Priceline Deals: A Blast from the Past Returns

The author enters the room, sits in front of the reader and dangles a pocket watch before them.

AUTHOR: “Welcome to your session. I’d like you to relax and focus on this watch…”
The pocket watch begins to swing, the reader’s eyes follow it back and forth. Back and forth.

AUTHOR: “You’ve traveled back in time to the Fall of 2021. You open a browser tab to book a Priceline hidden deal. You see All-Star Movies for $68, Pop Century for $88 and Coronado Springs for $149.”

The reader shifts uncomfortably in their chair.

AUTHOR: “These will be the last Priceline hidden deals you will see for more than two years.”
The reader begins to whimper.

AUTHOR: “Breathe in, breathe out. You see a light. It is shining faintly in the distance. The pages of a calendar begin to turn, first slowly then become so fast they are a blur.”
The reader gasps.

AUTHOR: “You have now reached the month of February in the year 2024. You look at your browser and see hidden deals for Disney resorts discounted as much as 50% off the full Priceline price. A bluebird appears at the window and beckons you.”
The reader slumps. After a moment they raise their head and a smile spreads across their face.

The emptiness of the last 30 months has been released. The reader wishes the guy in front of them would stop swinging that weird pocket watch. WHO HAS A POCKET WATCH ANYMORE, ANYWAY?

HIDDEN DEALS ARE BACK!

Greetings and salutations, dear readers – we may finally be on a path to more deep and comforting Disney resort savings. This week, we heard reports from our league of informants (aka “subscribers”) that, indeed – Priceline hidden deals have finally reappeared.

What, in particular are we seeing? So far, the resorts include All-Star Sports for $81, Art of Animation suites for $299, Coronado Springs for $201, and Animal Kingdom Lodge Savannah View rooms for $324. While some of these may not seem to be the deep discounts of the past, you will see they are a very nice savings, even when compared to Disney’s current 20% discount pricing.

Many of the past tips and tricks for identifying Disney resorts in hidden deals still apply, but with a few differences. So, we’re going provide a few quick examples to help you find your own discounted resort deals to book.

First Things First: A Caveat Recap

With a little homework, you can become quite confident you’ve identified the correct resort for a Priceline Express hidden deal. However, please keep in mind nothing in this world is guaranteed. Priceline might change how they list deals at any time, or some resorts may look similar to each other in listings, so take your time and compare all of the clues.

Another important point: Priceline deals technically guarantee room for 2 adults. However, since the vast majority of Disney rooms are built for at least 4 people, it is much less likely to be a problem there. (People have reported they just add children to the reservation after the initial booking.) However, if your hidden deal specifically states a room is, say a King bed, you will be assigned that room. If I needed 2 Queen beds, I would not book that deal.

When looking at non-Disney resort deals and comparing resort fees, take those with a grain of salt. Priceline loves to leave those out or even randomize the prices, which can throw you off.

Finally, remember that Priceline hidden deals have an additional fee tacked on to the price in the cart, so you always want to look at the all-in, final, Bob’s-your-uncle price to compare apples to apples. You usually want to have Priceline report a hidden deal is at least more than 12% off, but ideally 20% or more off of the “full” price.

The Basics

In general, the simplest way to identify Disney hidden resorts on Priceline is to search your dates for all hidden and non-hidden deals together and compare the info. To make the results easier to go through, I suggest you scroll down the left menu to Neighborhoods and select ONLY Bonnet Creek and Disney Springs, since that is where all of the Disney resorts are located. Then, sort the results by Price from low to high. That will make scrolling up and down the list easier later.

In the search results you will see hidden deals with descriptions such as “A 3-star Hotel in the Walt Disney World Area.” As a rule, on Priceline Value resorts are 3-stars, Moderates are 3.5-stars and, wait for it… Deluxes are 4-stars.

Priceline being Priceline, though – there are odd exceptions. For example: The Cabins at Wilderness Lodge are 3.5-stars and Animal Kingdom Lodge – Jambo House is 4.5-stars.

Some hidden deals are very easy to identify with a simple comparison, as you can see in the All-Star Sports example below. Once you see an interesting hidden deal in results, try scrolling down until you find a regular resort deal that appears to match.

In this case you can see that the star and guest ratings, location (Bonnet Creek) and review counts all match. (Hidden deal review counts are rounded down to the nearest hundred, or to the nearest 10 if the number is less than 100. If the review counts are less than 10 they round down to 0 on hidden deals.)

If you see a match, the next thing to compare is the “full” price on the hidden deal to the regular listing. In this Sports example, you can see they both are $160. At this point there is a very high chance the hidden deal is Sports.

In fact, the only other resort in Bonnet Creek at this time that is also a 3-star, 8-guest rated resort with reviews in the 600s is Pop Century – so it has to be one of those two resorts. Since Pop is typically priced higher than All-Star resorts, I’d be very confident the hidden deal is Sports.

(Of course, would not be upset if it turned out to be Pop! Skyliner, baby!)

A Bit More Complicated Example

Now, over the last couple of dry Priceline years, they apparently have been scheming in their hidden lair coming up with different ways of obfuscating hidden deals. Here’s an Art of Animation example where you’ll notice that all of the location and ratings in the hidden deal match the regular AoA listing further down in the results. BUT – the “full” price of $507 on the hidden deal does NOT match the $491 on the regular one.

What to do? Well, if you click through the regular deal to look at the room booking options, you’ll see that a couple of the family suites are indeed priced at $507.

Again, while not a 100% guarantee, we have a very strong case that the hidden deal is one of these rooms. I’d personally be comfortable booking this hidden deal if I were looking for an AoA Suite, even without the help of a hypnotist.

To really lock it in if you are not convinced, there is one more clue we can look at: if you take the time to note the review counts of ALL 3-star resorts in Bonnet Creek you’ll see that Art of Animation is currently the only one with a review count in the 200s.

Quicker Examples – Coronado Springs and Animal Kingdom Lodge

We’ll finish off this post with a couple of faster examples you can look at to hone your skill identifying both Coronado Springs and Animal Kingdom Lodge in some hidden deals. We’ve included captures of the listings to compare, and the check out pages so you can see just how good the savings is for each.

The most exciting part of these may be that many of the the hidden deals at Animal Kingdom Lodge appear to be for Savannah View rooms!

Please note: These examples are each for 2-night stays and the final pricing reflects that. While you definitely will find hidden deals for Disney resorts when searching 1-night at a time, in some cases you may need to search for 2 or more nights to have them appear. That was the case for the Animal Kingdom Lodge deal here, in particular.

Coronado Springs

You can see that the hidden deal price for this 2-night Coronado Springs room is $240 less than Disney’s 20% off pricing! That is super very nice.

Animal Kingdom Lodge

Here, the hidden deal 2-night savings for what is very likely a Savannah view room is $429 – an excellent discount.

When booking these deals, please take your time and maybe do a little homework by comparing similar resort ratings and review counts. We want you to have a good feel for what resorts are possible for the hidden deals you are looking at so you can book confidently – and save!

If you’ve booked any Priceline Express deals or see any more interesting ones – let us know in the comments!