The Walt Disney World Swan and Walt Disney World Dolphin are two hotels on Disney property between Epcot and Hollywood Studios (near the Boardwalk). Both are owned and operated by Marriott.
In this post, we cover booking the Walt Disney World Swan and Walt Disney World Dolphin with points. Don’t have Marriott Points (or any idea what they are)? That’s fine! In this post we cover how to earn the points, how to use them, and whether or not the Swan & Dolphin are a good use of Marriott points!
The Bottom Line
Since points and miles posts can get lengthy, I sometimes like to provide a quick answer for those of you already in-the-know. The Swan and Dolphin cost about 60,000 Marriott points per night and are a mediocre use of Marriott points (and a bad use of points transferred from Chase / Amex). However, with some credit card signup bonuses and free night certificates available, this is definitely a workable option for anyone planning a trip to Disney World. These hotels do charge resort fees of $40+ per night.
The Basics of the Swan & Dolphin
The first question you might have is why these hotels? The Walt Disney World Swan, Walt Disney World Dolphin, and Walt Disney World Swan Reserve are three hotels (separated by a short walkway) that are “Official Walt Disney World Hotels.” Throughout this post, we’ll use the phrase “Swan & Dolphin”, but that include all three hotels.
The Swan & Dolphin are operated by Marriott—not Disney—and thus don’t get all the perks of staying at a Disney hotel.
They do, however, get some important perks. Before I get to the list, I want to be clear you should confirm these with the hotel before booking because they are always subject to change. Here’s an official “Disney benefits” page for these hotels, for reference.
Guests at the Swan & Dolphin have access to Early Theme Park Entry, a perk that grants guests access to each park, every day 30 minutes before the general public. They also have access to Extended Evening Hours, a perk otherwise available only to guests of deluxe Disney hotels, which grants guests extra hours in select parks on select evenings.
Swan & Dolphin guests have the ability to purchase and book Lightning Lanes 7 days in advance of your trip, rather than 3 days in advance of your visit date.
They also have an excellent location just off Crescent Lake, where Disney’s BoardWalk Inn, Yacht Club, and Beach Club are. This gives them walking access to Epcot and Hollywood studios, though their bus service has been changed to non-Disney buses, meaning in particular they get dropped off at Transportation and Ticket Center, not directly at Magic Kingdom.
With their prime location and respectable set of perks, the Swan & Dolphin are worth considering for anyone looking for a nice Disney stay without breaking the bank on an actual Disney hotel.
The Basics of Booking Marriott Hotels With Points
If you’re completely new to the world of points and miles, here’s a quick primer. The Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin are operated by Marriott. Marriott has a rewards program called Marriott Bonvoy.
You can earn points in Marriott Bonvoy through a variety of methods, like staying at Marriott hotels and using Marriott-branded credit cards. We’ll cover how to get these points in more detail below.
Once you have the points, you can use them to stay at Marriott hotels, including the Swan & Dolphin. You’ll naturally have lots of questions about this—how do I use the points? How many points do I need? How do I get that many points? Is this a good use of points? And we’ll answer those in this post.
We’re going to start with how to earn (lots of) Marriott points. We’ll quickly say that you need about 60,000 points for a night at these hotels so you have enough context. After this, we’ll talk in more detail about how much these stays cost per night, and what availability looks like when booking with points.
Then we’ll cover whether this is a good use of Marriott points. We’ll finally close with the step-by-step process for booking the Swan & Dolphin with Marriott points. While that’s sort of the “core” of this post, the “if” and “why” sections are obviously more important, so we start with them.
How To Earn Marriott Points (and Free Nights)
Three things to know immediately…
First, a night at the Swan or Dolphin starts at around 50,000 points, but with peak nights being frequent, try and plan for at least 60,000 to 70,000.
Second, availability is not perfect. We’ll discuss how to check for availability later, but what I want you to know here is that you shouldn’t plan on earning points and then easily booking Christmas week. Even if you search today, by the time you have the points in your account the availability will be somewhat more limited.
Finally, this section doesn’t cover every way to earn Marriott points. For a more comprehensive analysis of this, check out Upgraded Points.
Marriott Credit Card Signup Bonuses
Credit card signup bonuses are mostly straightforward. The card issuer has a promotion where you spend X dollars (on whatever) within Y days/weeks/months of opening your account and they’ll reward you with Z bonus points.
The details of these can get technical (when does the “clock” start, what if you have returns, when will you get the points), but this post isn’t the place for that. Here, we just want to highlight current example bonuses for Marriott points.
Here’s a look at the publicly available bonuses as of March 28, 2023
American Express Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant ($650 annual fee) — 95,000 points for spending $5,000 in 3 months
American Express Marriott Bonvoy Bevy ($250 annual fee) — 85,000 points for spending $4,000 in 3 months
American Express Marriott Bonvoy Business ($125 annual fee) — 125,000 points for spending $5,000 in 3 months
Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold — ($0 annual fee) 60,000 points for spending $2,000 in 3 months
Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless ($95 annual fee) — 100,000 points for spending $3,000 in 3 months
You can find the current offers and terms directly at the Chase and American Express websites (or just google the names of the cards).
There are lots of restrictions on who can get these bonuses, including that it’s very difficult or impossible to get two bonuses within 24 months. Any of these cards is going to be enough for one night most of the year, and you can be right around 2 nights with a few of them.
Marriott Card Free Night Certificates
The various Marriott Bonvoy cards have various free night certificates that you get every year you have the card, but it’s important to note how these work.
To start, Marriott sets a worth on the certificate. For example, the free night on the Chase Bonvoy Boundless card is good for a night up to 35,000 points. The free night on the Amex Bonvoy Brilliant is good for a night up to 85,000 points. This means the Amex Bonvoy Brilliant free night certificate is enough for a free night at the Swan & Dolphin most nights, but the Chase Bonvoy Boundless free night certificate usually won’t be enough.
However, there’s also a limited option to “top up” a certificate with up to 15,000 points. This means all nights that cost 50,000 points or less are within the reach of the Chase Bonvoy Boundless certificate if you have 15,000 points to “top up” the 35,000 point certificate.
Marriott Credit Card Spending
This is a small earner, but those credit cards above all earn Marriott points when you spend money on them. If you’re spending at Marriott hotel, you’ll earn up to 6X points per dollar spent (bonuses on top of this rate are even sometimes available). If you spend $50,000 on your card in a year, you’ll earn at least 50,000 points, enough for one free night.
Transfer from American Express or Chase Rewards
American Express’s mainline credit cards earn Membership Rewards points. Chase’s earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points. These points can be transferred from those programs to Marriott at a 1:1 rate (1,000 Chase/Amex points for 1,000 Marriott points).
Note this is unrelated to the Marriott credit cards discussed above. With those cards, you earn Marriott points directly and those points can only be used within Marriott’s system. With the mainline Amex/Chase cards, you’re earning points that can be used for lots of things, one of which is transferring them to Marriott.
As with the Marriott cards, you can often find signup bonuses for these cards offering 50,000 to 100,000 points. So if you got one Marriott bonus for 100,000 points, one Chase Ultimate Rewards bonus for 100,000 points, and one American Express bonus for 100,000 points, you could have 300,000 Marriott points—enough for six nights at Swan and Dolphin.
But this usually won’t be a good use of Chase or American Express points. Those points are much more valuable than Marriott points if you’re trying to get maximum value. And even if you’re not, there are sometimes ways to book the Swan & Dolphin with Chase points that might cost less than using Marriott points. We discuss this near the end of the post in “What if I used Chase Ultimate Rewards?”
Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Nightly Rates
Marriott did away with awards charts / categories and now uses dynamic pricing, where they set the nightly points rate of the hotel as they see fit. Generally, looking at the next year of the calendar, I currently see nights from about 42,000 points to 66,000 at the Dolphin. In our example search below, we show how you could go about getting an idea of rates for your stay.
Resort Fees at the Swan and Dolphin
Also important—the Swan & Dolphin have resort fees. Resort fees are basically a way for hotels to charge you some extra amount on every stay without including it in the advertised rate. The resort fees at Swan & Dolphin are around $40+tax per night and apply to all bookings, including when booking with points.
Using Fifth Night Free to Boost Your Value
When you book four nights at a Marriott property using points, you’ll get the fifth night free. Specifically, the night of your stay that costs the fewest points will be free. If you're thinking four days at the parks is enough time (and money), consider taking the fifth day for a no parks day. Near the Boardwalk and Fantasia Gardens you’re perfectly placed for a fun day!
This means that a five night stay at the Swan & Dolphin will cost you 168,000 to 264,000 points, depending on whether you’re in peak / off peak / standard season. (That said, even in off-peak season, finding five straight nights at 42,000 points per night is going to be a rarity.)
Are Swan and Dolphin a Good Use of Marriott Points?
This will vary by stay. In the example we give below, we get 0.92 cents per point of value. One Mile at a Time values Marriott points at 0.7 cents, so this could be considered a good redemption by that measure. That said, there are ways to get more than 2 cents per points.
The value of these points is ultimately subjective. You can’t sell them for cash (and if you ever can, Marriott would give you next to nothing for them). So if you don’t have another Marriott stay on the horizon, the Swan and Dolphin might still be your best use of these points.
Note this doesn’t speak to transferring Amex or Chase points and using those. Generally, this will be a poor use of these points as they can be used in a variety of ways and usually have a floor value of at least 1 cent. We discuss this a bit more in “What If I Used Chase Ultimate Rewards?” below.
Other Marriott Hotels Near Disney World
There are other Marriott hotels near Walt Disney World, but none of them will have Early Theme Park Entry or access to individual Lightning Lanes at 7AM, if you need those.
Here’s a list of some other Marriott hotels. I’m only using hotels that advertise included shuttles to Disney World.
JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort & Spa
TownePlace Suites Orlando at FLAMINGO CROSSINGS® Town Center/Western Entrance
SpringHill Suites Orlando at FLAMINGO CROSSINGS® Town Center/Western Entrance
Delta Hotels Orlando Lake Buena Vista
Fairfield Inn & Suites Orlando Lake Buena Vista
You could do a price analysis comparing $ / pt at these hotels vs. Swan and Dolphin. Personally, I wouldn’t go that route. What it really comes down to is whether the perks/location of Swan and Dolphin make it worth the extra points over your best other Marriott option. (Frankly, I can’t imagine a situation in which I go through all these hoops to engineer a points stay near Disney World and don’t book a hotel with Early Entry. It’s just a waste of a lot of effort at that point, in my opinion.)
Booking The Swan and Dolphin With Points
While it can be fluky, the Marriott website is easy to use for booking the Swan and Dolphin with points. We’ll take you through the process step by step, highlighting some of the details you should notice along the way.
1. Visit Marriott Search Page
The Marriott home page options are a little limited immediately, so I like to start my search at the dedicated search page here. Whenever possible, I like to do searches in incognito or private mode to avoid too many cookie-related errors.
2. Specify Search Location and Dates
I’m going to use “Disney World” as my destination. I’m not searching for any special rates, I’ll just search for one adult in one room. There are two ways to search for dates. If you need specific dates, you can input them here. If those dates aren’t available, the results page will have a “Dates Flexible? View Availability” option. I’m going to just search for flexible dates right away by searching for five nights in April.
3. Search For Points Rates
And I’ll check the box that says “Use Points / Awards” because I’m trying to book with points. Then I click “Find Hotels.”
4. Select Your Hotel to See Availability
Because I’m doing a flexible search, the next page isn’t super helpful. I have to select my hotel in order to see the specific availability calendar for five nights in April. I’ll use the Walt Disney World Swan Reserve for this search.
Recall that the Swan & Dolphin get Early Theme Park Entry, Extended Evening Hours, and access to individual Lightning Lanes at 7AM. Other Marriott hotels may be nearby, but they won’t have these perks (or as good location. Notice that booking five nights I’m getting the fifth night free, as discussed above.
5. Select Your Check-In Date
All these prices are displayed as total rates for my five night stay with the indicated check-in date. Availability in April isn’t great, but I could also look into other months using the arrows on this page. I’ll pick Tuesday, April 18 check in for 233,000 points.
6. Select My Room & Rate
This is the first time Marriott tells me about the dreaded resort fee, which will run me $40+tax each night. When you book with points, you’re still on the hook for that resort fee.
Notice I can see what the nightly USD rate is, if I wanted to switch to that. It doesn’t include taxes or resort fees as it’s displayed, but it’s still good to see it before using my points. You could easily check the actual total if you wanted by just selecting it and going to the final booking screen.
Below the redemption rate, not pictured, is a “Customize Payments” option that would allow me mix points rates with cash rates and certificates, if available.
6. Confirm and Book
The next page reveals that I’ll be paying 233,000 points plus $225 in resort fees and taxes. That’s a hefty chunk of change for a redemption booking. On this page I’d put in any other information needed to complete the booking (like credit card info) and complete the booking.
The lowest cash rate I could find on the Marriott website for this stay was $2,382.75, which includes taxes and the resort fee. This means my 233,000 points would be used to offset $2,382.75-$225=$2,157.75, so I’m getting 0.92 cents per point ($0.0092 per points).
What If I Used Chase Ultimate Rewards?
As of this update, I’m actually still not seeing the Swan and Dolphin in the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal. This isn’t shocking given that Disney hotels have disappeared from the portal, but it is disappointing.
It also makes the analysis a little annoying because I can’t just compare booking the Swan and Dolphin through Marriott vs booking the Swan and Dolphin through Chase.
The short of this analysis is that since I’m a Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholder, my Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1.5 cents each when I book travel through Chase. So if the Dolphin stay was available in the portal, the $2,382.75 stay would only cost me 158,850 Chase Ultimate Rewards points (as a Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholder).
Alternatively, if I needed to transfer 233,00 Chase points to Marriott for this stay, I’d be giving up $3,495 that could be used to book a different hotel.
Now, this analysis is irrelevant if I’m earning Marriott points directly instead of transfering from Chase. I can’t transfer my Marriott points to Chase, so all I can do is get the most value out of Marriott points once I have them.
All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered
Don't be overwhelmed by Disney World planning! Take a second to check out our most important content and you'll not only be an expert, but you'll save big $$$ along the way.
Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars. For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.
When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets. Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans! And don't forget to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations!
Don't forget to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.
Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.
Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.