Disney World Hotel Room Finder Update: New Filters, Features, & 2026 Room Types

Today, we’ve released an update to our Disney World Hotel Room Finder, with some changes that we think you’re going to love.

When we launched the Room Finder in 2013 our goal was to show you the specific view you get at every hotel room in Walt Disney World. We started by taking over 30,000 photos. We also built room-by-room, floor-by-floor, building-by-building maps of every Walt Disney World hotel.

Over the last 12 years – with help from the TouringPlans community and from Disney – the Room Finder has expanded to include vastly more information about every hotel room in Walt Disney World. We have nearly 40,000 photos! And we’re able to send your room request to Disney on your behalf.

Today’s release includes:

• Updated information for all 29,556 Disney-owned hotel rooms. In particular, the Room Type text, such as “Standard View – 5th Sleeper”, should match Disney’s 2026 room types for all rooms. Other updated data includes bedding, connecting rooms, ADA accessibility, and more.
• Dynamic filters that instantly show you how many rooms match your search criteria
• User interface improvements to make it easier to find the resort and rooms you want
• New filters, including:
  • Secondary View
  • Location Preferences
  • Other Room Features

Those new filters are described below in more detail. The process for making a room request remains the same.

First Things First: Thank You!

I’d like to take a minute here to thank the TouringPlans community and Disney for helping get this data together, and for testing all the different new features. It’s a privilege to have such an engaged group of folks here, and I am thankful every day for all of you.

Also, the resort team at Disney is the best in the business. The behind-the-scenes things they’re doing to turn your room requests into reality would be front-page press releases at other companies. They’re an impressive group who really care about getting you the right hotel room.

Here are some of the updates we’ve made.

Dynamic Filters To Save Time

In the previous version of the Room Finder, you selected your room criteria and clicked a ‘Search’ button to find matching rooms. One problem with that approach is that if no rooms matched all of your criteria, you’d have to go back and try different filter combinations to see which one was eliminating the last set of rooms. That back-and-forth was a frustrating user experience.

This update introduces dynamic filters that are applied as you select them. A status indicator at the top of the filters tells you how many rooms match your current set of filters. In the image below, the top line indicates that 58 rooms currently match the filter criteria we’ve set:

Filter Options Only Show Valid Choices

When you select a specific filter option, the other filter options will change automatically to show you only the choices that make sense for the current set of filter options.

For example, if you select a Room Type of “Preferred Room (2 Queen Beds)” at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, every other filter option will automatically update to show you only the options available for that room type. You won’t see options that apply to “Preferred Room – King Bed” rooms, since those options don’t make sense for your search.

Filters Are Applied In Order From Top to Bottom

To implement these filters effectively, we have to apply them in a specific order in computer code. That order is top-down, so changing a filter higher on the page will change all the filters below it. This ensures the filters only show you what’s possible for the current set of options you’ve chosen.

To determine where each filter went in the list, we asked the TouringPlans community to rank each filter option from highest to lowest importance. Those results showed consistently high importance for things like Room Type, and consistently lower importance for things like “Pet Friendly Rooms”, and that’s how we implemented them.

New Hotel Room Finder Filters

We’ve created eight new filter options for this release. I’ll go over three of the most important here.

Additional View Filter (Gardens, Marinas, Lakes, Monorail, & More)

The new Additional View filter provides more information about the specific thing you’ll see when looking out of a room’s windows. We’ll explain this by using the “Resort View” room type at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort.

“Resort View” (and the related “Standard View” at other resorts) is the most common room type across Walt Disney World hotels. At Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, 313 of the hotel’s 484 rooms, nearly 65%, are Resort View:

• 238 are Resort View with 2 queen beds
• 25 are Resort View with a king bed
• 50 are Resort View – Club Level with 2 queen beds

Disney says the Polynesian’s Resort View rooms overlook the “Garden, Monorail or Parking Area”. And with that many rooms, there’s bound to be a wide range in the quality of room views. The new Additional View filter allows you to select one of those areas for further research.

Room 3227 has a view of the gardens:

Room 3404 has a view of the monorail:

At the Poly, even the rooms facing the parking lot still have pretty, close-up views of the landscaping. Our photo of room 1817 happened to catch a couple of rabbits out for breakfast:

Location Preferences at Disney Hotels

The new Location Preference filter is designed to match one of the room request options in Disney’s online check-in form. One of the most common choices here is “Near Bus Stop”. Other options include “Near Skyliner” at those resorts with Disney Skyliner service.

Applying the “Near Bus Stop” Location Preference filter to Resort View rooms at Disney’s Polynesian Village shows us rooms in the Rarotonga longhouse, the closest building to the Poly’s bus stop:

I’ll note that this specific filter – “Near Bus Stop” – is more strict than the similar “Walking Distance to Transportation” filter. In this case, only rooms in the building closest to the Poly’s bus stop qualify. The farthest rooms in the Niue longhouse are only around 100 feet farther – less than 30 seconds of walking – from that bus stop.

Other Disney Hotel Room Features (Shower Only, Corner Rooms and More)

The new Features filter includes additional information about the room that isn’t covered in the other filters. Common options here include things like “Shower Only”, for rooms without bathtubs, and “Corner Room” for rooms in the corners of each resort building.

The image below shows the first 3 of the 20 “Shower Only” Resort View rooms next to the bus stop at Disney’s Polynesian Village:

Understanding Disney Room Views and Labels

One last thing: Disney has more than 29,000 hotel rooms. Grouping them into categories like Resort View or something else is subjective, relying on human judgment to answer the question “What am I looking at here?”

Lots of room views could fit into two categories. As an example, let’s look at adjacent rooms 4320 and 4322 at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge – Jambo House.

Room 4320 is a Savanna View room. And our photo from that room definitely shows the savanna:

Room 4322 is the room immediately to the right of 4320 and is classified as a Resort View. Here’s the view from 4322:

In my opinion, those are looking at the same thing. I think Disney’s being really conservative here, under-promising and over-delivering. The important thing to note as a guest is that you’d save at least $180 per night off the rack rate by choosing 4322 – the Resort View room. Getting good value for money is one of the main reasons we built the Room Finder.

The Future of the Room Finder

We spent the last few weeks working with the TouringPlans community to test these updates and new features. We also implemented a number of their suggestions to make searching and navigation easier.

That said, this is a big update. I’m sure there’s stuff I missed in the code despite that testing. If you’d like to report an issue or ask why something works a specific way, we’ll be monitoring the Room Finder testing thread on our forum for those. As a bonus, the folks in that thread have tons of experience with the room finder, too, and will probably answer your questions faster than I can. Like I said earlier, I’m grateful every day for this community.

Our next big update to the Room Finder will work on making it easier to request a specific room. That’ll probably be an early 2026 project. In the meantime, let me know in the comments what else you’d like to see in the TouringPlans Room Finder.