New Availability Tool on DVC Web Site

[disneymath]

Maybe but pretty sure ever since DVC booking came online, the number one request or complaint, was the lack of this feature.

Oh, I agree with you that many have requested this ... just thinking it may have been a wakeup call when someone was able to do it from the outside. (Kind of made any arguments about such a feature being too difficult or costly to develop fly out the window.)

 

[DVC Doctor]

I do like this new feature BUT it is not as good as the now defunk private version.

 

[paults]

looks good to me

 

[Fantasia79]

Awesome. I figured nerds like me had to be jamming up the reservation system checking availability for trips I'm not booking anytime soon. Provides a lot of help for planning.

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards

 

[LisaS]

It appears to be the latter. Seasons shown correspond to Aulani. I highly suspect it's just a bug. WDW resorts would not be shifting the end of April into Premier Season (which is "Golden Week" for the Japanese, and thus more expensive at Aulani.)

Not to say that there won't be changes to the seasons eventually...Adjustments to most of the fall are long overdue, IMO. But this has all the earmarks of a bug.

I agree -- it looks like a bug. The developer of this app either didn't realize the seasons are different at different locations (WDW vs DL vs Aulani vs HHI) or started with Aulani and then cut and pasted that code for the other resorts and forgot to make the edits to use the appropriate charts. It also appears that nobody gave this app a thorough test before publishing it because with such an obvious bug, someone should have spotted it.

I think this is a great addition to the members website. Let's hope they fix the bugs soon.

 

[PleasejointheFarque]

 

[Tigger2ntinkerbell]

delete

 

[crisi]

Oh, I agree with you that many have requested this ... just thinking it may have been a wakeup call when someone was able to do it from the outside. (Kind of made any arguments about such a feature being too difficult or costly to develop fly out the window.)

Not much of a wakeup call - data scraping is easy enough to do from the outside, and from the inside this is pretty easy as well. For some reason they didn't want to do it - probably most of their IT development resources have been tied up in MDE efforts for the past few years and have just been released enough for them to do this.

I don't think anyone thought it was too difficult or costly - its costly in the sense that the programmers who did this weren't working on something else. And given the obvious priority in spend on MDE, that was probably it. I argued that they might not want to let the data get out for various confidentiality reasons. And that they almost certainly didn't want it scraped off the production database from the outside - that adds load. Architecturally, I'm betting the availability database is a replica - and probably not real time - of the booking database to minimize load. So in addition to development costs, you'd have a few servers and some disk space to invest in.

 

[wildforgoofy]

Once you are signed on to the member website, click on the Vacation Planning tab that appears across the top of the screen. Under that tab, click on Resort Availability Tool.

I don't have Resort Availability Tool in the Vacation Planning tab on my screen. I have
Start Planning, Points Charts, How to book, Modify, Plan things to do & Pre arrival.
Is it missing on my page? That would be interesting if only certain members are getting a trial version on their member page.

 

[chrispel]

They must be doing something to it. It has disappeared from my account.

 

[wdrl]

I don't have Resort Availability Tool in the Vacation Planning tab on my screen. I have
Start Planning, Points Charts, How to book, Modify, Plan things to do & Pre arrival.
Is it missing on my page? That would be interesting if only certain members are getting a trial version on their member page.

As of this morning, the Resort Availability Tool is not appearing under Vacation Planning.

However, see my subsequent post #33 in this thread.

 

[Sur]

Yes, it's not there today.

 

[wdrl]

Actually, the Resort Availability Tool is still there. Denlo has a link in her post that goes directly to the Tool: http://dvcnews.com/forum/showthread...-debuts-on-member-website&p=169752#post169752

You can use her link to jump directly to the Tool (BTW, you will need to sign in to the member site to use the Tool).

 

[wildforgoofy]

Actually, the Resort Availability Tool is still there. Denlo has a link in her post that goes directly to the Tool: http://dvcnews.com/forum/showthread.php?13561-Resort-Availability-Tool-debuts-on-member-website&p=169752#post169752 You can use her link to jump directly to the Tool (BTW, you will need to sign in to the member site to use the Tool).

Yep I used the link to play around a bit. It's very cool!

 

[magicaldisney]

It showed up for me this morning, but I came back to it to try some more and now it's gone. I'm not surprised, but a little bummed. I'll try the link and bookmark it if it works. Thanks for sharing the direct link!

 

[Mousewerks]

It is there in my menu now....

 

[bdrobet]

Not in the menu as of this morning but the direct link does work.

 

[Tigger2ntinkerbell]

As of 11:55 am (EST) 7/01/14

I asked the CM (DVC member web site) when the System would be up and running

Here's her reply:

CM : I am sorry for any inconvenience, but at this time we are having some technical challenges with the tool, so it has been removed

CM : I would recommend that you check availability as normal if you were trying to book a stay or check back. Our IT Team is currently working on it.

 

[LisaS]

The Availability Tool is back. I spot checked some dates and it looks like the dates now show the correct season. Thanks to whoever fixed this so quickly!

 

[wildforgoofy]

Yeah!!!! I love this new tool.