Upcoming Swan and Dolphin Deals

If you are dreaming of great big beautiful winged birds and sea mammals who exist atop structures in close proximity to world-renowned rodents, I have a couple of deals for you.

In the week after Memorial Day from May 27 to June 2, Priceline Express has what very much appears to be the Walt Disney World Swan for a bargain rate of $102 per night. Admittedly, compared to the large batch of $92 Swan deals I reported on last fall, the window for this deal is a bit small. But, the limited inventory of deals dropping these days makes this a nice find for those in the market right now.

In comparison, a regular (non-Express) Priceline search right now has the Swan on the same dates for $152. Searching directly on the Marriott’s site for the Swolphin resorts has remarkably higher rates.

In early June, there’s a shorter windowed-deal for the Dolphin where you can find room rates from June 9 to the 12 for only $92.

Let’s take a look at some screen shots for a quick refresher on deciphering these Express deals.

If you search Priceline Express for the Swan dates above, you’ll see this 4.5 star hotel deal at the bottom of the results page.

Priceline has been changing how it presents amenities lately, especially on the non-Disney resort pages. So, using those to identify resorts can take a bit of work that we won’t go into today. But, this deal is fairly easy to decipher anyway: There are only three resorts 4.5 star resorts in either Bonnet Creek or Disney Springs areas: Animal Kingdom Villas – Jambo House (Guest Rating: 10), the Grand Floridian (8.9) and the Swan (8.4).

So, with those ratings, we’re down to the latter two resorts as possibilities. If we click on that deal, then click the Book button, we can see that this deal has mandatory fees applied.

None of the Disney resorts have mandatory fees, so that gives me a pretty warm feeling that this has to be a deal for the Swan. Wanting as much justification as one can muster, I suggest we click on the Hotel Canary button to see what it thinks…

…and things are still looking good. Remember, there are no guarantees in life, but as far as Priceline Express goes, I believe this is pretty strong evidence of a Swan deal.

If we quickly run another search for the Dolphin on the dates I mentioned, we can see how that deal plays out.

Here we see a 4-star, 8-guest rated resort. By my count, there are six Disney resorts with that rating in Bonnet Creek, plus the Dolphin and three non-Disney resorts. So, we have a bigger playing field. You might also notice in deal above that this resort has 600 reviews. (Priceline rounds down to the nearest hundred. Wish they did that with the rates too!)

Without bogging this post down in more details (too late!), I’ll say that when I check those possible 4-star, 8-guest rated resorts, the only one with reviews in the 600s is the Dolphin. But, let’s check the booking page for good measure.

Again, a mandatory fee rules out the Disney resorts. In this case, that $101.25 fee translates to $33.75 per night. A few non-Disney resorts have had that fee amount appear on Express Deals, but only the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort has the same resort ratings. Thankfully, the number of guest reviews for that resort is a whopping 1,175! So, Dolphin seems to be our prime candidate.

We’ll wake up the Hotel Canary again and see…

…it agrees with my assessment.

I think these are some very nice deals for those dates – especially for 4-star resorts such as these. A last quick reminder: while there is no guarantee that Hotel Canary, myself, or that magic 8-ball you have hidden in your office desk will provide 100% accuracy, with a bit of work you can create a fairly strong guesstimate of what resorts Priceline Express is offering.

If you’ve found any other interesting deals, please let us know in the comments!