February Availability

[sbbwdw]

Hello, All! Question, so we are looking at mid February, not a lot of availability. Only deluxe for 5 people is like $1200 a night! Zero villas, are they truly all booked or do they hold the villas? I remember in years past villas would not show up too early, but thought that 4 months out would be soon enough? Any thoughts?

 

[Marionnette]

Hello, All! Question, so we are looking at mid February, not a lot of availability. Only deluxe for 5 people is like $1200 a night! Zero villas, are they truly all booked or do they hold the villas? I remember in years past villas would not show up too early, but thought that 4 months out would be soon enough? Any thoughts?

There are only a few ways for DVC villas to show up as cash inventory.

The first would be when Disney uses their own points to reserve a villa and then sell it as a cash reservation. That can occur as early as 11 months ahead of time.

The second way would be for a DVC member to exchange out their points for DCL, ABD, the Concierge Collection or the Disney Collection. When that occurs, the points are used by DVC (using a complex system) to book a villa and then have Disney CRO sell it for cash to pay for the member's trip. Since points cannot be used for a reservation until 11 months out, you can see availability on the cash side as early as 11 months out but as late as days before arrival.

The last way for cash inventory to show up is what is referred to as breakage. Basically, DVC can commandeer inventory 60 days before arrival and sell it as cash reservations. At times, DVC can anticipate breakage and put villas up for cash reservations but doing so has to be in the best interest of members. Right now there are a lot of unused points and very little inventory to use them on, so I would not expect too much in the way of anticipated breakage.

Since RIV is not completely owned by DVC members at this time, there is additional inventory there that belongs to the developer (DVD). I believe that more than 50% is still in the developer's hands. That inventory is turned over for cash reservations at DVD's discretion. You are more likely to see cash reservations available at RIV than some other resorts for that reason.

 

[Brian Noble]

If by "mid-February" you mean "including President's Weekend" then yes, it is very possible that they are all booked.

You might see some more at the 60-day breakage window (see above) but it won't be much---internally, things are pretty well booked then.

 

[jimmymc]

It seems like a lot of international guests are booking early 2022 since they anticipate being allowed back in the US by then.

 

[WhitneyMB]

I'm a DVC member who booked a trip for President's Day weekend "late" at only 6 months out. I was able to book 3 nights one place (RIV) and two nights another (Poly) and have been checking pretty regularly for the past month or so to try to get all 5 nights at one place with no luck at all.

DVC and cash inventory is different, but the bottom line is that things are booked up.