Yes. Last night it was only available up to March 20th. At 11PM Central on the dot, the March 21st date became available. I clicked in and refreshed a few times until about 11:05PM Central, and at no point did I see any availability for that date.
It's brutal, I feel bad for people trying to book at the 60-day mark. But my main question was, what will availability look like for the 61-65 day mark? I read a sporadic data point on another blog that I'll be lucky if I can get 63 days out, and I'd have the most like at 65+ days out (i.e. the longer my hotel reservation, the easier I'll have booking at the tail-end).
Well if anyone cares, here is my data point:
Immediately at 11PM Central I was able to select the full days of my reservation (a Sunday through Friday). Since Sunday and Friday are check in/out days, I only selected Monday through Thursday. It then prompts you to select a bucket of time (Morning, Afternoon, Evening). I clicked Morning, and it had no bookings for Monday (61 days), Tuesday (62 days) or Wednesday (63 days). However, Thursday had ONE opening at 9:30AM.
Despite my preference to have the appointment on Tuesday (my daughter's birthday), I was prioritizing a morning appointment. I selected 9:30AM without much hesitation. It then prompted me to enter my Disney password (which was annoying considering I was already logged in). After doing so, the screen just spun for 30 seconds or so until I got a message that an error had occurred with my booking and to start again. UGH!
I had to refresh and go back to selecting my dates--but uh oh, it was only giving me the 60 day window and not the extra days with my hotel reservation! What gives? I began to panic a bit, and was refreshing constantly and trying to open other tabs. FINALLY after 2 minutes or so (it's now roughly 11:02PM), it gave me the range of dates to select. I once again chose Monday through Thursday. This time, there were ZERO morning slots available. I then clicked on Afternoon, and saw there was a 2:20pm slot on my preferred day (Tuesday) which was actually the earliest time slot available on any of those days (besides Thursday which had a 12:15pm). I ended up choosing the Tuesday slot.
All in all, I feel very flustered. I had the unfortunate error during checkout which caused me to lose valuable time. Perhaps if I had just targeted Tuesday Afternoon from the jump, I could have grabbed a more preferably 12pm'ish slot rather than 2pm.
I'm not terribly upset with the 2:20pm slot, but I know we're going to be rope-dropping the park since the kids are young and will be too excited. So having to basically kill time from 8AM-2PM might feel like forever for my daughter. At least we'll be at Disney! But when your 4 year old typically goes to bed around 7:30-8pm, this just means less time for her dressed as a princess. Of course, it's vacation, and maybe they'll be awake enough to make the fireworks before we head back to the hotel, in which case she'll get some more time (trying to stay positive haha).
This also indirectly impacted our dining plans--my dream was to get an early morning BBB slot and then go catch a late breakfast at CRT, or maybe an early lunch. Due to when our BBB appointment is, I opted for a CRT dinner slot at 5:15PM.
I will likely still keep an eye open for an earlier appointment and definitely try the day before to scoop up last minute cancellations. One thing I wonder is, can you show up the morning of and tell them "I have a later reservation but I'd love to get in ASAP if you have room?" I've done this numerous times with Disney dining options and while not guaranteed, it seems the restaurant is always happy to squeeze us in early as long as we already have a reservation at some point that day. Of course, BBB might not operate that way.
