You wouldn't have 7 reservations. You call 7/11 months prior to the "checkout" day for the first night of your stay and make a 1-night reservation. You tell MS that you are booking day 1 of a day-by-day reservation. They give you a confirmation number and make a note of your real checkout day and put a hold on your confirmation letter. You call the next day and tell the MS CM you want to modify a day-by-day reservation to add another night. Now you have one 2-night reservation. You call again the next day and again modify the reservation by adding another night. Now you have one 3-night reservation, and so on until the reservation is complete. Once your final night is booked, MS will release your confirmation letter for your 7-night reservation.
In that case things get a bit more fragmented. I would book something as a backup for that 3rd night and wait list for the room type I booked for the first 2 nights. Because that night is booked in a different room type, it would be a separate reservation with a new confirmation number. When I called for the 4th night, if I want to continue booking the first room type, I would have to start a third reservation. If my wait list eventually comes through, I will have 3 reservations that are all for the same room type so MS can link them together so that I won't have to move rooms. If the wait list does not come through, I will have 3 separate reservations and will have to move rooms for that 3rd night and move again for the remainder of my stay. If you're not willing to gamble on the waitlist coming through you could book the 3rd and all remaining nights in the same room type and just change rooms once during your stay.
If you're booking day by day and have to wait list, you're still way ahead of where you'd be if you waited to book it all at once. All of those other people that did call day by day would be ahead of you on the waitlist and you'd likely have multiple days on the waitlist compared to if you'd called day by day. You can do it either way, you're choice. More work to do so day by day but your chances of success are much higher for many options. If it's important to you, call day by day.
Your 7-month window has nothing to do with your closing date. You can book your home resort 11 months prior to your vacation check-out date and non-home resorts 7 months prior to your vacation check-out date regardless of your Use Year or contract closing date. For example any member who wants to stay at a non-home resort from Aug 3-8 could book the entire stay in one call on Jan 8th. If you want to stay at a non-home resort from Dec 7-12, 2008 and wanted to book it day by day, you would make your first call on Jan 8, 2008. You will be competing with every member who is trying to book the night of Dec 7, 2008 (and there will be a lot of them). In fact, for early December you really should book at your home resort 11 months out and then try to switch at 7 months. If you wait until 7 months to book something, you will probably end up on the waiting list for some/all of your nights.
You're new here and I assume you are new to DVC as well? I just wanted to be sure you understood the booking windows so that you don't miss out on a reservation you wanted because you didn't call as early as you could have. It can take a while for all the rules to sink in fully! And welcome to the DISboards!
Any system has nuances and systems that you must learn. DVC's is actually simpler than most overall. Those that choose not to learn the ins and outs will lose out. But the $95 fee is a separate issue from the DVC reservation system and likely one set by DVD and not DVC. As many can tell you, I think they should allow booking a single reservation for up to 2 weeks on a given start date. IMO, this could save as much as 20-30% of our maint fees because less phone calls means less employees needed. I don't think it'd help that much on wait lists though and would likely hurt those trying to reserve hard to get items at 7 months out.
Currently DVC can not limit stays to longer than 5 days. They could however require days to be grouped such as Fri to Sunday as one component and Sun to Fri as another with a points reallocation. Or you could simply require that each reservation contain a Fri or Sat night stay. Weekends are more likely to be available though we don't know the specifics since occupancy is not published and has not been since the mid 90's.
