Walt Disney World has released new resort discounts saving up to 35% off hotel room rates from March through October 2024 for the general public. This shares booking & travel dates for these special offers, which are both aggressive and early. Plus, commentary about the savings, sample pricing, analysis.
This is one of a growing number of special offers that has been released thus far for 2024 Walt Disney World vacations, with offers for Annual Passholders, Floridians, and Disney Visa cardholders. Then of course there’s the other big discount dropping today: 2024 Free Dining at Walt Disney World.
For every other special offer that’s currently available, see All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for 2024. There are promos available for pretty much all dates between now and late Summer or early Fall 2024, with even more targeted special offers available for select guests. So that list is worth checking out if you’re debating a trip sometime in 2024. It should probably go without saying, but more discounts for travel dates beyond October 2024 will be released down the road, too…
Per Walt Disney World, here are the deal details: Save up to 35% on rooms at select Disney Resort hotels when you stay 5 consecutive nights or longer—or save up to 30% on shorter stays. This offer is valid for stays most nights from July 8 to October 3, 2024.
Savings are also available for stays from March 25 to July 7, 2024. Same goes for stays of fewer than 5 nights, as shown in the discount breakdown chart below.
When you stay in the magic at a Disney Resort hotel, you can enjoy the same legendary detail, storytelling and service found in the theme parks—along with an array of benefits.
Here’s the resort by resort general public discount chart provided by Walt Disney World for March through October 2024:
Offer excludes the following room types: 3-Bedroom Grand Villas, Tower Studios at Disney’s Riviera Resort, Cabins at Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, Bungalows at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, Pool View at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter, Treehouse Villas at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and The Campsites at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort.
Valid admission is required to enjoy theme parks and is not included in this offer. Starting with visits on January 9, 2024, theme park reservations will no longer be required for date-based tickets.
Additional per-adult charges may apply if more than 2 adults per room at Value, Moderate and Deluxe Resorts and Studios at Deluxe Villa Resorts. Maximum length of stay under this deal is 14 nights. Cannot be combined with any other discount or promotion.
Reservations may be made online, by phone, or via your Authorized Disney Vacation Planner. If you’re reading this on the day the discount goes live, don’t be surprised if there’s a virtual queue for online bookings or a wait on the phones. In fact, that’s a near-certainty given the release of Free Dining.
If you want to help determining which discounts are available for your travel dates and which resort will work best for your family, we highly recommend requesting a quote from Be Our Guest Vacations, a no-fee Authorized Disney Vacation Planner. The agents there will do the math for you, booking your vacation with the best-available special offer, and monitoring your package for future discounts that can be applied retroactively.
In particular, they can help you determine whether this room-only discount or the Free Dining is the better deal for you, given your party size, resort preference, and eating preferences. Beyond that, Authorized Disney Vacation Planners help take the stress out of planning and will assist with itineraries, ADRs, and much more.
If you want to ‘do it yourself’ but aren’t sure which resort to book, check out our new Rankings of ALL Resort Hotels at Walt Disney World from Worst to Best. Several of the resorts with the biggest savings are in the top 10!
Here’s what we found for best available rates for this 2024 discount:
This search is for the first week of September 2024, which is part of the Value rate season at Walt Disney World. On the rack rate chart spectrum, this is one of the least expensive times to visit Walt Disney World in 2024. Less expensive dates can be found throughout January and February 2024, and slightly higher (but still relatively reasonable) rates are available in early March, May, and August 2024.
Friday through Sunday nights are all going to be more expensive, and less consistent. In general, Friday and Saturday will be the most expensive days of the week, with Sunday through Thursday costing less–but still more than Monday through Wednesday nights. Holiday weeks are also more expensive. Basically, room rates are higher any time when kids are out of school.
To maximize savings, you’ll need to book 5-nights, meaning that it’ll necessarily include at least a couple nights that aren’t the absolute cheapest. However, as noted above, you aren’t required to stay 5 nights. If you book 1-4 nights, you’ll simply save 5% less at most resorts and for most dates. It’s 5 nights or longer that “unlocks” the extra 5% off, so to speak.
For more on timing your trip to coincide with the lowest prices, see When’s Cheapest to Visit Walt Disney World in 2024? That covers price increases and other variables that impact the cost of a vacation beyond just room rates.
We already stressed this in the Free Dining Discount for Summer & Fall 2024 analysis, but we want to reiterate that a room-only discount is going to offer superior savings for a lot of parties. That’s especially the case with this one for parties staying 5 nights or longer.
All we can offer is sweeping generalizations–you’ll absolutely want to do the math for your own unique circumstances–but as a general matter, room-only discounts are better for smaller parties staying at higher-tier resorts. When comparing these two discounts, you want to look at party size, guest ages, and room cost.
Free Dining is best for those who can maximize the number of guests staying in one room and minimize their rack rate resort cost. Conversely, a room-only discount tends to be better for solo travelers and couples at higher priced hotels–as well as parties with lighter eaters (remember, the Disney Dining Plan is only worth as much as you’ll use it, which is not necessarily its full face value).
Again, these are generalizations and not hard and fast rules. We just want to reiterate this because there’s a lot of allure in Free Dining. After all, who doesn’t love something that’s FREE?! But in reality, there’s no such thing as a free lunch–you’re giving up a room-only discount to get that ‘free’ Disney Dining Plan. Even though it’s the more boring discount, a lot of times, the room-only deal is the better special offer.
My assessment of this discount is positive, but not emphatically so like the previous two general public promos. The key difference is one of expectations and precedent; the discounts for last year’s holiday seasons (October to December) were the first since 2019 and the best room-only discount for that timeframe since 2018.
What we’ve seen since for 2024 has been really good, earlier than normal, and more aggressive. This continues that trend, with better savings for the general public than the same promotion last year and a wider range of dates. For reference, last year’s room only discount released in early January offered 10-25% off, with travel dates from March through mid-July. Late July through September discounts weren’t released until March (10-30% off), and October wasn’t released until June (15-30% off). Granted, that June release covered dates through December, but still.
This is way ahead of normal and better than last year. We’ve been discussing how Walt Disney World has been pulling from the 2019 playbook for discounts, but this is superior to even that year. The only downside (debatable) of this deal is that you need to stay 5 nights or longer to “unlock” the extra 5% of savings. But even with a shorter stay, this discount still outperforms what was available for most of the same dates last year.
It’s also still possible that better deals are released down the road for (at least) August and September. In fact, I’d bank on that. I’d be very surprised if the last discounts for the two slowest months of the year are released at the beginning of January. That would be both unprecedented and illogical, especially in this post-pent-up demand era.
What we believe is happening here is that Walt Disney World is falling short of preliminary occupancy targets and wants to juice revenue for future quarters as early as possible. We saw that with discounts released last September (before the end of the last fiscal year) and again more recently. In some cases, they got surprisingly aggressive with dates that should book well even in the advance of great special offers (e.g. Easter and Spring Break).
It’s interesting to see this trend continue, and it could be an overcorrection to last year’s lower-than-expected numbers as Walt Disney World got caught flatfooted in some regards by the exhaustion of pent-up demand. (As mentioned elsewhere, we think Disney released the full 2024 calendar for Disneyland to get ahead of that same dynamic in the California parks.) We’re also curious as to whether this mentality will extend elsewhere–for example, will Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party tickets be released earlier in 2024?
Back to this specific stay longer & save discount, there are some very good deals to be had. All Stars for $109, Pop Century for $150, Coronado Springs for $201, Caribbean Beach for $212, and several Deluxe Resorts for under $400 per night, which are relatively reasonable rates. All of those rates are significantly better than the lowest prices for the October to December deals–but the difference is that the starting point is lower for the January and February off-season. (Spring break is a totally different story!)
In particular, both Wilderness Lodge and Animal Kingdom Lodge for around $350 per night; Contemporary for $385 per night; and the Crescent Lake Resorts for around $400 per night. The lodges are always personal favorites, and the recently redone rooms there are tough to beat. Same with BoardWalk Inn…whereas the Contemporary’s new rooms are pretty far from my favorite, but it’s tough to beat the location within walking distance to Magic Kingdom!
At the lower end of the spectrum, these savings make the Value and Moderate Resorts tough to beat. You’re going to be hard-pressed to find anything off-site that can beat the rates Walt Disney World is offering. Under $100 per night for the All Stars–with the new rooms, Early Entry, transportation, and free parking–is a very fair price, in our view. (If you can find it, Pop Century is a great pick, even at ~$150 per night.)
Ultimately, this is another discount that’s earlier and better than what we were seeing in 2021-2022, which continues a trend that began at the start of last year and really accelerated with the last round of discounts for the start of 2024. As always, plan on being flexible with your hotel choice, room category, and even travel dates for the biggest savings. That’s doubly true here, as there have already been several discounts that have dropped for this date range.
Walt Disney World offering more special offers to the general public is great news, and definitively demonstrates that travel trends are normalizing now after running hot for way too long. During that period of pent-up demand, Walt Disney World was able to ‘get away’ with pretty much anything and still see record guest spending and insatiable demand. Consumers now appear to once again have more leverage, and companies need to entice them to visit.
This should be an interesting saga to follow, and it’s almost certain that we haven’t seen the end of Walt Disney World’s efforts to woo back former fans and pull “levers” to incentivize more demand and guest spending. If bookings remain soft for 2024, it’ll be interesting to see what type of more unique promotions (beyond room discounts) are released for the second half of 2024…it sure feels like things are trending in the right direction for even more aggressive offers! We will be closely monitoring what’s released and will notify subscribers of our free email newsletter when any Walt Disney World discounts are released or rumored!
More broadly speaking, this normalization is obviously good thing for fans and Walt Disney World. Revenge travel was a distortion that had unhealthy consequences at Walt Disney World and beyond. Putting that in the rearview mirror is good for consumers and the long-term health of the company–especially its reputation and guest goodwill. Walt Disney World not doing record-breaking numbers regardless of the guest-unfriendly decisions and changes they make–and instead having to actually compete for customers–is a good thing.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of these Walt Disney World room-only discounts in March through October 2024? If you booked this, do you think you ended up with a good price or do you feel like you’re overpaying? What was available or unavailable for your dates? Is this deal enough to convince you to book a trip, or can you not justify these prices? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
