Hi Ilana,
Thank you for visiting us at the
Disney Parks Moms Panel. I hope your vacation is coming up soon. Mine is not until next year and I'm already counting down every minute.
The best way to enjoy a vacation at Walt Disney World Resort is with a
vacation package. It includes a stay at a
Disney Resort Hotel and
Theme Park Tickets. It also comes with all the amazing
benefits for Disney Resort Hotel Guests, and it's the only way to add a
Dining Plan, which helps you prepay for all your meals.
Many Guests want to enjoy more than one Resort hotel during their vacation, and therefore book a "split stay", another way of saying two back-to-back reservations. It is a great way to experience more than one Resort hotel in the same vacation. Here is my suggestion to make this work best for you.
Let's start with your first reservation. In general, a vacation package will add Theme Park Tickets for the duration of your stay, but you can add additional days past your Check-Out. Note that a Dining Plan would still expire at Check-Out. But you can still take advantage of a
Special Offer like Free Dining Plan. But for your second stay, you would want to book either a room-only reservation, or a Ticketless vacation package with dining. This will allow you to use the additional days from the Tickets part of your first reservation. Note that in this case, you would not be able to take advantage of Free Dining since this offer requires Theme Park Tickets. Finally, you can
upgrade your Theme Park Tickets as soon as you Check-In to an
Annual Pass. But, you can only upgrade one Theme Park Ticket, that is, you cannot combine two tickets into one Annual Pass. That's why my suggestion for the second stay is for a room-only or Ticketless package.
One last tip: if your first part of your stay is a short one, you may want to make this one a room-only or Ticketless reservation, while making your second one a full package. You can request Theme Park Tickets part of a vacation package, a couple of days in advance of Check-In, by visiting
Guest Relations at the entrance of any of the Theme Parks or Disney Springs. Happy planning!
Ricardo.