What is difficult to determine right now is what will be going on next fall. The refurb itself will likely start early 2023. Prior refurbs of BWV have taken close to a year to complete. The typical process internally is to do half a floor at time, thus leaving the rest of the resort open while any particular half floor is being done.. It usually starts on the fifth floor and works its way down.
If all BW view rooms are so far already taken out for 2 months starting Sept 9, that does point at exterior work. And makes sense along with news about Cake Shop, Cafe, and common areas getting overhauled. Very exciting! But if they do not address any BW View interiors while they are out of commision for the exterior work, does that mean they’ll take them out again during the interior stage? It seems like a waste to vacate them twice, especially for such long periods of time.
Several years ago, we were at the Boardwalk and all rooms on that wing were closed, both Boardwalk View and rooms on the other side of the hallway.
In every refurb that has been done since BWV existed, the pattern for internal work has been the same. They do a half floor at a time, usually starting on the fifth floor -- the rooms on both sides of the hallways, and the hallways, were done at the same time. While any particular half floor was being done, all the other rooms, on the same floor and other floors remained opened. I doubt they would just hold off doing the interior work on all the boardwalk view rooms until next fall, but instead will start that much earlier in 2023, including because if they are working on the boardwalk view rooms inside, they really need to close rooms on both sides of the hallway (including because they will have work carts in the hallways), and the rooms across the hallway from boardwalk view rooms are pool/garden view rooms, and I doubt there is any intent for next fall to essentially shut down about half of all the rooms in the resort at one time for an extended period.
Thanks, all, for the encouragement!
yay! Tomorrow, do a chat with MS to have them all merged.After five days of placing waitlist requests, I finally was able to get all the nights in the view I wanted! Five different reservations for a six night stay.
What crossed my mind is that perhaps they have decided to take all the Boardwalk view rooms out of inventory as the out of service placeholder and they will assign them to people with pool/garden view as they work thru the resort. Would that be enough rooms to allow them to complete the work in the same manner without "bothering" to figure out specifically how it will play out by category?
Hmmmm...that is a very interesting thought!
I think the Grand Villas are located on the wing that is undergoing renovations.
Currently known is that they are showing that all boardwalk view rooms, which includes all the BWV Grand Villas, will be unavailable for Sep 9, 2023, through Nov 16, 2023. We can check daily for availability at 11-months from any given date of arrival, which means today, Dec 10, 2022, we can check Nov 10 through Nov 16, 2023, since the system, at 11-months out, shows availability daily for the arrival date plus 6 nights after the arrival date. Thus far, the system has been adding one "unavailability" date per day in the online system. One would hope that this planned lack of availability ends before time in Jan 2024, but that is still an unknown. The one known is that DVC has never before taken all boardwalk view rooms out of service for any extended period, including during all past refurbs, so we are currently looking at something that has never happened before, and thus have nothing in the past that one could use to possibly predict any outcome.
Thanks for your comment. I wasn’t aware of the timeline but will definitely be checking after Nov 16 to see if any of the BW view rooms come back online. I’ve been debating booking a studio and 2 BR as a backup but if that’s the case, I’d probably want to do standard view and that takes some pre-planning to do and unfortunately I’d likely need to walk those reservations which I have feelings about.
I noticed this with one-bedrooms in September too.
