Late Check In

[AmyBeth68]

Does a late check-in at a DVC resort pretty much guarantee slim pickins' on your unit? For instance if we arrive 9:00 pm at OKW will we be about the farthest possible from the main pool area LOL?!

I'm just trying to decide if it's worth it to check-in that late. But the flip side is missing some park time the next day due to check-in needs. This would be for a really quick 4 day trip so time is valuable.

Thanks...love to hear your thoughts.

 

[bobbiwoz]

Most of the complaints from late arivees is that they get a HC unit. When we've arived at MCO late, we have always stayed off site and gone to the resort to check in early the next morning. Once we were able to check into OKW at 10AM, another time, our BCV studio wasn't ready until 3PM but we spent the day at AK, so it didn't bother us, we just called from the Guest services phone at AK, and when the room was ready we went back to the resort.

Bobbi

 

[SaratogaShan]

AmyBeth68,

We have never personally had a problem at SSR with late checkin. We may have just been lucky so far. If this is a quick trip and you do commando style touring like we do (I can't seem to break myself of this horrible habit! ) you won't be in the room much anyway. The only reason we even request non HA room is that we have a 3 year old who needs a tub. Our last trip we checked in fairly late so I called the resort about 5 pm to let them know that we would be arriving late....don't know if that made a difference or not but we did indeed get our non HA nonsmoking room.

Shan

 

[AmyBeth68]

Thanks for the info! My main concern is getting a room without a tub too...only because my littlest still likes to take a bath, otherwise that wouldn't be a problem. Oh....and we'd like to be semi-near a pool . We don't mind walking....but....after a morning at the parks....

Anyway, thanks for the info. We'll have to think about our options.

 

[Scoootch]

I think it really depends on whether the resort is utilizing "room ready" or "pre-assigned" check in. If they are utilizing "room ready" check in's then your pickins probably will be quite slim I'd guess...unless you're there at a fairly quiet time of year. If they are using "pre-assigned" then you won't have any issues as you'll get what was pre-assigned obviously.

FWIW, we checked in at 7:30pm to our 1bdrm villa at the BCV's for our stay last Oct. Now this was on a Friday night so not sure how much this affected our chances at all but....we were told by the CM checking us in that our room had been pre-assigned when I reiterated our requests while checking in. So it seems that it didn't matter on that particular stay that we checked in later as the room had been blocked off for us until we arrived. And ...we did get all our requests met that trip.

Not sure if there's a way to tell which check-in they're using at any given time though I think though that OKW tends to use "room ready" if that's any help.

 

[AmyBeth68]

I think OKW definitely uses room ready quite often. We figured that we'll take our chances...even though we're checking in very late. It's the very end of August prior to Labor Day Weekend so we are expecting slim pickings. The only thing that *really* matters to me is non-smoking...which I would hope I'd get regardless. Other than that I requested non-HC b/c of the tub. But if that's all they'v got, we'll work with it .

It's such a short trip that to stay elsewhere for one night and then check-in to OKW the next day wouldn't be worthwhile...especially when we're talking about 8 points only for a studio that night. Soooo....we'll roll the dice and see what happens LOL! Hey, how bad can it be?

 

[lisareniff]

I think you are making the right choice. One thing you could think about doing, which may or may not be frowned upon, is to call that morning and tell them that you will be arriving late and are concerned about your room assignment. Perhaps they can do something to help you out ...or not. I did this our first time home at BCV when we were going to arrive at midnight. I had this fear of getting a dumpster view room with stained and broken furniture. I'm not sure exactly what happened but the front desk called the room assigner and then told me over the phone that at the current time we had a first floor pool view room. (I wonder if they assigned me one right then??) When we checked in at midnight it was a first floor pool view.

Our trip in Feb was room ready. They choose from a short list of rooms.

 

[CharlesTD]

I called last week to let them know we would be checking in late for our trip in 12 days I had just one request for room location and I was told not to worry about it because we only had the one request on there that is would be granted which is a first as I have never had anyone say that to me in all our trips down or calls to MS.

 

[AmyBeth68]

Thanks for the info Charles and Lisa....we only requested N/S and I asked to put that we'd prefer a non HC room b/c of the tub issue. Maybe I'll give them a quick call before our flight...I guess it can't hurt and as long as I'm polite maybe they'll spare me some pixie dust .

Thanks again for the advice.