Minimum stay required?

[TinkWink]

We're going with some friends in December, and recently decided to add a day on to the beginning of our adventure. We thought it would be fun to spend the first night in a cabin at Ft. Wilderness, since we don't plan to go to a park on the first day as we're getting settled in, and there are a lot of fun things to do there.

We checked this week and became concerned because the WDW website was showing no availability for that night for Ft. Wilderness! I called and sure enough, no availability. I searched around and found availability on another travel website so I reserved it that way. Of course, the slight downside to that was having to pay upfront (just a drop in the bucket of what I'll spend overall, I'm sure - and it was a whole $1 cheaper than Disney's price, to boot! )

Then later, because I'm a nerd, I was playing around with the Disney reservations page, and discovered that Ft. Wilderness was magically available if you typed in at least three nights! For one or two nights, no availability, but more than that, and it was available. I *should* have come directly over here to ask this question then, but I'm still learning! Also, since the availability seemed different than just a few weeks ago, we wanted to go ahead and move on it.

Could I have reserved it for those three nights, then cancelled the last two nights to make it into a one-night reservation? I didn't know if they'd let me do that, or make me create a new reservation for just one night (which of course wouldn't work). I know there are pros on here who have more experience with the ins and outs of resort reservations! In the end, we have the reservation we want, but I just wanted to know for future reference!

 

[schwaa]

Yes, if you ask them to book it for 3 night and then modify to 1, it'll work.

The thing that cracks me up the most, is the CMs at CRO are always shocked when a resort is unavailable for certain dates, but if you extend your checkout day a few more nights, it becomes available. This happens a lot, or at least people seem to mention it a lot. Why are they so surprised?

 

[bradk]

something that might come into play that isn't clear, although i can't imagine FW would be the victim, is sometimes they restrict days you can't check-in. for example, if a hotel is expecting a huge group coming in on a saturday, they may (for that week only) determine nobody else can create a reservation checking in on that day.

i have heard of it happening at disney resorts, but again, FW seems a bit odd.

room onlys definitely typically have no minimum. the only minimum i could even think of is when they offer free dining, at least in the past.

 

[TinkWink]

Rats! I should have played around with it a bit. I was at work and didn't want to stay outside on my cell phone all day, though!

So do you think if I had initially said I wanted a three-night reservation, then the CM would have been able to back out of the last two nights? I agree, I thought it was odd that FW would have an availability issue.

 

[HugsForEeyore]

There really were minimum stays at one time ...

At one point a few years back, I was denied a one night stay at All-Star Music. I was trying to book the Thursday before Memorial Day, and they wouldn't let me since it was a "3 night minimum" stay required. So I went off-site instead. Funny thing is, I think I am the only one who ever fell victim to this policy - I never heard of anyone else having it enforced!

To the OP - I often seen availability pop up if I booked longer stays. And I heard of people here booking a longer stay than they really want, and then calling another time and knocking off the days they don't want. So it should be do-able.

 

[CanadianGuy]

Disney resorts do implement 3 night minimums during extremely busy periods and tho you don't say when you are travelling in December, I'm guessing it's a busy period.

This has something to do with 'orphan rooms'. If a bunch of people take a number of rooms for just one night - scattered throughout the hotel schedule, that leaves a bunch of 2 and 1 night availabilities.

And of course, those orphan rooms can be hard to fill sometimes and can force the hotel to turn away the lucrative five, six or seven night reservations.

The hotel would far rather have 1,000 reservations for four nights each than 4,000 reservations for one night each. It's just simply less overhead.

You've already found the obvious ways around this.

Knox