Has anyone else been told this???

[maxiesmom]

You are correct, BUT every one that I have seen they have it in writing or let you know this when you make your reservation and not after the fact. When I made my last BB (last month), no where on the pamphlet did it say you had to stay a certain number of nights, nor did the CM that made my reservation ever mentioned this. So I will have a BIG problem if I have to shorten my stay because of my job and am told I cannot

I would never expect a guarantee that if I wanted to cut days off of my trip, that there would be the ability to do so and keep whatever discount I had. Discounts are all subject to availability.

I don't blame Disney. I blame the people who play games with their reservations, and use loopholes to gain some sort of advantage. NOT saying that is what you did. But there are whole threads devoted to doing just that. Not surprising that Disney would find a way to put an end to it.

 

[vinotinto]

It used to be that there was no real penalty for booking very early on, because you could cancel and modify a reservation as needed. But, if that flexibility is gone, it seems prudent to wait until plans are set in stone (i.e., school schedules out, flight schedules and pricing out, discounts and promotions out) before booking, as long as it's at least 60 days prior.

I am waiting for the 2015-2016 school testing schedule (rumors that it's changing for next year) and I was thinking of booking now for October and adjust down as needed. Well, I'll have to wait until the schedule is announced, which will probably be mid-August, so it will be very tight with the 60 days needed for FP+.

 

[maxiesmom]

It used to be that there was no real penalty for booking very early on, because you could cancel and modify a reservation as needed. But, if that flexibility is gone, it seems prudent to wait until plans are set in stone (i.e., school schedules out, flight schedules and pricing out, discounts and promotions out) before booking, as long as it's at least 60 days prior.

I am waiting for the 2015-2016 school testing schedule (rumors that it's changing for next year) and I was thinking of booking now for October and adjust down as needed. Well, I'll have to wait until the schedule is announced, which will probably be mid-August, so it will be very tight with the 60 days needed for FP+.

Could you adjust up? Does it work to book fewer days and then add on?

 

[MakiraMarlena]

It'll work as long as those days are available when you go to add on. Which is very close to the same way it's apparently now going to work for subtracting days.

 

[vinotinto]

Could you adjust up? Does it work to book fewer days and then add on?

It'll work as long as those days are available when you go to add on. Which is very close to the same way it's apparently now going to work for subtracting days.

Exactly. There's no advantage to booking early. The availability needs to be there, whether you are adding or subtracting, so you might as well wait until you have the right dates.

 

[Babsy]

Except you don't get the options of booking your ADR's at 180+, unless you book in advance. If they cancelled the +10 for everyone, then people wouldn't be making fake bookings to get an early advantage.

 

[Babsy]

Could you adjust up? Does it work to book fewer days and then add on?

Exactly. There's no advantage to booking early. The availability needs to be there, whether you are adding or subtracting, so you might as well wait until you have the right dates.

The thing is, you will not really be able to book until you know your dates for sure. People dependant upon air miles or seat sales for flights will be SOL. Getting FP or difficult ADR's may be impossible for them.

 

[Halloweenqueen]

I saw this thread earlier and I started to panic over our FW stay in November. I tried to shorten our stay in a variety of ways online. No dice. I take just one day off and the entire stay becomes unavailable. I then called and was told about minimum stay, but the CM could find no information on what the minimum would be. Thanksging perhaps? I don't know, but I made no changes.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

IMHO, Disney created this problem with 180+10 ADR availability. Cut the ADR 180+10 down to 60+10 or even 90+10 and this massive fluctuation in resort bookings would substantially decline. I would guess a very small minority of people actually know their exact dates 6 months prior to a trip. Even if they are going over a school break, which may be set in stone, once airfare is released and someone sees they can save a substantial amount of money by adjusting their trip by a day or two, they are going to want to take advantage of that savings. If Disney is going to implement this new policy, they could do us all a favor by reducing the number of days in advance we need to be planning other elements of our trips.

 

[aaarcher86]

IMHO, Disney created this problem with 180+10 ADR availability. Cut the ADR 180+10 down to 60+10 or even 90+10 and this massive fluctuation in resort bookings would substantially decline. I would guess a very small minority of people actually know their exact dates 6 months prior to a trip. Even if they are going over a school break, which may be set in stone, once airfare is released and someone sees they can save a substantial amount of money by adjusting their trip by a day or two, they are going to want to take advantage of that savings. If Disney is going to implement this new policy, they could do us all a favor by reducing the number of days in advance we need to be planning other elements of our trips.

I think they did t one point and it was either worse, or it didn't help.

 

[mom2rtk]

I am wondering what travel agents are telling their clients. It sounds like it doesn't make much sense to book very far ahead if you need some flexibility. Have they started warning people at booking? Do they have a printout of exactly what the new resort reservation modification rules are? If so, please share.

My travel agent was totally surprised to find this out when she called to modify my reservation.

 

[cakebaker]

Under terms and conditions on the WDW Travel booking engine, it states "Room rates are guaranteed as long as your reservation is not changed."

I don't recall if that information was always there or newly added.

I just checked my reservations that were place over a month ago and that verbiage is included. I'm assuming it's always been included.

 

[ninafeliz]

I posted this in another thread that is very similar, so thought i would put it here also. Sorry if the grammar isn't perfect, I was in a hurry!!

We had a RO reservation using a UOC (what used to be called a PIN code) in a Deluxe room at the WL from May 1-10. We decided to leave May 9th due to my DH's work schedule, but I hadn't bothered to change it as I knew we could do it any time. I read these threads last night and panicked, I called and dropped the last night to make it may 1-9 without any problem. The CM jsut changed it and gave me my new total. My brother booked the same nights in a CL room at the WL (May 1-10) using the 30% off RO spring discount. Because of my SIL and scheduling he decided to stay may 5-9 instead of the 1-10, but again hadn't cancelled the pre and post nights because he knew if had never been an issue before. i called him and told him what i had been reading, he called last night and was able to change it to the 5-9 no problem. However, in his case, the CM put him on hold for 7 minutes and talked to someone before she was able to do it. She told him it was because his offer code had expired, but now I suspect she didn't know why she was having problems and just made a guess to tell him. So we were able to make changes, but this is going to drastically change how we book bounce backs or reservations in the distant future. My DH doesn't always know his work schedule months in advance, so I book Friday - Sunday (9 nights) and then drop either the first or the last night based in if he can take the Monday after vacation off or if he gets the first Friday off but then cannot take the Monday after. i guess I'll have to just book Sat-Sat now and lose a night from my vacation. Or book 2 one night reservations and a 7 night reservation in the same category, and hope we don't have to change rooms, I guess.

 

[IrishNYC]

I don't think people who take advantage of loopholes tend to think about consequences to anyone else.

No, they just think they're getting one over on the big, moneymaking corporation.

Is it even legal to say a hotel is sold out when obviously it's not if they say they will only book week long stays?
Sounds like bait and switch if they are going to have ads for resorts at a price starting at xxxxxx for 3 days or more and then not book rooms under 7 days saying there is no availability when there are rooms, if you book 7 days.

They're not saying they're "sold out" they're saying rooms aren't available. This is nothing new. It's very common when there are promotions or restrictions on bookings. Sometimes there are no package rooms available but try to book room only and there are plenty of rooms.

 

[gwynne]

My travel agent was totally surprised to find this out when she called to modify my reservation.

Thanks for posting about your experience. I don't think much information was given to anyone. It will be interesting to see where this goes in the coming months. Maybe it's permanent, maybe not.

 

[chocolateavocado]

We have a trip booked at WL for Thanksgiving week. I was just online checking airfare prices again and see that if we come home on Friday instead of Saturday, we would save almost 1/2 off total airfare (save almost $800). I just got off the phone about 5 mins ago with Disney and had no problem taking the last day off- changed from 11/21 - 11/28 to now 11/21 - 11/27 at WL woods view room. I'm sure it must be because they still have availability for that week- so I thank everyone for posting and letting us know about this change because if I didn't see this thread I probably wouldn't have made the change this soon and been out of luck.

 

[sndral]

Except you don't get the options of booking your ADR's at 180+, unless you book in advance. If they cancelled the +10 for everyone, then people wouldn't be making fake bookings to get an early advantage.

If you get rid of allowing on site guests the perk of booking all of their ADRs for up to a 10 day stay on one morning session (or phone call) then you force them to log on/call every morning 180 days before. So in my case for my usual 10 day WDW vacation I would need to be up at 3 am my time (west coast) 10 mornings in a row to get my usual 1 ADR per day of stay. Far better, IMO, to simply tie ADRs to the reservation and if it is canceled and rebooked then all ADRs are lost as well. But I don't think the ADRs are the issue that caused this change. Before the credit card ADR guarantee existed it was really tough to get some ADRs. When the guarantee was implemented there was much wailing and complaining here on Dis about how unfair it was and what about this or that. However, since the cc guarantee it is much easier to get ADRs - thus I don't think ADR abuse was the problem this particular change is intended to address.
I really think that Disney was seeing a lot of reservation changing which was resulting in lost profit and this change is an attempt to address that problem. Are there better ways to fix the problem - maybe, but I'm betting that much like the ADR situation once those 'phantom' reservations are out of the system we'll find more room availability. It's sort of like saving chairs by the pool, one person throwing a towel on a chair doesn't remove many chairs from use, just like one person reserving an extra couple of days of a room they don't plan to use doesn't remove much inventory for others to book, but if even 10% of a resorts residents throw a towel on a chair to save it for when they get back from a park suddenly there's no chairs left for actual pool users, likewise if even 10% of those reserving a room add a couple of extra days (for whatever legitimate or illegitimate reason) then there's no rooms available for those who want to go to the resort.

 

[pamkat1820]

this policy makes me a little nervous..... I tend to book before I get my flights because you can get a room so early out. We have never down graded the number of nights but I have moved my dates around almost every trip to work around the cheapest time to fly. I understand why they are doing it, but honestly I do not feel its really fair to the costumer if they do not release the discounts until so close to the time of travel. Its cutting it really close for the ADR's that are hard to get. I moved our stay to arriving a day later and leaving a day later. I wanted BOG for our last night, we always do MK the last day before we leave. I was able to get BOG on the last night of our original reservation but trying to move it over one day now......ya not happening lol! Bottom line I like to tweak my reservation if I am planning a year in advance. I think if this policy sticks then it will deter people from doing that. = less money ahead of time for disney.

 

[Ceryssa]

I would never expect a guarantee that if I wanted to cut days off of my trip, that there would be the ability to do so and keep whatever discount I had. Discounts are all subject to availability.

Well of course that makes sense. But we aren't just talking about people with discounts, are we? People who have booked at full price with no discount are being told the same thing. Let's face it, Disney thinks a lot of their hotels to be charging the amount that they do. And some of us pay it because we want the convenience of being offsite. But budgets, vacation time off work, and school schedules change. Sometimes you just can't stay the whole time. If I've booked 7 days (or however many) at rack rate in anticipation of being able to go the whole time, 6 months in advance in order to be able to plan my dining the way Disney has it set up, and something comes up like my kid's sports schedule--which aren't always handed out 6 months in advance--or my husband has a massive project come up at work--which he also doesn't get notified in advance about all of the time, and isn't always in control of when they happen--I would find it absolutely unreasonable to be told "Sorry, we can't take days off the vacation you're paying FULL PRICE for"!!! Which is what sounds like is happening. My husband is already opposed to staying onsite. If I tell him we can't shorten our trip if something comes up, we won't be going. End of story.

 

[maxiesmom]

Well of course that makes sense. But we aren't just talking about people with discounts, are we? People who have booked at full price with no discount are being told the same thing. Let's face it, Disney thinks a lot of their hotels to be charging the amount that they do. And some of us pay it because we want the convenience of being offsite. But budgets, vacation time off work, and school schedules change. Sometimes you just can't stay the whole time. If I've booked 7 days (or however many) at rack rate in anticipation of being able to go the whole time, 6 months in advance in order to be able to plan my dining the way Disney has it set up, and something comes up like my kid's sports schedule--which aren't always handed out 6 months in advance--or my husband has a massive project come up at work--which he also doesn't get notified in advance about all of the time, and isn't always in control of when they happen--I would find it absolutely unreasonable to be told "Sorry, we can't take days off the vacation you're paying FULL PRICE for"!!! Which is what sounds like is happening. My husband is already opposed to staying onsite. If I tell him we can't shorten our trip if something comes up, we won't be going. End of story.

If you don't have a discount, there is nothing keeping you from cancelling and rebooking your stay.