Help deciding between Riviera, Polynesian, and Animal Kingdom Lodge including possible split stay

[kmsprincess]

In September I will be doing an 8 day trip with my DH and our 3 (almost 4 at that time) year old son. We are staying the first two nights (Sat and Sun) at the Swan Reserve in the Crescent Lake area. I'm Titanium with Marriott and will very likely get upgraded to an Epcot view suite. We are checking out because, reasons (happy to share, just trying to cut down on the wordiness of my post...). I am trying to decide where to go next.

Itinerary starting post-Swan tentatively looks something like this:

Monday: HS/Epcot park hop for Ext. Evening Hours
Tuesday: MK (closes at 6)/Epcot park hop
Wed: HS (maybe park hopping with Epcot, not sure)
Thursday: AK / low key evening - i.e., dinner at resort, pool time
Friday: AK / low key evening - i.e., dinner at resort, pool time
Saturday: Waterpark day, likely leaving by 4 pm due to LO being tuckered out - maybe catch some fireworks or go to a park for a few hours in the evening. Or just dinner and resort evening
Sunday: maybe MK (closes at 6), WDW trip concluding by 5pm

Some additional info: We've never stayed at Poly, Riviera (have stayed at Caribbean Beach), or AKL but we are staying at Jambo house for 3 nights in May and at Kidani for 3 nights in July.

What I am struggling with is the Thurs-Sunday part of my itinerary seems to lend itself towards AKL, the Mon-Wed part towards Riv or Poly. But M-W our days will be pretty packed with park time so we won't necessarily enjoy the resort. I have no problems doing multiple splits due to Disney luggage transfer. But most of our down time is towards the end since I'm not planning on park hopping on our AK days. I don't think I want to stay at AKL the entire time due to transportation options with the 3YO. So here's what I am trying to decide between:

Option 1: Mon-Thurs Poly; Thurs-Sun AKL
Option 2: Mon-Thurs Riviera; Thurs-Sun AKL
Option 3: Mon-Sun Poly or Riviera

Thoughts?

 

[WDWEPCOT]

Lots of hotel hopping - if your heavy on Epcot & Magic Kingdom go for Poly
I myself love AKL but the bus can be a pain at times and if I heavy into EPCOT I do an EPCOT resort or a monorail resort to make things easy I do enjoy exiting out the back and walking right to my hotel or leaving MK getting on monorail and getting to my resort and not waiting for a bus and having to stand on the bus back to the resort
Have a wonderful time they are all great resorts !!!

 

[Sprinkles&Sprints]

I just finished a split stay with my young DD - we started at the Swan and ended at AKL. I envisioned chilling by the time we got to Jambo House with minimal park visits…but that’s not how it went down. My DD wanted to go back to EPCOT and HS…every day…so inevitably we had to deal with the bus and all the fun that comes with that

Because of this, I would never rec anyone with young kiddos end at AKL (and tbh, it is highly unlikely we’ll stay there again bc of transportation). If you skip staying, I recommend making the trip to Sanaa for breakfast one morning - giraffes galore!

I’d go with Option 3 - and probably lean towards Poly just to mix it up.

I’d also start lobbying hard now for 4PM checkout at SR - even with my status they haven’t been offering it as of late - and it makes all the difference for split stays.

Enjoy!

 

[Marthasor]

I wouldn't make it a three-way split, so I would choose one other resort after Swan Reserve. Your itinerary suggests RIV, but it's not a very excited resort, IMHO. You are staying at AKL on another trip, so I would save that resort for your future trip. I think I would pick Poly in this case. No matter how you slice it, there will be travel involved with your parks and water park. Poly just offers more than RIV, IMHO.