Pool hopping at dlr? Luggage transfers?

[d-r]

We are dvc members and are thinking right now about going to disneyland instead of beach club next year. We would want to stay at grand californian, but we think our child, who will be 3 then, would really like the pool at the disneyland hotel. He is a big peter pan and captian hook fan. If DVC members are staying on points at the dlr can they pool hop? I mean, if we are staying at grand californian can we use the pool at disneyland hotel? If not, we'd probably split the stay 3/nights at each. I did a search on here for pool hopping but couldn't find anything, but I did find two posts where someone mentioned luggage transfers. I got the drift that this might be less common at disneyland than at wdw (because the hotels are so close together) - I wonder if anyone would post experiences they have had with splitting a stay between the disneyland hotel and grand cal.?

My wife and I stayed at paradise peir probably 5 years ago, but this would be the first trip with a child to disneyland. He's a wdw veteran, though.

Thanks so much.

 

[got2travel]

I don't know if the rules would be different for DVC members, but I doubt it. For regular resort guests, there is no pool hopping.

As for luggage transfers, not really sure. I know of instances where the resort upgrades someone to another hotel and in that case they will transfer the luggage. But for people who split their stays on their own, I really don't know. It's just not that common as it is as WDW.

 

[Amy&Dan]

Pool hopping at Disneyland, for DVC members is not the norm because you are staying at a Disney Collection vs. a DVC resort where they have the whole DVC thing down to a science. For that matter, if you stay on points at the Grand Floridian as opposed to a DVC WDW resort, I am not sure you can pool hop then either because its a whole different system . Because DVC is a realtively new concept at Disneyland they don't seem to have a pool hopping strategy in place (as of my last visit in June when I stayed on points at the GCH). Your best bet is to call directly but be aware that you can sometimes get conflicting answers from cm's (but thats true for WDW too) especially regading DVC. I can tell you that at both the GCH and DLH pools, there is a locked gate that can only be accessed with a valid room key. Whether or not they can make your room key work at either resort pool is the big question. At one time, the pool hopping policy for any DLR guest was as follows:
GCH guests: could hop to either the DLH or PP pool
DLH guests: could hop to PP's pool, but not GCH's
PP guests: could not hop
As far as I know however, hopping of any kind is not allowed anymore but that could change anytime if it hasn't already.

As for resort switching, I agree with got2travel, this is just not done much at Disneyland so I am not sure if or how they would do it for you. Taking a cab would be a low cost, easy way to do this and probably about the same as the tipping you would need to do for the bellman on both ends of the transfer. If you have a small amount of luggage, you could roll it right up DTD, it would be about a 10 minute (tops) walk.

 

[honeymom]

That Captain Hook pool isn't all that great. We were there in August 2002, it was packed and freezing. My 3 1/2 year old son and 6 year old daughter couldn't stand it. We wound up in the quiet pools at DLH. This time we are staying at the GCH and I am hoping to have a more WDW like experience.

 

[kandyk]

The olny part I can answer for sure is the luggage transfer. In Sept. we stayed at GCH on the concierge floor. About a month before our trip I decided to add an extra day but GCH was booked so we decided to stay at DLH. Bell services transfered our bags to DLH with no problem whatsoever, it seemed like an everyday occurance to them. I was so grateful not to have to roll all of my baggage all the way through DTD or take a taxi.

 

[d-r]

Great information, thanks you all. It looks like the best thing for us to do is split a stay between the two hotels.

 

[scanmom]

about 3 years ago, we stayed at PP and had no problem hopping to the neverland pool at DLR. We used our room key to get in, and it worked fine. I would think that you would have no problems, unless the rules have changed. I would call the front desk at GCH and ask. I bet they know the answer!