Hotwire: Half Off Yacht – Without Sinking!
Time to float another set of Hotwire deals your way: How does Yacht Club for $249 per night sound?
Last night a nice drop of deals showed up for mid-August, and it is a beauty – in fact, more than 50% off Disney’s current 25% off discount! That’s a lotta percent signs!
We mentioned in our last Coronado Springs post, A Towering Deal, that Hotwire has mostly fixed their systems and many more HotRate and non-hidden resort deals are appearing again. However, the “mostly” still applies, so there may be a few catches for you to see and/or book these Yacht Club deals.
Also, because Hotwire seems to be changing what deals appear every 38 seconds lately, let’s make this quick so you can get searching before these deals head off into the sunset. Below are a couple of tips to help you spot the Yacht:
- I was only able to get these Yacht Club deals to appear on the app – not the desktop browser at all.
- Just like the current Coronado Springs drop August 14th seems to be a magical day. I HAD to start my search on that exact date to get any of the Yacht Club deals to appear.
When I did, I was able to see them all the way to August 28th! (If you do book that many days in a row, the price drops down to $244.)
From reports I’ve received and seen online regarding Hotwire deals, your nautical mileage may vary. I have had people tell me about booking some great deals that just never show up for me. As I’ve mentioned before: one tactic that might help to tease out more deals is to clear the cached data on your apps, or on the iOS app just delete it and reinstall. I have had that work more than a few times now when my search results were bare.
What To Look For
On Hotwire, Yacht Club is a 4-star, 4.5-guest rated resort. There are 2 other resorts with this rating: Beach Club Villas and Boardwalk Inn. I’m going to to out on a limb here and say you will never see Beach Club Villas at a price in the mid $200s. But, let’s assume I’m wrong and that might happen one day. You can use some other clues in the listing to help identify which one the deal is for.
THE EASIEST METHOD EVER
If you see a HotRate deal you find interesting – scroll down in the search results and look for a non-hidden deal for a resort with the same star and guest ratings. (Sometimes both deals will show a review count as well – but usually not on Disney resort deals.) Then, compare the crossed out “full price” listed on the hidden deal to the price on the non-hidden deal: it should be off by $1. (Very rarely it might be off by $2.)
I’ve modified that image above so that both the hidden and non-hidden deals are next to each other – but yep, that sure looks Yacht Clubby to me.
Sub-Amenities
When you still need more clues to give you confidence in your deal identification, try using sub-amenities. When you click on the deal you’ll get another page with various info: you may see generic review counts, snippets from guest reviews for the resort, and a list of sub-amenity ratings. You can try comparing each of these to those listed on the resorts Hotwire page (see links I added in paragraph above.)
The review count comparisons are more useful with non-Disney resorts, since the hidden deals will often tell you the exact number which you can also compare to the non-hidden deal.
The review snippets are less useful: the hidden deals tend to have very generic text that doesn’t offer any clues and don’t match any you can find on the resort page reviews. Also, some are red herrings: Coronado Springs hidden deals have snippets mentioning “Manila Bay” – which isn’t a thing.
But, sub-amenities are real data you can sink your anchor into.
In the example above I have overlayed a capture of the sub-amenities from Hotwire’s Yacht Club page – looks like a pretty good match up. (Just note that sometimes the review counts and ratings on the deal can be slightly out of sync with the resort pages if something changed recently. They are still usually just off by .1 or so on a single item.)
If you look at the Beach Club Villas listing, the sub-amenities are clearly different. But, in this instance at this time: Boardwalk happens to have exactly the same star and guest ratings AND the same sub-amenities! (That’s pretty rare in the land of hidden deals.)
So, you can use another trick: the old Draw technique. In the app, zoom in on the map to the resort you suspect, click the Draw button then make a circle around the resort. If you are correct, the search results should change to show just the resort you suspect.
Here’s a short video to help you get a feel for using Draw.
Wrap Up Info
Some last items before the calendar of deals: Room descriptions are your friend.
You’ll likely find that these Yacht Club deals are Water View rooms – this is one example where it pays to read the room descriptions (which you should always do). Always nice to know what kind of room you might get!
When we look at the all-in price of these deals to Disney’s current 25% off price – Wowza, is all I can say. (In addition to the approximately 11,000 words above this line.)
Calendar of Deals
The calendar below is a visual of the Yacht Club deals I was able to see on Hotwire – just remember I had to start my search window on August 14th or I didn’t get ANY deals. You might have different results.
Also remember: These are not the only deals out there right now – there are definitely Coronado, Pop Century, as well as some other resort deals out there all the way until the end of the year. BUT – be wary of the ones marked 11% off or so. After the hidden deal fees are added in, they usually do not save you any money. Always Do The Math. 🙂
Take a look through my recent blog posts for some more info on the deals we wrote about.
If you’ve booked any of these terrific Yacht Club deals, have any questions, or just are a fan of bad nautical puns, let us know in the comments!
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Thank you John!
I’ll keep following the blog.
Will there be any new deals for Hot Wire in 2022?
Hi Michael, That’s a question we’re asking ourselves!
And by ourselves, I mean the royal ourselves (just me), because I’m not sure if anyone else here is asking themselves questions about Hotwire. 😀
Honestly, I think the Disney resort deals do have to come back. But I think there needs to be a combination of lower resort bookings and/or higher capacity before Disney and resellers get to the point where they feel they need to discount things more steeply.
I also suspect another factor in the higher capacity part of the equation is the need for more cast members to service the resorts properly. I’ve seen articles on large sign-on bonuses to attract people and their having to deal with supply chain issues for food service etc.
I have been pretty surprised we did not see anything pop up in the last month or so. But, it seems to me, at least, that we’re just in the middle of a perfect storm that’s keeping the deals away.
Here’s to a New Year with less stress, more magic – and resort deals!
Boy the pressure when you “know” it’s Yacht Club but still have to pull the trigger is pretty intense. But I eventually hit confirm and moved my Beach Club reservation to Yacht club and saved about $500. Thanks for all that you do John!
Rich, Terrific! That’s some great savings, right there. 🙂
Sam,
I’ve heard from some people lately where they had to make a few phone calls – one side says to call the other. So far, they’ve all been successful. (When I made my own call, the Disney Wholesale cast member just made the change for me.)
I have heard in the past that sometimes Hotwire chat works when a phone call doesn’t. I’d also explain, if you can, that Queen beds was one of the options when booking, you just happened not to get assigned one and your kids didn’t make it onto the reservation. Maybe that combo of info will move the needle?
It seems to be the luck of the draw what any individual CM or Hotwire rep will do.
Thanks for the response. Tried Hotwire again and was able to get it done on my two itineraries.
Thanks for finding and sharing these deals!
Sam, Terrific!
Wish there was a better way to insure the process was smoother, but as with many large companies both of these can take some finagling to get things done. Have an excellent trip!
Anyone having luck lately getting Disney Wholesale CMs to add kids to an itinerary? I keep getting told to call hotwire/expedia. Hotwire has been of no help so far either.
I found this YC hotwire deal for my 8/14-18 trip, the problem is we are 5 adults. Is there a way to add a 5th adult to a third party booking? We dont mind paying for the extra it will still be soooo much cheaper!
I’ve had people tell me there are a lot of YC rooms that sleep 5, but it is my personal opinion that hoping to get a room for 5 on a non-refundable hidden deal is just too risky.
My suggestion is to book 2 good value or even moderate resort deals and request adjoining rooms. While getting your request filled isn’t a guarantee I’d bet they’d at least get you close, and you have 2 bathrooms, which is a good perk with more people!
Good luck!
Great job, @JJT.
Thanks Len!
And I meant to say King bed in e-mail is the default but not what we’ll get. We’ll get 2 Queens or 2 Queens and a sleeper sofa
I just booked two nights in a Water View room towards the end of August for $235/night. This is for 2 adults and 2 children. When I got the e-mail confirmation from Hotwire it says King bed. Does this even matter or is it their default? I’m trying to call Disney now to make sure I get 2 Queens.
Hi Dave,
Make sure you call the Disney Wholesale number at 1-407-939-7671. They are the ones to best deal with reseller bookings. I just called in myself a few weeks ago to add our kids after booking, took only a few moments for the CM to do it.
As with anything Disney, there may times when you get a CM that tells you that Hotwire needs to request the change. That’s fine – you can ask Hotwire to do it as well, but I find often an easier tactic is to say Thanks! and call back and see if a different CM just gets it done for you.
Good luck!
So I spoke to someone from Wholesale today and they basically said the King bed in the e-mail is Hotwire’s default and I also asked about the “resort fee” message and he said that is also a default. Would only be charged for parking if we are driving, which thankfully we aren’t. Thanks for pointing out this great deal we were about to save about $300 by booking this and cancelling our Wilderness Lodge reservation!
Dave, thanks for the update! Very glad to hear that it worked out. From the reports I’m getting here and offline, this Yacht Club deal has saved a LOT of Touring Plans readers some serious money. Love it.
Thanks for the tip (another example of how touringplans saves us both time AND money).
We successfully booked this morning for August. Interestingly, between around 10:30pm ET last night and 10:30am this morning, the tip to use the draw tool stopped working for the hidden resort deals – we were only able to see the named resorts.
We were able to still match the reviews and sub-amenities and rule out any resorts we did not want (e.g. Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, Coronado, etc) by using the draw tool around them and getting to a process of elimination.
Excellent, John! Good work.
I’ve found lately that the draw tool seems particularly finicky around the EPCOT area resorts. If you leave off a small corner of a resort, or include a small corner of another it can change whether thing show or not. I’ve been doing what you probably did – make bigger and/or different circles and compare the results.
I just booked it for mid-August using your tips and did in fact get the Yacht Club. Thank you!!
Followed the tips/advice and it worked out perfectly for a weekend yacht club stay in August. Thank you for taking the gamble out of booking via hot deals. I have never been brave enough to try it out until reading this post. Thank you for helping make staying at a deluxe resort a reality for me and my family.
Tim, Great to hear – hope you have an awesome trip!
Sarah, Woohoo! 🙂