks. Both are good holidays. They are not the same holiday.

Room only, ticket inclusive and dining packages are all sold differently in the UK market from the American one. UK customers can buy the 14 and 21 day Ultimate tickets that are not sold in the United States, and those work out far better per day. Bundling the hotel and tickets in sterling also fixes the price rather than leaving it exposed to the exchange rate between booking and travel.

Deluxe Villas are sold as Disney Vacation Club accommodation, which occasionally confuses UK customers who think they need to be members. Anybody can book a villa as a normal cash reservation. Studios sleep four or five with a kitchenette, one bedrooms sleep four or five with a full kitchen and a washer and dryer, and two bedrooms sleep eight or nine.

Booking ahead matters more at Disney than at most destinations. The rooms that sell out first are the family suites, the five person Moderate rooms, the savannah view rooms at Animal Kingdom Lodge and every villa over Christmas and Easter. Twelve months ahead is normal for a summer or Christmas stay and is not excessive.

Refurbishments and seasonal closures affect pools, restaurants and whole buildings, and Disney publishes them at short notice. We check the schedule against your dates before confirming, because a hotel with its main pool closed for six weeks is a different proposition and it is much easier to move before you have paid than after.

Pools are worth choosing on rather than treating as identical. Every Disney resort has a themed feature pool with a slide and one or more quiet pools, and the gap between the tiers is real. Stormalong Bay at Beach Club and Yacht Club is a three acre sand bottomed complex and the best on Disney property by some margin. Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach are separate water parks with their own admission, included on the UK Ultimate tickets.

Split stays are more common than people expect and often the best answer of all. A week in a Deluxe or a villa on Disney property followed by a week in a villa off site gives you park proximity for the heavy days and space and a pool for the rest of the fortnight, usually for less than fourteen nights of Disney accommodation. Moving mid holiday costs you a morning, which most families consider a fair trade.

Arrival and departure days are worth planning around the flight times, because they are more useful than they look. UK flights land in Orlando in the afternoon and early evening and leave in the evening, so you gain a half day at each end. Disney resorts hold luggage before check in and after check out, so a family flying home at nine at night can spend the final day at a park and shower at the resort before leaving.