Walt Disney World has released a second wave of the general public ‘stay longer and save more’ discount of up to 30% off hotel room rates for August to October 2025. This shares booking & travel dates for these special offers, which are both aggressive and early. Plus, commentary about the savings, sample pricing, analysis.
This is one of many deals that Walt Disney World has released for 2025 vacations, with special offers for Annual Passholders, Floridians, and Disney Visa cardholders. For every other special offer that’s currently available, see All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for 2025. The other big discount dropping today is a ‘second wave’ of 2025 Free Dining at Walt Disney World, this time for the general public.
As discussed here, this ‘stay longer and save more’ discount might actually be better for many Walt Disney World guests than Free Dining. While the siren song of free food is certainly alluring, there’s no such thing as a free lunch–that special offer has some catches that might actually make this discount paired with the 3-Park Magic Discount Walt Disney World Ticket and/or the 50% Off Kids Ticket Deal for Walt Disney World a better option!
There are promos available for pretty much all dates between now and late Summer or early Fall 2025, with even more targeted special offers available for select guests. So the above list is worth checking out if you’re debating a trip sometime in 2025. It should probably go without saying, but more discounts for travel dates beyond October 2025 will be released down the road (probably in mid to late June).
Per Walt Disney World, here are the deal details: Save up to 30% on rooms at select Disney Resorts Collection hotels when you stay 5 consecutive nights or longer in late summer and early fall. Plus, enjoy other savings for shorter stays.
This offer is valid for stays most nights from August 1 to October 11, 2025.
When you stay in the magic at a Disney Resorts Collection hotel, you can enjoy the same legendary detail, storytelling and service found in the theme parks—along with an array of benefits.
Here’s the resort by resort general public discount chart provided by Walt Disney World for August through October 2025:
Offer excludes the following room types: 3-Bedroom Grand Villas, Cabins at Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, Bungalows and Penthouses at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, Deluxe Rooms and 2-Bedroom Villas at Disney’s Beach Club Resort, and Suites at Disney Deluxe Resort hotels.
Additional per-adult charges may apply if more than 2 adults per room at Value, Moderate and Deluxe Resorts and Studios at Deluxe Villa Resorts. Maximum length of stay under this deal is 14 nights. Cannot be combined with any other discount or promotion.
Reservations may be made online, by phone, or via your Authorized Disney Vacation Planner. If you’re reading this on the day the discount goes live, don’t be surprised if there’s a brief virtual queue for online bookings or a wait on the phones. Here’s the link for directly booking the deal via Disneyworld.com.
If you want to help determining which discounts are available for your travel dates and which resort will work best for your family, we highly recommend requesting a quote from Be Our Guest Vacations, a no-fee Authorized Disney Vacation Planner. The agents there will do the math for you, booking your vacation with the best-available special offer, and monitoring your package for future discounts that can be applied retroactively.
In particular, they can help you determine whether this room-only discount or the Free Dining is the better deal for you, given your party size, resort preference, and eating preferences. Beyond that, Authorized Disney Vacation Planners help take the stress out of planning and will assist with itineraries, ADRs, and much more.
If you want to ‘do it yourself’ but aren’t sure which resort to book, check out our new Rankings of ALL Resort Hotels at Walt Disney World from Worst to Best. Several of the resorts with the biggest savings are in the top 10!
Here’s what we found for best available rates for this 2025 discount:
This search is for the first week of September 2025, which is part of the Value rate season at Walt Disney World. On the rack rate chart spectrum, this is one of the least expensive times to visit Walt Disney World in 2025. As far as this promo goes, you’re not going to find any dates that are better than late August through mid-September.
Friday through Sunday nights are all going to be more expensive, and less consistent. In general, Friday and Saturday will be the most expensive days of the week, with Sunday through Thursday costing less–but still more than Monday through Wednesday nights. Holiday weeks are also more expensive. Basically, room rates are higher any time when kids are out of school.
To maximize savings, you’ll need to book 5-nights, meaning that it’ll necessarily include at least a couple nights that aren’t the absolute cheapest. However, as noted above, you aren’t required to stay 5 nights. If you book 1-4 nights, you’ll simply save 5% less at most resorts and for most dates. It’s 5 nights or longer that “unlocks” the extra 5% off, so to speak.
For more on timing your trip to coincide with the lowest prices, see When’s Cheapest to Visit Walt Disney World in 2025? That covers price increases and other variables that impact the cost of a vacation beyond just room rates.
We’ve discussed this before in Is Walt Disney World’s Free Dining Deal Actually Worth It?, but a room-only discount is going to offer superior savings for a lot of parties. That’s especially the case with this one for parties staying 5 nights or longer.
All we can offer is sweeping generalizations–you’ll absolutely want to do the math for your own unique circumstances–but as a general matter, room-only discounts are better for smaller parties staying at higher-tier resorts. When comparing these two discounts, you want to look at party size, guest ages, and room cost.
Free Dining is best for those who can maximize the number of guests staying in one room and minimize their rack rate resort cost. Conversely, a room-only discount tends to be better for solo travelers and couples at higher priced hotels–as well as parties with lighter eaters (remember, the Disney Dining Plan is only worth as much as you’ll use it, which is not necessarily its full face value).
These are generalizations and not hard and fast rules. We just want to reiterate this because there’s a lot of allure in Free Dining. After all, who doesn’t love something that’s FREE?! But in reality, there’s no such thing as a free lunch–you’re giving up a room-only discount to get that ‘free’ Disney Dining Plan. Even though it’s the more boring discount, a lot of times, the room-only deal is the better special offer.
The other big reason this deal might come out ahead is the aforementioned ticket discounts. With Free Dining, you’re required to purchase a (full priced) Park Hopper ticket. With this room-only discount, you can buy that discounted ticket–or any ticket deal (see our Guide to Saving Money on Park Tickets at Walt Disney World).
We’re not going to belabor this point again, because we already did that with the Free Dining analysis, but you’ve gotta do the math not just on room-only discounts vs. Free Dining, but room-only discounts plus ticket discounts vs. Free Dining. You can potentially save $150+ per adult ticket (not an apples to apples comparison) and at least $275 per child ticket (apples to apples comparison) with those ticket deals as opposed to Free Dining.
That’s a big thing that trips a lot of people up with Free Dining–again, it’s not actually free food with no strings attached. C’mon, this is Disney–do you really think anything that good is truly free?!
My assessment of this discount is mostly positive, but not quite as good as the first wave of last year’s comparable discount (so we’re talking about the special offer released in early January 2024).
Just as is happening this year, this deal was released twice last year (or rather, re-released). Once on January 3 for travel dates from March 25 to July 7 and July 8 to October 3. That was a twice-tiered deal, with higher savings for longer stays during the second set of dates. Meaning you could save up to 35% off for 5-night or longer stays from July 8 to October 3. (Up to 30% for the first set of dates.)
That deal was incredibly popular. So much so, in fact, that Walt Disney World “ran out” of room inventory fairly quickly, and pulled the deal from the website. The DTB Archive shows reader complaints about availability almost immediately and then notes that deals had been removed early from DisneyWorld.com, but not when that happened. The deal was then re-released for that second set of dates, but maxing out at 30% off.
The other big change with this re-release is that August 12 to August 23, 2025 and September 15 to September 27, 2025 now offer lesser savings. That’s unfortunate, as those are among our favorite times to visit for the start of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and several of the lowest-crowd weeks of the entire year at Walt Disney World.
Aside from those couple of date ranges, this 2025 version of the deal is substantially similar to last spring’s special offer, right down to the re-release (just a couple weeks earlier). To be clear, that’s not bad! If this same deal were released in March/April 2021/2022/2023, we would’ve been rejoicing! But the circumstances are markedly different now than they were during the height of pent-up demand.
The 2025 Stay Longer & Save More special offer is still a good general public deal by long-term historical standards–just not on par with its counterpart released on January 3 of last year. That one was amazing, and fairly unprecedented.
Which is probably why it sold so well and was pulled! It’s also fair to point out that deal was better on paper, but not always in practice. Availability was very limited, and we’re actually seeing better (practical) savings at several resorts with the 2025 incarnation of the deal!
Not that any of this matters since you don’t have a time machine, but I nevertheless find it fascinating how deals stack up to one another from a historical perspective.
It’s also interesting that, at the same time Walt Disney World offers a better deal to Florida residents and Annual Passholders (as compared to last year) during some of these same dates, they’re offering a lesser discount to the general public. You’d think they would’ve at least matched the first Stay Longer & Save deal from January 3 of last year, especially with Epic Universe opening this summer!
This suggests a few things to me. The first is that Disney got too aggressive with this deal last January, offering more of a discount than was “necessary” to hit occupancy targets. I think this much was evident last year when the special offer was pulled early and replaced with the same deal but not as good a couple of months later, but this further reinforces that notion.
Second, that Disney CFO Hugh Johnston was not lying when he said early bookings are slightly stronger for Summer 2025 than last year. Perhaps Walt Disney World really is correct with its “rising tides lifts all ships” thesis. Or maybe there’s already a ton of enthusiasm for Disney Starlight Night Parade. Maybe both. (Is seems notable that Disney is doing superior ticket deals for kids and trying to exclude Magic Kingdom from the more adult-centric offer.)
Finally, that Walt Disney World is going to embrace price discrimination strategies in its approach to dealing with Epic Universe. It’s probably no coincidence that Annual Passholders–a group of not just Disney fans, but theme park fans as a whole–are getting a deal that’s better than last year, whereas regular tourists have a slightly worse offer. Perhaps this is Walt Disney World recognizing it’s going to need to do more to appeal to more passionate fans, many of whom aren’t just passionate about Disney, but theme parks, generally.
It’s also possible that this is all over-analysis and Walt Disney World is mixing up approaches to see what works best. Still, this general public offer for 2025 not being better than last year’s initial release says something.
Nevertheless, there are some very good deals to be had. All Stars for $107, Pop Century for $154, Coronado Springs for $211, Caribbean Beach for $262, and several Deluxe Resorts for under $400 per night, which are relatively reasonable rates. These are about as low as you’re going to find for general public discounts, with the possible exception of January and February 2026 (so next year) when rack rates will be lower.
In particular, both Wilderness Lodge and Animal Kingdom Lodge for around $320 per night; Contemporary for $398 per night; and the Crescent Lake Resorts for around $400 per night. Even Grand Floridian for $516 is low, relative to its rack rates. The lodges are always personal favorites, and the recently redone rooms there are tough to beat. Ditto the Garden Wing at the Contemporary, which has become our go-to when traveling as a family for the location within walking distance to Magic Kingdom. Not having to transfer from a stroller when Baby Bricker is asleep at the end of the night is a huge win.
At the lower end of the spectrum, these savings make the Value and Moderate Resorts tough to beat. You’re going to be hard-pressed to find anything off-site that can beat the rates Walt Disney World is offering. For me, the All Stars at anything under $140 is great–new rooms, Early Entry, transportation, and free parking really sweeten the deal to the point that your ‘all-in’ cost off-site will likely be higher. (If you can find it, Pop Century is a great pick at ~$160 per night.)
And for reference, the searches I did to spotcheck prices for this re-release of ‘stay longer & save more’ encompassed identical dates to the initial release in June. In most cases, the prices are exactly the same or slightly less expensive. The Value Resorts, in particular, all decreased. Caribbean Beach and Contemporary both increased slightly.
Obviously anecdotal based on my parameters, but this deal seems substantially the same as the first round from what I’m seeing. (My previous searches weren’t for the weeks with the lower savings, so neither are my new ones–if they were, the savings would almost certainly decrease.)
Ultimately, this is another discount that’s pretty good by historical standards and certainly better what we were seeing in 2021-2023 (pretty much nothing!), but still manages to fall slightly short of expectations. Perhaps that’s a “me problem” as this is on par with what was released at the same last year, but not as good as the January special offer encompassing a substantially similar date range. I had hoped we’d see something equivalent to that first release for late summer and early fall 2025 given the same timeframe is the opening season of Epic Universe.
This should be an interesting saga to follow, and it’s almost certain that we haven’t seen the end of Walt Disney World’s efforts to woo back former fans, compete with Universal Orlando, and pull “levers” to incentivize more demand and guest spending. If bookings end up being softer than expected–due not just to Epic Universe, but also the economy, consumer confidence, international travel slowdown, etc–it’ll be interesting to see what type of more unique promotions (beyond room discounts) are released for the second half of 2025. We will be closely monitoring what’s released and will notify subscribers of our free email newsletter when any Walt Disney World discounts are released or rumored!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of these Walt Disney World room-only discounts for August through October 2025? If you booked this, do you think you ended up with a good price or do you feel like you’re overpaying? What was available or unavailable for your dates? Is this deal enough to convince you to book a trip, or can you not justify these prices? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
