My timeline for 3 1/2 months booking

[paults]

FOR oct f&wf

at 11 months out I booked 3 standard studios at BWV for DW and I, DDand her DH and baby and For DS. booked last NOV

Needless to say in June my nieces wanted to come too so I booked 2 studios at OKW. Nothing at BWV at 3 1/2 months out.

Then my sister and husband wanted to go and their son and wife and 2 kids from Vermont said they would like to go also. OK so I booked 2 more studios at OKW.

Now I have 3 st studios at BWV and 4 studios at OKW. 18 people total.

I didn't llike having people at 2 resorts so my calling began.

Started on JULY 22 and ended on OCT 9th. Trying to get us all at BWV.

To make a long story short I made 196 calls to MS. Breakdown as follows:

only 2 calls I waited 6 to 10 mins. before a got a CM.

the rest of the calls were picked up within 2 mins.and most didn't last more than 2 mins because they had nothing at BWV for OCT 11 to 16.

during my calls I would sometimes picked up a night or 2 at a time but really spread out from call to call.

By AUG 10 I had everyone at BWV and had cancelled all my OKW studios. Now some of us did have to change rooms 2 times that week but we were all at BWV.

I kept calling to get all the nights in a row and just couldn't.
Then my sister's son had to cancel from (Vermont) because of job .

Now I have to many rooms. Kept calling for changes.

ON Aug 14 I got a BWV GV for OCT 11 and 12 to go with my 2 bedroom standard on OCT 13 and 14.
Kept trying to get a GV for rest of week.
ON Sept 1st I got a GV for OCT 15 our last night.

I kept trying for the GV even when we were there . My last call was OCT 9th.

To find out later 2 of the GV were not in use because work being done on BW side.

How it all ended:

we had 2 st studios for the people with kids 5 nts no moving.
Had a GV first to nts for 7 people then 5 moved to 2bed standard and 2 to st studio for 2 nts. then all 7 back to a GV the last night.
Nobody knew I got the GV nights except my DW and boy were they all supprised. nobody cared that they had to move 2 times, it was worth it.
We were in the 2 story GV first 2 nts and on the last nt we got the other 2 story GV right next door. 5037 and 5035.

What I did notice was that olny 1 waitlist came through out of 6 total. and I did better just calling to see what was available. I asked the CM's and they kept telling me that rooms being cancelled go to a waitlist first and if not picked up they become avalible for anyone.

So therefore even if it's 1 month out keep calling because you never know whats there unless you call.

[RunningthruDisney]

Thanks for the Info.

I think that is going to happen to us. Half the family is still unsure for August thinking they have so much time. We are staying at SSR, but want to switch to Bay Lake or Beach Club at the 7 month window.

[Deb & Bill]

OP, I hope your family really appreciates all the work you did.

[lundve]

All I can say is wow! Great job!

[laura-k]

Originally Posted by paults

To make a long story short I made 196 calls to MS. Breakdown as follows:

What I did notice was that olny 1 waitlist came through out of 6 total. and I did better just calling to see what was available.

Amazing you got this all done -Hope they appreciated you and you all had a great time !
I guess it all go's back to try try again -

Laura

[DMKEDM]

Had a somewhat similar experience last March, during a last-minute (8 weeks out) spring break trip...lots of phone calls, some W/L success (this was when you could W/L day-by-day w/out limits on how many W/Ls you could have)...

We started at OKW, ultimately I got my college kids into a one-BR at BCV (four of the five); the fifth college kid and I wound up having to book a room at the Dolphin...a studio, 1-BR or 2-BR never opened up at either BCV or BWV...

At first I felt very lucky to have what I got...I thought splitting the party between BCV and the Dolphin wasn't so bad at all and getting us into BCV in mid-March by starting only 8 weeks ahead of time was flat-out miraculous!

However, by the end of the trip I was "paying for my sins." Somewhere between when we checked in on a Sunday, when we had a five-night linked 1-BR reservation at BCV and Thursday, someone canceled our last night...at the very same time, the lock on the door to the villa broke and no one (including DVC management) could get in to the villa...all of that could be laughed off as no biggie (took over 2 hours but eventually we got back in and got our last night back), but the fall-out kept going for weeks...

Got charged twice for DP (when they added back the last night they canceled on us)...MS totally messed up my points and to this day it hasn't been fixed (I gave up...I think my point totals are at least close to ok...the records showing points usage for that trip are still all messed up, but given that the totals are close to ok, it's not worth any more time on it)...

It's a good news-bad news ending: bad news first: Sheila from Member Satisfaction called me in the middle of the mess to inform me the whole thing was my fault for having made so many changes to the reservations (keep in mind they were all completely correct the day we checked in, and I never made another phone call after that until the problems developed). Good news: Disney found an additional error in my bill...I found the one w/the double-charged DP and called Disney Accounting...they fixed that, cheerfully and quickly, and then found an additional charge I hadn't noticed that shouldn't have been assessed against me...and they fixed that, too...

So huge gold stars to Disney Accounting, and shame on Member "Satisfaction"...

And the W/L-multiple calls procedure can in fact work, but woe to you if something goes wrong...Sheila made it clear that she thought I had misbehaved badly by trying to piece together this last-minute trip... (I completely disagree: I worked within the rules and never asked for anything "special.")

Oh, well...it was a bad experience, true...but most of our (frequent) DVC stays are great...I can "write off" this one bad time...