News Walt Disney World Adds Water Park Perk for 2025 Resort Guests

The Colonel

Well-Known Member
There’s this thing called a planning ahead. Put the swim stuff somewhere easily accessible.

And Disney provide this new fangled concept of a building with little cubicles at the water parks. They call them changing rooms. They even have showers and lockers and provide towels to onsite guests.
I believe (I may be wrong) that you pay for towels at the waterparks. It used to be you left a deposit and then they changed to charging for them. Of course if you grab a couple of towels at the resort....
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
So you arrive before your room is ready but you get a free water park day--now you have to dig through your luggage for a bathing suit in the lobby--where do you change. Wear your bathing suite on the plane
No different from what every advice tells you to do for cruises... pack a day bag to have your pool gear for the arrival day before your luggage is returned to you.
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
Logistical hurdles await. First off the flight needs to land early enough. Then you need to drop luggage off at bell services, change into swim gear, sunblock up, then generally hit two buses to get to a water park.

Oh the water park closes at 5 pm. Oh and it's cold today.

In the end, it's MOSTLY no bueno.

Could be a good reason for people to adjust their travel schedule. Arrive night before... stay somewhere cheap... then take advantage of pool day, then check-in, then do something like DS at night.

This would have been a tougher pill to swallow with magical express loss... but since that's already gone, why not?

We use the same method when visiting UNI to maximize our Express Pass perk.

I didn't get through all the pages yet, any details yet if you need to hit the hotel first? I assume online check-in, etc covers all that.
 

doctornick

Well-Known Member
No different from what every advice tells you to do for cruises... pack a day bag to have your pool gear for the arrival day before your luggage is returned to you.

And, in terms of planning ahead, this doesn't come into effect until next year. If it is something that people are interested in using then they can plan their flights and pack their bags accordingly.

Again, it won't be used by a lot of people who are eligible for it. It might change some plans as other have stated, perhaps encouraging some split stays with Universal or part off/on property stays (instead of all off property) which Disney would b happy about.

Personally, we aren't likely to go in 2025, so it doesn't matter, but if this perk were in effect, I'd almost certainly try to book an earlier flight on our arrival day and use it even if it is only for a few hours. We often don't bother doing much our arrival day (pool, Disney Springs) because the cost isn't worth another park day - but if you give us an entry for free, that changes the plans.
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
I think it's a simple perk Disney could add into their hotel offers without a huge penalty. It's a way of fluffing the register a bit. Compared to the UNI hotels.. they need to start adding some perks back.

Everyone talks about all the people that will miss out... yet there are still lots of people that wouldn't. Remember that huge 'locals' passholder population?? What's not included in their AP anymore? waterparks without add-ons.. That's a huge population of short visits to Disney hotels that may now consider a water-park visit they wouldn't have otherwise.

Plus, it's the kind of change people may alter their previous trip patterns for. Seasonal impact of course... but I think this is a simple 'paper' win for Disney that people can decide if it's meaningful to them or not.
 

Disstevefan1

Well-Known Member
I think I figured this out.
The family from Denver arrives to WDW and the the family manages to get to the water park albeit late. The kids spend only as couple of fun hours at the park and on the way out the kids are saying to their parents, "Can we come back here for a full day, Pleeeeeeeeeeeze"

The parents from Denver purchase full day passes for the family.

Disney wins again.
 

John park hopper

Well-Known Member
There’s this thing called a planning ahead. Put the swim stuff somewhere easily accessible.

And Disney provide this new fangled concept of a building with little cubicles at the water parks. They call them changing rooms. They even have showers and lockers and provide towels to onsite guests.
Great idea just another level of planning
 

larryz

I'm Just A Tourist!
Premium Member
Two things:

(1) Disney say that rooms undergoing maintenance are still counted as part of inventory. From the 2022 Annual Report, page 45, footnote 5:

Available hotel room nights are defined as the total number of room nights that are available at our hotels and at DVCproperties located at our theme parks and resorts that are not utilized by DVC members. Available hotel room nights include rooms temporarily taken out of service.

Is that still true?

(2) I ask because I was corresponding with someone last week who was trying to reverse-engineer the number of WDW hotel rooms by looking at "occupancy percentage" and "occupied room nights" from a recent 10-K filing.

The issue was that using those 10-K numbers indicated 1,200 more hotel rooms than any other source we could find. A hundred rooms I could understand. But we're talking about two decent-size deluxe resorts' worth of rooms.

My comment was that if the math isn't mathing, it's time to verify the definitions.
Investor Relations: "Oh, CRAP! Someone's actually READING this stuff!"
 

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