Finally found someone who could "merge" my 3 reservations!

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

After 3 seperate calls -- and a lot of time on hold -- I was FINALLY able to find someone at guest services who knew how to merge my pieced together Christmas week trip.

I was stressing about making dining reservations and not getting the 180+ advantge.

So, if you were like me, and have several reservations for the same type of site, they can be merged... you just have to keep trying

Now if I could only add 12/31-1/1... I've been on the prowl at 7am every morning for the last 2 months... wish me luck!

 

[lbmiller77]

Congratulations! I had to talk to several cm's to merge my reservation too. There doesn't seem to be many cm's that understand how to merge ressies. As for picking up days, I would check multiple times a day if you have time. As soon as a person cancels their reservation, it is released back into the system. I have had the best luck picking up days early in the morning and late in the evening.

 

[tmoo]

I had 2 reservations merged a few weeks ago. The agent on the phone did not know how to do it, but took down the information and told me they were giving a note to an advanced agent who would make the change within 24 hours. About 12 hours later I got the confirmation emails from the merged reservations. I also received a refund from my deposit on one of them. My 180+10 worked just fine with the merged reservation.

In the past the agent on the phone told me they have to cancel one of the reservations and then try to extend the other hoping someone doesn't grab the open date in the meantime, but apparently the more advanced agents have a way to actually merge them. I didn't find this out until I was unwilling to take a chance on cancelling one of them.

 

[Napria]

Can't they be merged on the Disneyworld.disney.go.com website? I thought I had seen that I could do the merge myself there. Still don't have anything to merge... Yet.

 

[bama_ed]

I'm glad you posted this, Momto3.

It answers the question definitively that it CAN be done but it is a rare skill among Cast Members. In the past we encountered so many guests who asked for it and it couldn't or didn't happen that I wondered to myself if I had misunderstood the times I had heard that it WAS done.

The one thing I would ask you to follow up with us with is if the official "merging" relieves you of the requirement to check in officially at the start of all your piece part reservations. Does the official merging mean you only have to check in once at the start?

Christmas is still six months away but I am glad you got all the dates and got them put together.

Bama Ed

 

[KristinU]

The one thing I would ask you to follow up with us with is if the official "merging" relieves you of the requirement to check in officially at the start of all your piece part reservations. Does the official merging mean you only have to check in once at the start?

LOL, this was the exact question I was going to ask, Ed! I'm also curious to know if you'll receive multiple magic bands or just one set, Momto3 Congrats on getting through to someone who knew what you were talking about! I got our Christmas ressies linked, but never got them fully merged to the point where I didn't have to go check in on the "new" mornings. I do think I was able to book all of our FP+ at once...but now I don't remember for sure since I logged on and changed stuff around at least a couple of times (getting old sucks...this wasn't that long ago!!!)

 

[Disbug]

...The one thing I would ask you to follow up with us with is if the official "merging" relieves you of the requirement to check in officially at the start of all your piece part reservations. Does the official merging mean you only have to check in once at the start?

LOL, this was the exact question I was going to ask, Ed! I'm also curious to know if you'll receive multiple magic bands or just one set, Momto3 Congrats on getting through to someone who knew what you were talking about! I got our Christmas ressies linked, but never got them fully merged to the point where I didn't have to go check in on the "new" mornings. I do think I was able to book all of our FP+ at once...but now I don't remember for sure since I logged on and changed stuff around at least a couple of times (getting old sucks...this wasn't that long ago!!!)

Hi all! Our experience has been if you had your reservations merged it will be like one reservation. You will only have one Reservation number and thereby only one set of Magic Bands etc... This would not be the case if it was after your first set of Magic Bands were already shipped, though... lol! You also do not need to check in on the morning of every merged reservation segment. Linking the reservations is different. You will still have multiple reservation numbers and multiple sets of Magic Bands. So then you would also need to do multiple checkout/check ins.

 

[TheRustyScupper]

if I could only add 12/31-1/1... I've been on the prowl at 7am every morning for the last 2 months... wish me luck!

1) It is better to check right after dinnertime and just before bedtime.
2) Most folks cancel when they get home from work or early evening.
3) When there is a cancellation, the vacancy goes into the system immediately.
4) Thus, if you wait for morning, someone else might have already snatched it.

 

[bigblock396]

1) It is better to check right after dinnertime and just before bedtime.
2) Most folks cancel when they get home from work or early evening.
3) When there is a cancellation, the vacancy goes into the system immediately.
4) Thus, if you wait for morning, someone else might have already snatched it.

That's a good point about the timing on when people cancel. I usually try to check first thing in the morning but the evening time makes a lot of sense.

 

[bigblock396]

Hi all! Our experience has been if you had your reservations merged it will be like one reservation. You will only have one Reservation number and thereby only one set of Magic Bands etc... This would not be the case if it was after your first set of Magic Bands were already shipped, though... lol! You also do not need to check in on the morning of every merged reservation segment. Linking the reservations is different. You will still have multiple reservation numbers and multiple sets of Magic Bands. So then you would also need to do multiple checkout/check ins.

Disbug, this has been our experience also. Merging reservations eliminates the multiple checkins and compiles everything into one reservation. Just make sure you don't confuse 'linking' with 'merging' when you call.

 

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

I went from 3 seperate confirmations to just one (my original #) in MDE, listing the dates 12/26-31. So, one set of bands and one check-in!

Thanks for the suggestions Rusty -- I'll start checking in the evenings, too!

 

[jhomuth]

I had just come to the board to ask a question about having 2 back to back ressies and as a result, ending up with 2 sets of Magic Bands. So now I have a new question...if I made my 2 reservations through a travel agent, can I call Disney to have them merged? Or can the travel agent merge them for me? I've never had more than one reservation before in all of my trips.

 

[2goofycampers]

I had just come to the board to ask a question about having 2 back to back ressies and as a result, ending up with 2 sets of Magic Bands. So now I have a new question...if I made my 2 reservations through a travel agent, can I call Disney to have them merged? Or can the travel agent merge them for me? I've never had more than one reservation before in all of my trips.

You have to have the TA do it.

 

[RachelEM]

What do you mean by a TA is required to do it? Who did you all use to get your reservation merged? Do you have the name of the person who helped you pretty please? I have five reservations for our two week stay and am desperate to make it less confusing and have them merged! We are renting an RV and traveling from far away so that concerns me even though the cast members assure us they will do their best, but cannot make any promises on not having to move each time! Yikes!

 

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

What do you mean by a TA is required to do it? Who did you all use to get your reservation merged?

What they mean is that your travel agent "owns" you reservation. You can't call Disney directly to make changes -- only your TA can. That is one disadvantage of turning your reservation over to someone else.

Tell your TA to call and not hang up until your reservations are merged. It can be done, you just have to keep escalating the call until you find someone at guest services who knows how to do it.

**they can only be merged if all reservations are for the same category site on consecutive days, if you have a premium site for a few days then a preferred site, you can't merge**

Good luck!

 

[RachelEM]

Ohhh, thank you!

 

[CJHokie]

Hi! Looonnng time lurker, this may be my first post, maybe not.

I got 12/21/15-12/29 (premium) on the first day I was able to. One of my camping friends waited a few days and got through 1/1/16. I called a few months ago and was able to add the 30th on to that res.

Called again a few weeks ago hoping to get the 31st. The CM could not find one. I asked if he had any tips on when to call. He said I could try like once a week or I could try online whenever I wanted and if I got it to just tell them at check-in I had two reservations so they would keep me in the same site. He also said he thought I might have a better chance after Thanksgiving, that a lot of people make up their minds one way or the other then and might cancel.

Kinda forgot about it, but last week another camping friend was over so we could plan our upcoming July 4 trip. She mentioned Disney, so I said, oh, let me check. Lo and behold, a premium site was available!! So, I snatched it up. I was planning on calling to see if they could merge them as waiting til check-in seemed a little iffy (big rig and dog). Glad to read your info about it being do-able over the phone.

Hope you get lucky too!

 

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

I was able to get a premium site for Dec 31- Jan 1 last week, too!

The rest of our ressie is full hook up, so we WOULD have to change sites on the last day. I'm going to hold on to it, but I still check twice a day for a full hook up.

It might actually work to our advantage though, because that means I can have the dinign plan for just 1 night -- New Years Eve! We already had planned to go out for dinner that night and meals are more expensive on NYE (and I can't use Tables in Wonderland) making the dining plan "worth it" for us.

 

[CJHokie]

Oh, yay! We haven't gotten the dining plan in a while. My boys are older, though (almost 15 & almost 13), so we might be a little more flexible about coming and going. We may not even go to the parks this time! We are going to do Univ for HP, though. Shh!