85: My Honest Review of Disney's Grand Floridian Villas by Renting DVC Points

The Laid-Back Magic® Way: A Disney World Planning Podcast

Host Dana Stanley provides a detailed review of her family's stay at the Disney Grand Floridian Villas. She explains how renting DVC points

Key takeaways

Renting DVC points via DVC Rental Store reduced the nightly rate from $844 to $378, a 55% savings.
The deluxe studio's split bathroom layout was highly effective for managing a toddler's sleep schedule without disturbing the rest of the family.
Proximity to Magic Kingdom via monorail, boat, or walking path offers great flexibility and easy fireworks viewing.
The 'Make Your Own Acai Bar' at Gasparilla Island Grill was a standout dining highlight for the children.
Navigating to Epcot via monorail can be cumbersome due to the required transfer at the Transportation and Ticket Center.

Main topics

DVC Point Rental
Grand Floridian Villas Review
Disney World Budgeting

Notable quotes

The resort that you pick might have more of an impact than you think.

Conclusion

While there are logistical trade-offs regarding coffee access and Epco

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) When you're planning a Disney World trip, sometimes you may jump ahead. You start reading about lightning lanes and dining reservations, which day to do which park, but really the resort that you pick might have more of an impact than you think. Now, I definitely appreciate the look and feel, the style of how a resort is, but really I'm thinking about... how our mornings in Disney are going to go, if it's easy to take a break when we need one, and how our nights feel when we're getting all three kids ready for bed. And the part that made our particular resort stay this past summer a little different for me when it comes to giving a review is I've stayed at a decent amount of the deluxe resorts in Disney World at this point, but I had never stayed once at the Grand Floridian myself up until this trip. So today I'm giving you my freshly new, full, honest review of our stay at the Grand Floridian Villas. Coming from, yes, a mom of three, but someone who is pretty particular, I think, and looking for certain things to hopefully help you decide if this sounds like it's a resort that's a good fit for you and your family. Speaker 2 (1:22) Hello, and welcome to the Laidback Magic Way podcast. I'm your host, Dana Stanley, creator of Laidback Magic. As a mom of three, I know how tough it can be to find time to plan a Disney World trip that doesn't leave you feeling stressed or overwhelmed. That's why I'm here, to help moms like you create Disney vacations that feel even better than they look on paper. Here, we're not chasing perfection, but creating our next favorite memories. So whether you're brand new to Disney or looking to go deeper into the details, This podcast is your go-to for simple tips, mindset shifts, real-life trip recaps, and expert insights to make your trip magical and manageable. New episodes drop every Monday, so be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment. Okay, let's dive in. Speaker 2 (2:12) Okay, so let me go back and explain a little bit of the context being that I've quote never stayed there, but it's a little bit funny because I feel like I have a little bit of a history with this resort in particular, close to maybe eight. Are we going on nine years ago? This November, I think will be nine years, which is crazy. This was back when I was still doing wedding videography and I filmed a wedding at the Grand Floridian. If you didn't know, you can get married there and lots of lots of people do. And if you're in the wedding industry, I feel like you're going to know what I'm talking about. But when you are covering an entire wedding from start to finish, you are all over that venue between the bride prep, the groom prep, the first look, the portraits. Obviously the ceremony and all of those things themselves, but more of just finding good photo and video spots. So while I have, you know, walked the lobby and the beach and in some of the rooms, I had never actually stayed there myself as a guest and slept there. So this was a genuine first for me on this trip, even though I felt more familiar with the resort itself. It was not as a... family with three kids. And I think that is the right lens to review the hotel through because I'm pretty particular when it comes to logistics specifically when I'm with the kids. I care about the layout of the room a lot more than maybe I would have cared about back when I filmed the wedding, maybe more even about how it looked on Instagram and the aesthetics. Now I care about things that are different. Like if my two-year-old is going to have a spot for his crib and things like that. A quick note too, because I always want to be upfront with everyone, is that this day in particular was in partnership with DVC Rental Store, but hosted or not, everything I'm about to tell you from what I loved and what I didn't is exactly what I'd tell you if we had booked and paid for it ourselves. That's always the deal I have in the back of my mind when it comes to partnerships and sponsors of the podcast. If it's not 100 % honest, I don't say it. And if something doesn't work for us, you are going to hear about that too. So let's get into it, starting with what the Grand Floridian Villas are and how we kind of landed at this resort and in this room in particular. Before I get into the room itself, I want to say that Even though this was a partnership stay, I was very specific on what room I wanted to stay in under a confirmed reservation. So if you've been listening for a while, you already know renting DVC points through DVC Rental Store is one of the main ways we stay at deluxe resorts without paying the very high premium prices. So quick refresher if you're new here, because I think it sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. is is DVC stands for Disney Vacation Club and it's basically Disney World's timeshare program. So members of DVC get an allotment of points every single year whether they use them or not. And as we all know, life happens. You know, work schedules get busy, maybe someone gets sick, and just vacations and plans change. So sometimes these points can just sit there unused for members. What they can do is get in touch with a broker or marketplace like DVC Rental Store that acts basically as a matchmaker for those leftover points that they're not using. They connect people like me and you with members who have those points going to waste. So you can stay in the same rooms at the same deluxe resorts for a fraction of the price that you would book just cash going through Disney World's website. And I want to say this clearly. Because it's like the number one thing that people ask me about and I get questions in my DMs is no, you do not have to be a Speaker 1 (6:22) DVC member to do this. I Speaker 2 (6:24) think this gets confusing because we actually are members ourselves, but we just don't have nearly enough points to cover every single trip that we want to take. So renting through DVC rental store is how we fill in those gaps when we don't have enough points. I'm going to leave a link in the show notes for a previous episode where I really went into the nitty gritty of why I chose the room that I chose. And the room we stayed in actually ended up being $378 a night instead of Disney's going rate of $844 for a Speaker 1 (7:04) studio there. Speaker 2 (7:06) So same room, same view, same everything, still get early entry and the perks. cost 55 % less by renting DVC points. And I wanted to really mention the price difference here because when you're staying there at the resort and knowing how much money you would have saved or saved, it's a lot easier for me to maybe like shrug off a couple things that didn't totally work for us. And I'm going to get into exactly what those were. But I want you to know going into this that This isn't like a completely, you know, everything was perfect type of review. There were definite trade-offs of the trip, particularly like the mom of three standard and all of that. But I just really think that the savings changed how Speaker 1 (7:55) much those trade-offs bothered me in the moment. Speaker 2 (7:57) One of the more difficult things about renting DVC points is putting in a request for points that you want to rent doesn't necessarily guarantee you. the exact room at this exact resort that you're