Anyone thinking ahead to Christmas 2003 yet?

[zurgswife]

The Zurg family will be at WDW for a solid two weeks....

12/19,12/20....Not sure of accomidations
12/21-12/26 2bdrm BWV
12/26, 12/17 Swan suite
12/28 - 1-3 2bdrm BWV

 

[Merilyn]

We are taking the family down around the middle of Dec 2003. We wanted to be home Christmas but a week trip to see the decorations will be great. We always plan months in advance. As soon as 11 months rolls around, I will be on the phone. Want a GV, so OKW may be our only option. I think I will try for one at BWV at 7 months. Any ideas how hard it is to get a GV at 7 months? We will be there around Dec 15th.
Maybe we can get a group together while we are there. It would be nice to meet some of my DVC board friends.

 

[missyndda]

We are talking about getting a studio and a 2bdr at BWV from 12/20 - 12/27. Haven't been over Christmas since 1991 when I had to wear a jacket and gloves the whole trip, but I miss seeing the decorations.

I have to second an earlier post about the week after Christmas being one of the busiest weeks at the parks. Also, I do not recommend being on Main Street for
MVMCP on Xmas Day. Too crowded and not enough action since they are frequently doing scenes from other parts of the park. I believe that a good portion of it is pre-taped earlier in December.

We just received our closing papers, so I am new to the ressies process. I keep seeing calling day by day as part of the posts. So am I understanding this right...I have to call MS every day for 7 days, 11 months out to try to complete my ressie?

 

[DisneyPhD]

We are also from Michigan Travelbug and Mouseclick. Dec is a great time to escape from winter.

We took our first Dec trip 2001 (13, to 20) and loved it. I really recomend going before Christmas if you can. (My husband teaches colleage so we plan to leave as soon as his last exam is over.)

We hope to take a second trip in 2003 Dec 13 to 20 again (or around then) to our home resort of VWL and use annual passes again.


Travel bug I think we will be at BCV around the same time this March. Hope the weather is good. It will be our first DVC trip. Can't wait.

 

[disrailfan]

Well you can look at my signature in my post and see that we are already planning our trips even into October of 2004 and we have even talked about December 2004 and a cruise in 2005.

 

[travelbug]

Hi, DisneyPhD! You're right about WDW being a great place to escape from a Michigan winter.

Will experience my first DVC Christmas trip in a little over a month! I wish so much that I could go down before Christmas, as you're planning on, but my work schedule prevents that.

Hey, maybe we'll run into you at BCV in a few months!

 

[SamS]

An earlier post said that in order to reserve, one would have to reserve a day at a time, ie. call Jan 26th to reserve for December 25th, then call the next day 1/27 to reserve 12/26. Is this for real? I can't imagine how to do this without scheduling a vacation to schedule my vacation. (LOL) I was going to call Monday, Feb 3rd to reserve 12/25 - 1/2. Won't happen huh?

 

[travelbug]

Hi, SamS. It might depend on how flexible you are as to resort and size of unit. I was going for a standard BWV studio, of which there are not many. Let alone for Christmas week! So I just wrote in my planner ahead of time to get on the phone by 9:00 on the days I'd need to call. I got lots of busy signals, but managed to get through by 9:05-9:10 every day. In spite of that, I had to waitlist for 2 of the days in order to get a standard. All of them were already booked by the time I got through, even calling that promptly. Both waitlist days did come through within the next 4-5 months.

Could I have waited and gotten lucky with only one phone call if I'd been willing to stay in any of the DVC resorts? Maybe so, but I didn't know because I had no experience to draw on. Since I wanted to try for a standard BWV room, I decided to call day by day and not take any chances.

By contrast, I got an OKW 1BR for Easter week of 2001 at the 7-month window with only one phone call. No problem at all. OKW is a bigger resort, so that probably helped my chances.

That's only my experiences. I'm still kind of a rookie, so others more experienced in reserving for peak times may have better info to pass along to you. Good luck!

 

[robinb]

Yes, we're thinking about December 2003 too . We bought a BWV resale just so we could stay near Epoct over NYE. I think we'll be staying with friends and their 2 children in a 2 BR. Both families are DVC members and a 2 BR is a lot cheaper than 2 1BRs. Of course, we'll have to switch off on who gets the master bedroom from trip to trip .

 

[DemoBri1]

DW and I, along with DD and DS are thinking of going down either mid-November or the 1st two weeks of December. Guess we better decide soon because 11 month for November is fast approaching!!

 

[Ralph&Pam]

Actually we have two trips planned but not yet booked. We are planning on a week at BWV in late Oct. 2003 for the F&W festival and then 5 nights at BWV (and probably 3 at VB for cash) Dec 28, 2003-Jan 1, 2004. We've been doing the BWV/VB combo the last two years but have always arrived just after the new year when the points are lower (and will be arriving at BWV Jan 2, 2003 for our next visit). But I just realized this weekend that we could go earlier to take advantage of the annual passes we're getting this January 2 and use them again at the end of December. The main reason this will work for us point-wise is that Dec 28-Jan 1 is a Sunday through Thursday stay whereas our usual early January trip includes both a Friday and Saturday night. Also the Oct trip for F&W is replacing our usual mid-March trip (we will be going to London in March instead) and points are lower in Oct than in March. It looks like I'll have just enough points to manage without borrowing. I'll be calliing day-by-day for both the October reservation (in fact, I have to start calling this Wednesday) and again for the December stay.

Ralph

 

[SamS]

Thanks for the benefit of your experience! We (wife and I) are new owners at BCV. We are going to try for a studio there 12/25/03 through 1/2/04 (checkout). I guess we'll call on Monday, Feb 3rd and see what happens. We'll take what we can get, wait-list for the other days, and then call back at the 7 month window to see what studios are available at other DVC resorts if wait list doesn't come through in the mean time. As luck would have it, we'll be skiing at Mt. Snow, VT during the week we'd have to do the day-by-day calling (last week of January). That's entirely too much hassle (and we'd be late onto the slopes). Anybody else like to share their Xmas to New Year reservation experiences? I'd love to hear from you.

 

[BethC]

We're also planning for Christmas 2003. We hope to stay in a one bedroom at BWV from December 21-27 and then we'll be off on the 7 night New Year's Eve cruise to celebrate our 15th anniversary!

I do plan on calling it in day-by-day, hope we don't have any problems booking this.