The original rule when OKW first came into existence was that one could book starting at 11-months out from day of departure at your home resort, and 10-months out from day of departure from an unowned DVC Resort. Of course, at the time there was only one DVC Resort, and that 10-month window was never used because, just before VB was added in 1995, the rule for non-owned resorts was changed to 7-months from day of departure.
The 11/7 date-of-departure rule lasted until 2008, when it was changed to being able to book 11/7 months out from date of arrival, but at exactly 11/7 months out you could book no more than 7 nights. You could add nights thereafter by modifying your reservation by phone, but your new departure date when doing so could never be more than 11-months plus 7-days from the date of doing the modification. That remains the rule now.
Before 2012, by phone was the method to make or change reservations and such changes could not occur until MS opened at 9 a.m. Eastern. The online reservation system was added to the DVC website in 2012, and the rule became that you could reserve up to seven nights online as early as 8 a.m. at 11/7 months out despite that MS still did not open until 9 a.m.
There actually has never been a stated limit to the total number of continuous nights you can reserve in one room, except the limit provided by the number of points you have to use. Some thought it was 14-nights when, as was true for the first several years of the online reservation system, the computer system would allow only 14-nights. That was thought to be supported by the Florida law which provided that someone who has stayed in a room for at least 15 days could assert a residency right and could not be forced to leave the room absent DVC actually seeking a court ruling to evict the member. The rule actually never applied to DVC both because the POS expressly provides that one cannot claim any residency rights based on any stays at a DVC Resort, and because the actual legal rule requires one to be able to assert and prove that one has no residency anywhere else. (That Florida statutory rule itself was partially changed in March 2024 to allow an owner or manager of property to have squatters removed via having the police remove them without a court hearing if the squatter does not have express permission from the owner to be on the property.)
The 30-day DVC reservation limit that exists now is a computer-system limit not a legal limit, and there is no stated DVC rule that prohibits longer reservations, except the problem that the computer system may only allow 30-days.
