What is the experience like having multiple rooms?

[Cosmic Commando]

We're looking at a trip coming up with four adults and seven kids. Our preferred option is to have three rooms at Pop. I know you need a separate reservation for each room. I know connecting and adjacent rooms can't be guaranteed. But I don't really know how the nitty gritty of the whole thing will work out. Is there a benefit to booking everything under one MDE account versus two or even three? If I make my wife the primary guest in a second room, will I not be able to enter that room with my magicband? Are there any other quirks that I should know about?

Edit: Really, the ideal thing would be to have all 11 people be able to access all three rooms... is that possible?

 

[carriebeth]

A persons magic band will only work for the room they are assigned to be in no matter how many reserved rooms you have on an account. Each magic band can only access one room. We have often have 2 or 3 rooms and have never had an issue with them not being together. Two have always had the connecting door also.

 

[drizgirl]

OP if your wife has a magic band left over from a prior trip she could let you have that to open her room. And vice versa. Multiple magic bands will work for one person on the same trip.

 

[John park hopper]

We have traveled with my son granddaughters and daughter in law and never had a problem getting adjoining rooms. We booked well in advance and made our request

 

[Master Yoda]

We have done the large party, multiple room thing many times.

1. I don't think it really matters all that much to have all of the rooms booked under a single account. We would typically book our kid's room under our account, but everyone else would book under their own and we never had an issue. I think the biggest thing is to make sure the reservations are linked and make your only requests to be connecting rooms or adjoining rooms if connecting is not possible. If you start throwing in top floor, near the elevator, away from pool, the door on the right side of the room (a request I actually had to make for a client) then the chances of you having connecting or adjoining rooms goes down quickly.

2. There are a couple of solutions to the lock thing. The easiest one is to get an additional room key. We did this with our kids rooms all the time. The other solution might be the door unlock feature in the app. I have not tried this one before, but you should be able to set your Magic Band to one room and the app to another. (if the room is under a different account you will need to log in under that account) In the grand scheme of things, we found the room access to be a non-issue. In most cases, I knocked on my kid's door and they opened it.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

Its possible if you all have previous magic bands and share each others bands in order to access the rooms but you'd have to keep them straight.
They MAY be able to give you each key cards for each room but not totally sure if they will.
Someone from each room would need to go ask just so they know everyone is ok with having access to each room.

Honestly though you are completely overthinking things.

Disney tries their hardest to accommodate large groups with rooms next to each other.

I've had as many as 5 rooms lined up next to each other at POP.
There was a connecting door between 2 of those rooms which was nice but considering the other 3 were not connected but we easily accessed each other it was not needed.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Is there a benefit to booking everything under one MDE account versus two or even three?

That's not a thing. Each room needs a unique primary guest.

 

[Weather_Lady]

If you're able to get connecting rooms, you don't necessarily even need to have access to the other rooms via door key. We had connecting rooms (with a door in between) in a previous family trip. We simply unlocked the connecting doors, and left them unlocked and open for the duration of our stay, so everyone could access the whole space the entire time.

 

[nickys]

That's not a thing. Each room needs a unique primary guest.

I don’t think each primary guest needs to have their own MDE account though.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I don’t think each primary guest needs to have their own MDE account though.

In my experience, planning and linking goes much smoother if every eligible adult has their own account, regardless of the number of rooms.

 

[Tinker218]

I have booked trips with my husband and me, my son and his family and my daughter and her family and my single daughter. We had 4 rooms at the Boardwalk Inn. My grandchildren slept in different rooms all the time during our 7 night stay, wanting to stay with cousins they don’t see often! Of the 4 rooms, 2 were connecting, my daughter’s and my son’s. My other daughter and my room were on the other sides of them. When I booked the reservations the CM linked our reservation and this is how it ended up. Now, once we checked in my 2 middle grandchildren wanted to be able to get into my room, so they were given key cards to access my room and wore them on a lanyard. It worked out perfectly! This was done at the concierge desk on the club level floor.

 

[Rob562]

Its possible if you all have previous magic bands and share each others bands in order to access the rooms but you'd have to keep them straight.
They MAY be able to give you each key cards for each room but not totally sure if they will.
Someone from each room would need to go ask just so they know everyone is ok with having access to each room.

FYI, physical tickets/cards that are linked to a person's profile also work as room keys. So all you need is to have a card that's linked to someone in the other room and use that only for room access while they use their MagicBand.

-Rob