Disney Resorts Blocking Single Night Reservations Oct. 14 - Dec. 5

[dragonflymom]

https://thepointsguy.com/news/disney-world-blocking-one-night-resort-stays-fall-2021/
Disney must be very confident about 50th anniversary crowds...

 

[Brian Noble]

..or they are doing what they can to minimize the impact on an understaffed housekeeping unit as they open more resorts/rooms.

 

[sponica]

From a workload management perspective, minimizing short stays makes sense.

There aren't enough housekeeping staff for scaled back housekeeping as it is on the 3+ night stays

But aside from that, the past few years they've been trying to limit orphaned rooms and I just see this as an extension of that.

 

[fla4fun]

Just curious, as this doesn’t affect me right now, but does this also affect people who want to add one night to an already existing reservation? It shouldn’t, since it’s a multiple night stay, but knowing Disney’s IT issues, I wondered if the computer would see the addition of one night as a one night reservation and perhaps not allow the CM to even see the availability.

I could see someone with a four night stay, calling to add a night to the end of the trip. CM looks in computer for just the night they want to add, and it shows nothing. So they check adding two nights, and it shows available, meaning the one night they want to add is open to book, but the system won’t let them. So then the CM tries looking at it as a cancel and rebook, but maybe the first night of the original booking is now at capacity, so a new five day booking won’t show available either.

It will be interesting to see if this causes any issues, since many people make changes to their bookings.

 

[Marthasor]

I noticed this issue when booking for early October. Closer to our travel dates, they did open up 2-night reservations, but I never saw any one-night reservations pop up. As PP noted, I also think it's a housekeeping issue. Until they can offer daily housekeeping again, I don't see how they could possibly keep up with 1-night, full room turnovers for new guests.

Just curious, as this doesn’t affect me right now, but does this also affect people who want to add one night to an already existing reservation? It shouldn’t, since it’s a multiple night stay, but knowing Disney’s IT issues, I wondered if the computer would see the addition of one night as a one night reservation and perhaps not allow the CM to even see the availability.

I could see someone with a four night stay, calling to add a night to the end of the trip. CM looks in computer for just the night they want to add, and it shows nothing. So they check adding two nights, and it shows available, meaning the one night they want to add is open to book, but the system won’t let them. So then the CM tries looking at it as a cancel and rebook, but maybe the first night of the original booking is now at capacity, so a new five day booking won’t show available either.

It will be interesting to see if this causes any issues, since many people make changes to their bookings.

It shouldn't affect multi-night stays. When modifying a multi-night stay to try to add an additional night, the website and a CM would look for the full set of dates, not just the added night. If the resort/room is available for all of the nights, they can extend the stay. Sometimes, if you can see availability past the original stay, but the availability isn't showing for an extension of your original dates, you can ask if Guest Services can extend the reservation for you - a regular phone CM would need to transfer you. I hope that makes sense.

 

[fla4fun]

It shouldn't affect multi-night stays. When modifying a multi-night stay to try to add an additional night, the website and a CM would look for the full set of dates, not just the added night. If the resort/room is available for all of the nights, they can extend the stay. Sometimes, if you can see availability past the original stay, but the availability isn't showing for an extension of your original dates, you can ask if Guest Services can extend the reservation for you - a regular phone CM would need to transfer you. I hope that makes sense.

It makes sense, but in my example I mentioned that when the CM looks for the full availability, it could be that dates you already had booked are full, which would result in a search for the full five days as unavailable, even though the fifth day could be wide open. I can see where a transfer to Guest Services could override it though, at least I hope so. I don’t usually drop or add days once I have my trip booked, so it’s not something I was concerned about for myself. I just get curious sometimes.

 

[Nabas]

Blocking single night stays is a common industry practice, especially on weekends.

At WDW, booking a Friday and Saturday night only stay means there’s a good chance that room will remain empty for Sunday to Thursday nights.

Before the pandemic, Disney was reporting 90% hotel occupancy, which is phenomenal. Single night stays tend to hurt that, as it blocks others from booking longer stays.

 

[DL1WDW2]

I can think of a few instances when I wished they had this policy for DVC…Especially at Disneyland Resort , notorious for one night local stays taking a Saturday and screwing up the weekend for out of towners.

 

[Dug720]

I can think of a few instances when I wished they had this policy for DVC…Especially at Disneyland Resort , notorious for one night local stays taking a Saturday and screwing up the weekend for out of towners.

I could see this - especially now with the park reservations. I've seen talk of doing it to use the on property reservations bucket when their magic key bucket is empty.