Checking out of a Disney World hotel room can be a bit stressful. Gathering one’s belongings, making sure nothing’s left behind, preparing bags for plane or car travel, etc. On top of that, according to some reports, Disney is adding another layer on top of it.
Room View
According to Walt Disney World policy, “If you have a credit card on file—or you have a zero-dollar balance—it’s easy to check out of your room, with no need to stop by the Front Desk! You can enjoy streamlined checkout through the My Disney Experience app. Just open the app menu and select “Hotel Reservations”. Then select “View Charges” to begin checking out. If you forget—no worries, you’ll be automatically checked out at our checkout time, 11:00 AM.” However, it’s that final automatic checkout that seems to be causing issues.
According to guest reports online, some have found themselves automatically checked out and locked out of their rooms EARLIER than the 11:00 AM timeframe. According to these guests, it’s because they were told that location services built into the My Disney Experience App had registered them as being off of hotel property and therefore triggered the automatic checkout, deactivating their digital room key and leaving them locked out from their belongings.
Port Orleans — Riverside
While this may not seem like too big of an issue in theory — after all, many spend the morning of their checkout gathering their belongings — it can cause problems for guests who take an early trip into one of the theme parks to squeeze in a final ride or grab breakfast at park, other hotel, or Disney Springs.
Breakfast at ‘Ohana
Until this glitch is addressed, we would advise guests to either have breakfast at their hotel or drop their bags off with Luggage Services if they’re going to grab breakfast off hotel property or head into a park for an early morning jaunt prior to 11:00 AM.
The luggage assistance desk!
According to reports, a new Disney hotel policy may be automatically checking guests out BEFORE 11:00 AM, and should be taken into account when planning the final morning of your trip! Stay tuned to DFB for more on this potential issue.
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Another checkout issue is Mouse Cleaning banging on your room door demanding to “inspect” the room when you’re trying to pack and get ready to check out. One Mouse Cleaning member pointed her finger at me when I told her we would be out of the room in a few minutes. “Are you refusing a room inspection?” she demanded. I politely told her she was welcome to inspect the room a in few minutes when we were checked out. At that, she walked away. Yeah, that was a less than magical experience.
If I paid until 11, I better have access until 11. Unless I PERSONALLY check out, Disney needs to honor 11 and chill out.
That explains so much! We were checked out early automatically before we got our bags once. This was before covid. We went down to the front desk to reactivate our ability to get our luggage, which is a long walk! I’m not sure this is a new policy. I believe we had gone to Disney Springs that morning. It would be better if Disney made this apparent and better defined off-property. From our perspective, Disney owns all of that property. 😉 What about instances where guests have a breakfast at other Disney resorts?
Checkin is 3 pm. Checkout at 11 am. Not even 24 hours to have a room at their prices and you’re locked out before the time is up that you pd for. Got it.
Yes, we were checked out of our hotel. We left to go to Starbucks and when we returned, we could not get into our room. It was early not even close to 11 AM. We had to go to the front desk and have them reactivate our room key.
I always request the late checkout, just to not be rushed out. Sometimes we do in fact do a final park day with a late flight, but we want to be in the park for early access so we have our bags at the bellhop before 8 anyway. Though that location thing is interesting. I guess the other hack is to put your phone into airplane mode.
We have been automatically checked out several times – and we never even left our room. I realized it when I went on the app to notify them that we were leaving and we’d already been checked out. Disney needs to fix this.
And yes, I agree with the above comment that the constant banging on the door and / or phone calls from housekeeping on checkout morning is very annoying.
This is too invasive! It must be stopped!
For what is charged for a Disney hotel room, there should be no glitches in their checkout. Anyone paying $500+ for a room must be allowed their use of it. It is the guest’s decision as to how they utilize their time. As the normal check in times at Disney are listed as 4 o’clock, their needs to be enough staff on hand to turn rooms around in that 5 hour window. Guests should come first in any service industry, especially one as large as Disney.
We are normally busy just packing up our car(s) until 11:00 on the morning of check out, but we are heeding DFB’s recent articles about this. Leave the phones/MBs in the room, and prop the door open on check out morning, is our new plan! (Plus I still plan on the “we’re still here” sign for the door 🙂
Hmm they don’t have my room ready by 3 pm , yes I know it’s not a “rule” just a “suggestion” (My last trip I checked in online and didn’t get my room ready notification until about 9 p.m. The visit prior to that it was after 7 p.m.) Now they can boot guests out before check OUT time too? Not magical Disney, not magical at all.
The easiest thing a guest can do to prevent this from happening, leave your damn phone in the room. Believe it or not there was a time, back in the dark ages, where everyone didn’t have a tracking chip morphed into their hand
In December, we stayed at the Copper Creek Cabins and were “automatically” checked out at 10:30am and that was with our entire family still in the cabin. The odd thing was that it showed up on my cousins MyDisney app rather than mine, the primary reservation holder. Additionally, and even more annoying, we received a knock on the door at 10am from the cleaning service so they could come in, and I respectfully told them we would be walking out the door at 11:00am on the dot. It never ceases to amaze me how in recent years, and practically every trip now, Disney is slow to get you into your room, but is fast to get you out. The joys of Disney vacations!
I’ve never once checked out of a Disney hotel in 3 decades of going.
Thus happened to me last year. Luckily I was just relaxing in my room and had all my belongings packed and ready to go. I decided to watch a movie but at 10:30 I no longer could cast to the TV from my phone and the main TV screen no longer had my name on it. I was going to do the moble check out at 10:55 anyway to get as much time in the room, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for being in the room since I was officially checked out. I ended up spending the next 2 1/2 hours until my mears shuttle departure lounging in the lobby. This was at Coronado Springs.
Unfortunately, I had this happen to me while I was still in my room at Riviera resort. At 10 AM, I went downstairs to apply a $500 gift card to my check out, but they told me that I was already checked out and they could not revise the bill. I’m not sure what limitations cast members have because of the checkout process, but as a former cast member, I could not believe no one could help me.I learned my lesson that I have to apply GCs the night before, but that should never have been the case. I’m not sure why they checked me out because I never left Riviera Resort when I went down to get breakfast earlier that morning.