Guest in room for a couple of days

[Melanie415]

Hi! I am brainstorming some ideas for our trip. Predicting dates for the Last week of September/first week of October of 2016, and can't find anything with the search function to help me. My family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) will (probably) stay at the Polynesian for 12 nights, hoping to get either a free dining or room only discount for some of our stay. I know the occupancy is 5 guests. Could a 3rd adult "visitor" be allowed to stay in our room for 4-5 nights (with the additional $25 a night fee) without being included in our package, if that's what we end up with? Could I just inform the front desk after we arrive we will have a guest for a few nights and pay the extra fee?
The reason being, my mom can't afford to stay at the Poly but I would like to spend some of our trip together at the same resort (especially for MNSSHP and MK days). I'm thinking maybe she could stay somewhere within her budget 3 days or so, purchase her tickets for longer and stay with us in our room for a few days. Is that possible?

 

[PinnySmart]

I don't think so. I think everyone in the room has to be on the same package.

 

[BJones82]

I think the occupancy is a fire code thing, so at the hotels I have worked at in the Wisconsin Dells, we had to be extremely strict with how many guests were in the room :/ I don't know for sure though so maybe just asking Disney if you don't get a good answer from a forum user in the next day or two?

 

[Master Yoda]

The short answer is no. Everyone in the room must be on the same package.

What I have heard you can do is add the extra person onto the room reservation only at the desk and just pay the extra fee. I have not personally done this and with all of the recent changes I would not count on that unless someone else can confirm it.

Now I have option 2 for you....You can add that person onto the reservation right from the start and then step down your tickets to only what the guest will need. You can the upgrade the other tickets to whatever they need to be. Since you only pay the difference, it will not cost you any more to do this.

This will most likely only work out cost wise if you book under free dining, as you will be able to use the extra dining credits you will have by adding on the 5th person and them not being there for a few days. You will have to do some math to see how that will work out as you will pay the $25/day for the entire reservation, but the extra dining credits could make it a wash and a much simpler reservation that you know will work.

I would highly recommend that you contact @Kingdom Konsultant. They are the travel sponsor of this forum and they specialize in Disney. Their agents will know every in and out and will be able to make this trip happen for you at the lowest cost and with the least amount of hassle.

The great thing is they do not charge you for their services (they are paid a commission by Disney) so letting them sweat the details will not cost you a dime.

 

[dreamfinder]

You can add people as "day guests" at the desk once you check in. They do need to still be under the legal occupancy limits for the room. Once they have been added as a "day guest" you can sign them up for DME (which means they should be arriving at least 24 hours after being added) They would be limited to the 30 FP+ booking window, and may get just key instead of a MB (at least this is what happened to me early last year). You can do as Yoda suggested, stepping down the tickets up front and then upgrading once you arrive. I think the downside to this is you would be limited to booking FP+ for only the new smaller number of days instead of your full trip.

But as Yoda said, if you are going to get some free dining, then it may make sense to just book her on your reservation (assuming you are still under occupancy) and then have her get a room only booking elsewhere for her portion of the trip. And in this case, I would do the full length of tickets. The $25 per day should be more than offset by her free dining, and she can use the longer ticket from the Poly booking when she stays elsewhere. If her overall trip is still shorter you may still need to upgrade the tickets for you direct family, but then you are only missing out on a few FP+ days instead of many.

 

[RiceCrispyMickey]

We did this last year at SSR. Our trip was 10 nights a friend joined us for 3 of those nights half way through the trip. We just let the check in desk know when we arrived and that we were happy to pay any extra fee (we didn't have to though as it was a DVC villa so wasn't at capacity anyway). We had a UK package with tickets dining plan but were able to just add my friend for a few nights at check in and she did not have dining plan or park tickets - it was all fine. They did however mention that she couldn't use the magical express from the airport... but we went and picked her up anyway so in a hire car so it didn't matter.

I rang the disney parks line and spoke to someone to confirm this would all be okay before our trip as we were having the same doubts you are, the lady I spoke to said it would be ok and it was