Fortunately, Disney offers a variety of hotels in different price points. Part of our contract with them is that we have to guarantee a total of 25 hotel nights from us and our guests- otherwise, we pay the difference.
That might sound scary at first...but when you do the math, it's actually not scary at all. For one, we're not just counting the night of the wedding - this includes any nights that are booked by our guests for nights surrounding our wedding. If Mr. L and I stay there a week...that's 7 nights right there. Since we have ~120 guests...well, as you can see, 25 hotel nights is virtually nothing
We actually had to set up our hotel blocks BEFORE we signed our contract. Disney recommends you offer guests 3 different hotels to choose from - one 'value' resort, one 'moderate,' and one 'deluxe.'
While we've never stayed at the Yacht Club, its proximity to our ceremony and New England, nautical feel (notice the striped theming!) goes perfectly with our wedding.
The deluxe rates that Disney gave us were 30% of the 'rack rate' - aka, if you were to just log onto the Disney website and book a hotel room - 30% off THAT price. (Sometimes Disney does package deals - not 30% off those prices).
For our 'Moderate' pick, we went with Port Orleans, French Quarter:
The "Value" resort we then chose was Pop Century:
Mr. Llama and I will actually be hotel-hopping across a number of different resorts while we are there, 'renting' Disney Vacation Club points. So technically speaking, we're not even using our own hotel block! That requires a bit of an explanation that I may or may not delve into in a future post. But basically, we're saving a ton of money by booking our hotels through a third party.
Is creating hotel blocks at more than one hotel a destination-specific thing? Or even Disney specific? How did you decide on your hotel?