Walt Disney World SWAN, DOLPHIN & SWAN RESERVE RESORTS Information & Questions

[mickey916]

Mystery for the experts: I'm looking at booking 8 nights next April at the Swan. When I go to the Bonvoy website and use the "flexible dates" calendar along with my annual passholder discount, it shows if I check in starting on 4/25 that it's an average cost of $295 per night. However once I select that date, the lowest cost is $381 and that's without selecting "taxes and fees", but it says it includes the $45 resort fee. With taxes and fees in addition to the resort fee it is $428/night....what happened to the $295 price? I could see if the $45 wasn't included in that price but that would only bring it up to $340 not $381 before tax. Am I missing something?

 

[EPCOT Terran]

Mystery for the experts: I'm looking at booking 8 nights next April at the Swan. When I go to the Bonvoy website and use the "flexible dates" calendar along with my annual passholder discount, it shows if I check in starting on 4/25 that it's an average cost of $295 per night. However once I select that date, the lowest cost is $381 and that's without selecting "taxes and fees", but it says it includes the $45 resort fee. With taxes and fees in addition to the resort fee it is $428/night....what happened to the $295 price? I could see if the $45 wasn't included in that price but that would only bring it up to $340 not $381 before tax. Am I missing something?

I think you're seeing that they'll offer a rate of $295 during the week but the price goes up to $460 on the weekends. So, your final price depends on your starting date and how many weekends are included. You can click down on the summary of charges after selecting the room to see the per-night charges, taxes, and resort fees breakdowns. The $295 per night shown on the calendar is a little misleading because it doesn't include the resort fee. If you add the resort fee to $295 for the weekdays (so, $340) and to the $460 for the weekends (so, $505), you end up with 6 nights @$340 and 2 nights @$505 (assuming a weekday start here), for $3,050 total before taxes, or $381.25 on average. Oddly, the match works out just right so that the room taxes are also $381.25.

Interestingly, if you use the AP discount and look at fixed dates from 4/11 to 4/19 next year, the Swan Reserve is slightly cheaper and the Dolphin is a good bit cheaper. Boardwalk Inn is more expensive (almost $100/night) and Caribbean Beach is a good bit cheaper (around $60/night).