In the old days, the reservation rule was that you could reserve 11 months (or 7) from your date of departure from WDW. A typical and allowed practice at that time when a high demand room/time was at issue was for a member to call 11 months from the day after the first night he actually wanted and reserve that night; the next day he would call and add the second night moving the departure date up one and continue that until he had all the nights he wanted. Thus, you could "game" the system back then. However, under the old system, those with more points than others did not have an advantage in that everybody had the same chance of getting a night 11 months out. Thus, the disadvantage existed only if someone choose not to walk a long reservation and actually wait until 11 months out from departure to try to reserve.
The new, 11 months out from date arrival, system has been in place for many years now. I do not consider it necessarily "unethical" to walk. It is allowed, anybody can do it, and, in fact, I recall it took only about a day after the new system went into effect for someone on these boards to post the method of walking a reservation when you are less than 11 months out from date of arrival. However, unlike the old system those who have enough points to reserve 7 nights at once can start walking before those who only have enough points to reserve fewer than 7 nights. In that way, one could argue there is unfairness, and, if you think like Democrats, you can demand social change because the "rich" are being favored again, but I do not know what the solution is. The need for walking exists because there are some very high demand times and Disney created categories of rooms where the supply is limited but the demand for them is much higher than others. Reverting to the old system would eliminate the unfairness issue but trying to bar the practice in the new system would be difficult to enforce, e.g., suppose someone makes a 7 night reservation and then calls later to drop the first six nights and add six, MS claims it is improper walking, and the member says no it is not, because he was going to go on those prior dates but found out he will not be able to get off work until the new dates. What would happen in that situation and should we have MS being in any position of deciding what is or is not improper walking? I think not becaus eit would jsut foment furtgher disputes.
As to wasting Member Services time resaulting in higher dues, that is not an issue. MS is funded in a way that dues do not rise based on on amounts spent for it. It receives (a) a $1 per member annual fee, plus (b) its two entities, the Buena Vista Trading Co., the designated company for handling trade-outs to non-
DVC resorts and members of one resort reserving another resort at 7 months out, and Disney Vacation Club Management Co., the designated company for handling home resort reservations, get all the breakage income (rentals of rooms still open at 60 days out) above a small percentage that goes to offset dues, plus (c) DVCMC gets as a management fee a set percentage, 12% of the budgeted operations and capital reserve budgets for a resort, in dues annually. Those are the sources for funding MS operations and none of those amounts are affected by how much MS gets used by members.
Bill
