Grand Californian chances

[iheartcoasters]

Hi
My husband and I have finally decided DVC is right for our family. We are looking into buying a resale contract. My question is what are our chances at booking GC for the dates we want if we have purchased a GC contract? My husband is pretty skeptical that we would even get to use our grand Californian points because the resort has a smaller amount of DVC rooms. We typically travel in October for Halloween or at the end of January. Typically in the past I have booked vacations anywhere from 3-6 months in advance, but because we have developed a pattern of when we go, I'm sure booking at 11 months wouldn't be an issue. I know from research getting a studio at 7 months or less would be next to impossible, but would booking at 11 months be that difficult?
Thanks ~ Terri

 

[_auroraborealis_]

If you own a GC contract and book at 11 months, your chances are pretty good most of the time. Maybe not always if booking at prime dates.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

At 11 months you shouldn't have an issue.

The way it works is points are sold that would fill that one location for 100% of the time and it never shifts from that exact number of overall points so being small doesn't really matter if it's a home resort. I bought there in presale and I doubt I've ever even booked exactly at 11 months and had no problems. Race weeks, CP weekend and a couple holidays are the ones that book up the fastest. As with most DVC the studios book the fastest and 1 bedrooms last. The 2 Gvs are harder to predict. Sometimes go fast and other times are there at 7 months.

 

[drusba]

To date, VGC has not had any issue of getting rooms at 11 months out except for two times of year: (a) the MLK/Star Wars half marathon weekend in mid-January, and (b) the D23 Expo weekend in July (or August, varies annually). For both, studios have disappeared very quickly at the beginning of the weekend, e.g., studios for the July 13-15, 2017 D23 Expo weekend disappeared for all three dates right at 8 a.m. eastern, on August 13, 2016.

 

[FireflyTrance]

I agree with above. I own at VCG and the studios for D23 went super fast, however 1 bedrooms were still available around those dates for at least 24 hours when I checked. I thought about booking a 1 bedroom, but I had read a lot of horror stories about the D23 lines so I decided to skip it this time If you own there you can get pretty much any date you want if you book at 11 months. Even between 7 - 11 months most dates are available. Everything disappears once 7 months hits. It doesn't really matter that VGC has a smaller amount of rooms since it also has a smaller amount of owners. I will say it can be a bit frustrating that you can never get anything less than 7 months out. I wanted to stay there last October but by the time I got my contract it was too late to book anything.

 

[wbl2745]

We own at VGC too and have had no trouble booking any room type, including the Grand Villa of which there are only two, at 11 months. We live closer to Disneyland than to Walt Disney World so we tend to stay at VGC more than any of the WDW resorts. Further, unless we're going after a high demand time, such as Christmas, or a high demand room type, such as the AKL Value units, we've had absolutely no trouble trying to get a nice resort at WDW.