Priceline’s Spring Fling
*tap tap* hello, is this thing on? *blows dust off keyboard*
We’re back with a new Priceline update for you – but it has been a minute!
We keep watching for deals and there have been some, but the offerings have been, um different.
Back in the day, when Priceline dropped some deals, there would be oodles of them. Seemingly never ending splendor, like literal months full of Swan $93 hidden deals, Coronado Springs for $101, or Yacht Club for $250. *sigh*
Don’t get us wrong – since they came back last year, there have been some terrific rooms to book with significant savings, but Priceline seems to have turned down the knob from 11 to about 5. Also, when hidden deals do appear they tend to be for more targeted dates – two days here, another day there. Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day. (Not sure about that last one, I may be watching too much of the 1970s rerun television network again.)
They also seem to be skittish about the hidden deals they do release – twice in the last few months we’ve spotted some hidden deals out in May and June – then *poof!* no more spaghetti. er, deals.
Housekeeping
The good news is – if you’re hoping to score a nicely priced Disney resort room in the middle of April, there are a nice smattering of deals for you. First, if you are new to the world of Priceline hidden deals and would like to learn a little about how to find and identify Disney (or other) resorts, we’d like to point you to some past Touring Plans blog posts where we’ve gone over tactics.
Priceline Deals: A Blast from the Past Returns goes over the search parameters you’ll want to use and has some examples to help you visualize the process. Falling Expressly in Love with Priceline Again offers more examples, including the finding of an Art of Animation suite deals (which, SPOILER ALERT might help you this April.)
A Modified Tactic to Find More Deals!
Before we post the current *insert snazzy music here* Calendar of Deals, I’d like to point something I only just realized. Back in the Blast from the Past blog post, we go over how to search for Disney resorts by filtering to Bonnet Creek and Disney Springs neighborhoods, and sorting by Price to display the cheaper deals at the top of the results.
I tend to use this tactic because I find it easier to see the cheaper Express Deals at top – but some people prefer to sort by Guest Rating, which displays Express Deals right below the non-hidden resort deal in the search results and makes identification an even easier endeavor.
While recording one day’s deals in my usual “sort by lowest price” fashion, I spied a tasty All-Star Music deal for $119, and lower down the results a Coronado Springs deal.
In order to capture both the hidden and the non-hidden deals together in a single image, I changed the sort selection from Lowest to Guest Rating. Lo’ and behold, when I scrolled down the results I noticed than an Art of Animation Suite appeared! Not only that – the All-Star Music deal was gone!
In the future, I will be adding a sort change to my tactics, that’s for sure.
Savings Comparisons
We have some nice ones here for you – but as we pointed out above, Priceline is really targeting specific time periods. This batch runs from April 13th to the 26th and features All-Star Music for about $120, Animal Kingdom Lodge between $273 and $299, Coronado Springs for $179 and Art of Animation between $347 and $371 per night.
Gone are the days, perhaps, of $101 Coronado, but the savings versus Disney’s current “Early 2025” discount is still significant as you can see in the comparison tables below.
One interesting thing you may note is that Disney’s Standard Music room price is only 20 cents more than Priceline’s regular price! That is unusual and is not the case for the other resorts. (Numbers may vary by date, even within this short time period.) But – even so, the hidden Express Deal will save you over $86 per night vs the discounted Disney price – and that includes taxes and hidden deal fees.
The savings are REALLY great if you grab an Animal Kingdom Lodge ($232/night on this example day) or Art of Animation Suite ($255/night).
Calendar of Deals
If any of those shy May and June hidden deals poke their heads back out, we’ll be ready for ’em and share them with you.
Some reminders: As usual, the deals shown in the calendar tend to be ones that appeared when searching for 1-night stays through the month. Multi-night searches might show more or fewer hidden deals, so play around! The Art of Animation suite and some Animal Kingdom lodge hidden deals only appeared to us in a dream, oh wait, only appeared to us when we sorted the search results by Guest Reviews.
If you see blank spaces in between deals, sometimes you can tease out the missing days by changing your start and end dates. Sliding date windows are your search friend when it comes to Priceline.
For some Priceline drops, there is a “magic date” that unlocks the following dates. In this batch, starting your search on April 13th seems to pop up more Animal Kingdom Lodge hidden deals. By starting my search on that date I can get $299 hidden deals for that resort to appear all the way to April 20th!
One last thing: When booking a Priceline deal, don’t forget to check the Retailmenot Priceline page – you’ll often find a 7% off code there. (The current one has a $50 maximum back.) To use their codes, you will need to make a note of it AND use their link to go through to Priceline, then enter it on the booking page.
If you find any different deals in April or are just excited for Prince spaghetti day, let us know in the comments!
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This is really interesting and cool. This is also my first time looking into something like this. Looking at the Art of Animation example above, if you click on the $371 Choose your room, the room is described as “One Double Bed or One Queen Bed with Free Wifi, Microwave”. That doesn’t sound like one of the suites to me. How can we be more sure?
Thanks very much!!
Hi Paul, It is nerdy and lucrative fun figuring out the hidden deals. 🙂
I’ll give you a couple of ways to look at it that I hope will give you more belief we’re on the right track.
First I’ll say: Priceline really does not do a good job of listing accurate amenities on their hotels and they are often wrong, so my advice in the context of identifying hidden deal resorts is to mostly ignore them. (But I’ll get back to that at the bottom of this reply.)
Using the location, resort and guest ratings and review counts you can be pretty darn sure what resort a hidden deal really is. If, in the rare case there are two resorts that where all of those factors are the same, you can compare the hidden deal info to the non-hidden listings in search results, look for resort fees (Disney resorts do not have them) and maybe some other things.
But, in fact – if you use the guest rating sort I outlined in this post, Priceline does that work for you by placing the hidden deal RIGHT AFTER the non-hidden resort listing. (see the screen capture example in the blog post.)
Looking at these Art of Animation suites in particular, here are some facts that can help you narrow down the possibilities very quickly:
For the record, I have a simple Resort Matcher Tool for Bonnet Creek, Disney Springs, and UOR Areas that I do my best to keep up to date to help people figure this out. (My matcher is not affiliated with Touring Plans, just for the record.) Below are all the Values in BC listed with review counts as of last week – as you can see, AoA is alone in its current review count.
Back to the room amenities you mentioned: Yes, I agree, what you see in the hidden deal feels off, and I said they are often wrong. But, I’ll add a caveat to that: while main amenities listed ARE often wrong, the room bed types etc also tend to line up between hidden and regular deals.
If you look at the slightly muddled comparison I whipped up below: I opened both what I believe is a hidden AoA deal and a regular AoA deal and captured the room descriptions. You can see that when you open the full “Room Details and Photos” popup on the regular deal, that bed description is basically the same as the one on the hidden deal, except for the use of “OR” in between the bed types. Also, you can see that the listings of Kitchen and Microwave also line up between the two listings. (BTW that $648 price on the FULL family suite hidden deal is NOT a good price and is not worth booking.)
Hope that info gives you some more tools to work with – good luck!
Wow! Thanks for the detailed follow up! It makes sense, but I get nervous committing to things “blind.” After my initial post I also looked at the pricing a little closer. The $371 is listed as discounted from a nominal price of $738. Checking the Disney resort pages shows $738 as the non-discounted price of a Lion King or Cars family suite, so that plus your data has me even more convinced it is not just an AoA suite, but specifically either Cars or Lion King!
I already have a standard room at the Swan resort booked over the Easter weekend for pretty much the same price as this, but I’ve always been interested in one of these family suites. Even though it is not a deluxe, I’ll have to give it some serious consideration.
Thanks much!
It’s good to see you post again, JJT. I’m glad the absence hasn’t dulled your wit.
Thanks Tom! Happy to have some deals to blog about, hopefully we see some more soon.