Are hotels booking to capacity at WDW?

[jkatzz]

Hey All,

I was looking at booking in November/December (not holiday weeks) and there are weeks of no availability, and some with only 2 rooms available. Does anyone know if they are actually filling all the rooms in the hotels they have open, or have they only booked at a lower capacity due to the limited park capacity?

Thanks!

 

[lanejudy]

Here's another recent thread on the topic:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/open-resorts-booking-at-capacity.3838080/

 

[Bella749]

Most likely they aren’t filling all the rooms. How could they if park capacity isn’t at 100%. Also I heard they are having staffing issues so until they can get that taken care of I am sure they won’t be booking at full capacity.

Hey All,

I was looking at booking in November/December (not holiday weeks) and there are weeks of no availability, and some with only 2 rooms available. Does anyone know if they are actually filling all the rooms in the hotels they have open, or have they only booked at a lower capacity due to the limited park capacity?

Thanks!

 

[fabfemmeboy]

Most likely they aren’t filling all the rooms. How could they if park capacity isn’t at 100%. Also I heard they are having staffing issues so until they can get that taken care of I am sure they won’t be booking at full capacity.

Well, even if park capacity isn't at 100% (which it evidently may be by fall, per Chapek's recent comments), given the number of hotels either not open yet or only open for DVC, it would be possible to have all of the open hotels be full and not have park capacity at 100%. It would also depend on what percentage of park guest spots were allocated to APs and off-site ticket holders, etc.

However, capacity for hotels can be a bit of a misnomer. Yes, there are a lot of nights for which there is simply no availability at any of the hotels - or entire classes of hotel, at least. That means that, for those nights, the hotel is full - there is no availability. They're not holding back rooms, you can't book anymore. BUT that might not mean that every single room is full. According to one CM somewhere sometime, about 80% of rooms are occupied and that's being considered full-up (at whichever hotel was being discussed at whatever point it was being discussed - I want to be very clear I'm not buying this as first-hand information here!) This can be for a number of reasons, both pandemic-related and non-pandemic-related. One reason cited was pool crowding complaints. Another might be the difficulties of feeding everyone with mobile ordering and shortages of space in the quick service eateries. Another could be staffing concerns vis a vis cleaning and check in/out. Another could be renovations - I don't recall whether those are completely done-done at ASMo, but they weren't when things reopened last year. All of which means that, for whatever reason, a resort could have no further booking availability even if only 80% of all rooms are occupied. So is that booking at "full capacity"? Depends on your definition.

 

[WNYDisneyDad]

I booked my November 2021 trip in December 2020 and saw very few options. I thought I was crazy but I wasn’t the only one.

I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be offering all their rooms in opened resorts, but you never know.

I wonder how many non-Americans have resort stays booked with the hope they will be allowed to vacation here. And depending on how international travel goes, more capacity might open up as they cancel.

 

[maltdizzy]

Yes, the hotels are fully booked, except for the Club Levels, and they are using those for overflow. 30% of all room inventory has no reopening date, that's what put the crunch on room inventory, expecially at the Moderate and Value levels. Despite that, Chapek has said advance booking for late 2021/2022 have reached 2019 levels — there are people who booked 500 days in advance (pre-pandemic), and tons who rolled over trips they planned to take in 2020 or early 2021. There are guests who booked at hotels last year that still have to be walked because their hotels aren’t slanted to reopen. All of the USA is planning on traveling domestically this year, and they have two years worth of vacation funds to spend — beaches, national parks, Hawaii, WDW, etc. — are all dealing with more demand they then can handle.