Can someone give waitlist tips?

[albergstrom]

Okay, we're newbies here. We just got through ROFR and are sending off our closing papers tomorrow. Should be in the Disney system in the next week or two. We already have travel plans to Disney BCV paying cash 9/10-9/17. We booked this back at the beginning of the year knowing we wanted to go for our son's birthday, before we finally found a DVC resale we wanted. We have some banked points that will be expiring 4/1/11 that we are hoping to use for our upcoming trip if it's available.
I know waitlisting is an option, can someone explain to me how this all works? Do you have to make a reservation at a villa that is available and then waitlist the location you really want, or can you just go on the waitlist? Do all reservations have to be made through member services, or can any of this be done online? I'm assuming not since I see people talk about calling member services every day to check a waitlist. How exactly is the waitlist filled? If you are wanting to go for a week, do they only fill your request if the whole week becomed available, or do they fill individual days as they become available so hopefully you will end up with the full week? Can anybody give me tips for the best success rate of getting your request filled? Thanks so much!

 

[5forDiz]

Waitlists are filled on first come, first served basis; no way of telling how many are ahead of you that is truly accurate, of course you can ask MS but again, it is anybody's guess how many may or may not be ahead of you. Once you are on WL it is not necessary to call everyday to check (& in fact,frowned upon by many as a waste of MS resources which our dues pay for, but most members have been known to call occasionally to check, myself included if I've been on waitlist for long while, so if you want to call every so often to check that by all means you can).
When your WL is fulfilled it will appear on Member's Site.

You are only permitted 2 active waitlists at any one time.

You may only waitlist a resort that is NOT your Home Resort at 7 months or less before check in date you'd like.

As far as I know, you do not have to have a reservation in order to be waitlisted for something so I do believe you can just waitlist but again, if it isn't at your HR than you can only do waitlist at 7mos or <.

You need to have enough points available for use during your travel dates to cover what you want to waitlist for so that can be either from banked, borrowed or the current Use Year allotment BUT note that MS will automatically pull the points if WL comes through; so they will not call you to ask if you, for example, still want to borrow the points to fulfill the WL. And if using banked or borrowed points always check to see when your WL is fulfilled that MS used banked points first, then Current Use Year points and then borrowed points if necessary to complete your WL request.

ALL dates in the range you tell MS must come through in order for your waitlist to be fulfilled so if you want a 1 bedroom villa at BWV-Standard for Sept 20 thru 25 it must become available for all nights; MS will not fill Sept 20-23 and then still have you waitlisted for Sept 24-25 AND they will only be looking for a 1 bedroom-Standard so if a 1 bedroom Preferred comes available for those dates MS will not fulfill your Waitlist with that type of villa.

I have never set a waitlist up online on Member's Site but I have read of member's who have (I think there is a bit of delay in doing it this way, seem to remember hearing something about 48 hours before MS may actually read the request).

Best wishes and WELCOME HOME

 

[CarolMN]

Okay, we're newbies here. We just got through ROFR and are sending off our closing papers tomorrow. Should be in the Disney system in the next week or two. We already have travel plans to Disney BCV paying cash 9/10-9/17. We booked this back at the beginning of the year knowing we wanted to go for our son's birthday, before we finally found a DVC resale we wanted. We have some banked points that will be expiring 4/1/11 that we are hoping to use for our upcoming trip if it's available.
I know waitlisting is an option, can someone explain to me how this all works? Do you have to make a reservation at a villa that is available and then waitlist the location you really want, or can you just go on the waitlist? Do all reservations have to be made through member services, or can any of this be done online? I'm assuming not since I see people talk about calling member services every day to check a waitlist. How exactly is the waitlist filled? If you are wanting to go for a week, do they only fill your request if the whole week becomed available, or do they fill individual days as they become available so hopefully you will end up with the full week? Can anybody give me tips for the best success rate of getting your request filled? Thanks so much!

First of all, congratulations on your purchase and welcome home!

Once you are in the system, just give MS a call. Ask for the reservation you want, and if it is not available, ask to be put on the waitlist. You do not have to have a reservation to waitlist.

Tell the CM at MS that you want to stay on the waitlist until 7 days prior to arrival. If you don't, your waitlist will be canceled at 31 days prior to arrival. I assumed that you could still cancel your cash reservation at that time. If that is not true, be sure to tell the CM you want the waitlist to end at the 31 day mark if it doesn't come through for you.

IMO, you have a good chance of getting a room for your dates. September dates tend to fill more slowly than any other time of the year. That's especially true for you because your your dates are before the beginning of the Food & Wine Festival and after the Labor Day Holiday. Of course there are no guarantees, but the odds are with you.

 

[EWL]

Hi all!

Another new DVCer here with the same questions as the original poster of this thread-- so I went searching before starting a new one, but in addition to the very useful answers above, can anyone help me understand how this works at AKV? If there are 4 categories (value, standard, savannah, concierge) for both studios and 1BRs (which is what we'd be looking at), does that mean there are 8 options for waitlisting? (Although I guess value and concierge are probably huge longshots, so maybe effectively there are really only 4 options?) So we could waitlist for at most 2 of them, and we'd have to match the size/view exactly PLUS all of our exact dates to clear the waitlist, right?

Otherwise, if the reservation you want is not available when you call, and you don't want to go on the waitlist, do people just keep calling every day? Or if you're waitlisted for two options but there are others, would you keep calling to check on those? Just trying to get a better understanding of how this process works with DVC. (I'm used to being able to do it all online myself-- I hope they come thru with the online system this year!) And I imagine this is mostly an issue for us now when we're waiting for our account to go active and hoping to travel in August-- future years we'll be able to take advantage of the 11 month window.

By the way, will we eventually get something from DVC that explains all these procedures for reservations/waitlists/etc.? Because otherwise I don't know WHAT we'd do without the DISBoards!

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Lol - I was getting confused by the first post and points expiring 4/1/11! You may want to start your own thread with this question but the quick answer is that yes, each view in each building at AKV would require a waitlist and you can only select two. So for a studio or 1BR there are up to 12 different options. If you want to check on others you will need to call.

 

[EWL]

each view in each building at AKV would require a waitlist and you can only select two.

WOW, did not realize Kidani and Jambo are separate options too!

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

WOW, did not realize Kidani and Jambo are separate options too!

It is a bit crazy!

 

[hollis]

Way back, we used to be able to specify wait for the whole reservation, or wait one night at a time. Now, there is no one night at a time option any more. So your waitlist will only come through if all nights are available at the same time. This makes things simpler (for Disney at least), but makes it so much harder to rely on waitlist. So if I have to waitlist, I always have a backup plan.

August is a busy month. At AKV, Kidani Village savanna view would be the best bet as there are more rooms in that category. But every now and then, there is a room available in the usually less available category but not in the usually more available category. So while statistics can help us estimate, you really never know. Standard view tends to run out fast as well (even though not as fast as value and concierge).

For AKV, trying to make a reservation in April for August, I do call frequently (like everyday), even after I set up waitlists. That way I can check categories of rooms I don't have waitlists, and I can also find out if some of the nights in my waitlists are available. When some nights are available, I go ahead and reserve them. I then have to change my waitlists accordingly. For example, if I initially wailisted for 1-bdrm savanna view at both Jambo House and Kidani Village, and the first and third nights are available at Jambo House, I will change my waitlists to second night at Jambo House and fourth night at Jambo House. As for backup in this scenario, I will either book second and fourth night at Jambo House with member cash price (so I won't have to change rooms), or book those 2 nights with points anywhere with room availability (cost less).

 

[EWL]

Thanks for the info!

I just tried calling to see if we are in the system yet (just could not resist), but not yet. More patience needed!

 

[hollis]

Good luck! If I remember right, back when I bought through resale, it took over a week before I got in the system. Well, I wasn't in a hurry back then, since I used the seller's points to make my reservation, and we worked it out so that we close the week after our vacation. We even stopped by the agent's office while in Orlando to sign the papers in person.