A DVC dining plan question

[MollyMcDaniel]

Hi all....just posted on the DVC section of the boards but thought I would post here as well since this gets more traffic. Does anyone know if the policy has changed for DVC members to segment their reservation so you don't have to get the dining plan for length of stay? We booked a last minute, post cruise 3 night stay in March and I would like to get the DxDp for 2 nights instead of 3. Member services told me they don't do that anymore. Really? I did it twice in 2011...is this new for 2012? Thanks!

 

[Faldred]

They stopped offering "segmented" reservations back in the fall, I believe, with no advance warning.

 

[zeferjen]

Did you ask if you could book a split stay?

 

[vicki_c]

Did you ask if you could book a split stay?

You can't do a DVC split stay over consecutive nights unless you are changing room types or resorts. But if that is the case, then you could and you could have the DDP on one part of it.

 

[TDC Nala]

No more segmenting. This was discontinued in October 2011, maybe because it was causing enormous headaches for just about everyone involved when people started doing things like segmenting their reservation into, say, seven one-day segments so they could have a dining plan on every other day of their stay.

You can do a split stay, but you'd have to change room type or resort. So there's no longer any way to change dining plans while guaranteeing that you stay in the same room.

 

[MollyMcDaniel]

Thanks for the info. I know I saw last year where some members were segmenting the whole stay. Day 1...DxDp, Day 2 nothing, Day 3 DDP, Day 4 DXDP etc........It was insane!

 

[Faldred]

Thanks for the info. I know I saw last year where some members were segmenting the whole stay. Day 1...DxDp, Day 2 nothing, Day 3 DDP, Day 4 DXDP etc........It was insane!

If that was the only problem, I think it would have been easy enough to fix:

3 nights or less - single-segment only
4-7 nights - up to two segments
8-11 nights - up the three segments
12-14 nights - up to four segments​

From what I heard, they were also having significant problems getting the whole "segment" thing to work properly within the computer systems that track credit allocation and usage.

 

[danimaroo]

What's weird about this is when my husband went to pay for our DDP (we book through DVC), the person with MS actually said to him, "Okay, do you want to split that up at all?" and for us, we're doing 10 days of the DDP, but I thought it was odd that MS actually offered to split it up for us if we wanted to do the dining plan for less days.

Also, my in-laws are doing the DDP at OKW for 3 days before my SIL and niece show up, and they were able to only do 3 days of the DDP (they will not be doing the dining plan with SIL and niece it's not worth it for them)... but the point is, they're not being forced to do the DDP for the full trip.

The trick there is that their first 3 days is booked under just the two of them (vs. the final 10 days with my SIL and niece), so that can also allow you to do a "split stay" without having to actually move resorts/room type (they are not changing their resort or room type or anything for when SIL and niece arrive).

 

[TDC Nala]

What's weird about this is when my husband went to pay for our DDP (we book through DVC), the person with MS actually said to him, "Okay, do you want to split that up at all?" and for us, we're doing 10 days of the DDP, but I thought it was odd that MS actually offered to split it up for us if we wanted to do the dining plan for less days.

Also, my in-laws are doing the DDP at OKW for 3 days before my SIL and niece show up, and they were able to only do 3 days of the DDP (they will not be doing the dining plan with SIL and niece it's not worth it for them)... but the point is, they're not being forced to do the DDP for the full trip.

The trick there is that their first 3 days is booked under just the two of them (vs. the final 10 days with my SIL and niece), so that can also allow you to do a "split stay" without having to actually move resorts/room type (they are not changing their resort or room type or anything for when SIL and niece arrive).

If they were booked prior to October they could still segment. I think it was October when they started telling guests they can't do it anymore.

 

[danimaroo]

If they were booked prior to October they could still segment. I think it was October when they started telling guests they can't do it anymore.

Okay, that definitely makes sense as to why the woman said that to my DH on the phone; we booked back in September and I'm pretty sure paid for DDP prior to October, as well.

As for my in-laws, I know they just recently booked the extra 3 days with the DDP in December, and in fact, their reservations in general for their trip were definitely done after October as they did everything pretty last-second after changing their November trip February. I think the thing with them was the fact though that they were the only two on the initial 3 day reservation for OKW, so that allowed them to have a completely separate reservation without changing the resort or their room type.