How does waitlisting individual nights work? Does anyone ever get "stuck"?

[Simba's Mom]

What I mean is-suppose you want 7 days, and 4 of them are available-not 4 consecutive days though-and 3 individual days are not? It seems that the majority of people recommend taking the 4 days that you can get, and waitlist the remaining individual days (from what I understand, you can only waitlist 2 of them, then when one comes through, you can waitlist the other). Do I have that right? We've always waitlisted the entire 7 days, because what if only 1 or 2 of the days come through. and you're left with one day, right in the middle of your trip that doesn't come through. Has that ever happened to anyone and if so, what did you do? On the other hand, do the days usually come through, assuming you went on the wait list right at 7 months. I'm just trying to figure out if our family should change its strategy on waitlists. It seems so chance-y, but is it?

 

[kes601]

If I had enough points to hold an alternate reservation then I would:

• Grab what you can
• Waitlist 2 of the others
• Stalk the last one.

If you don't have enough points to hold an alternate reservation AND grab what you can (plus account for the points if the individual nights come through) then I would only waitlist the entire stay. I'd rather know I have a room and then hope my desired room came through.

 

[Sandisw]

I always have a back up reservation set to go, but I have never taken individual nights that were not consecutive if I didn't have a back up in the same room for those nights.

I just did this for September....I booked the 11 to 13th in a room at SSR, because only one night was available at RIV....

I then booked the 12th at RIV and waitlisted the 11th to cancel the SSR room if it came through...and it did so I know have both nights at RIV....had it not worked, I would have canceled the 12th at 31 days and just stayed at SSR.

 

[mz-s]

This would have happened to me later this month, but rather than take a disjointed RIV reservation and pray the waitlist came through - I decided to do a split stay. I booked all the consecutive RIV days I could get, and we're moving over to Jambo for the last 3 nights.