New policy for reservations based on check IN date

[robinb]

I will not be dragged into an online arguement. Everyone has their reasons for liking or disliking the changes. Lets respect those that do like it.

I thought that Jade asked the same question I had in a very respectful way. You have now answered it and it makes sense that you felt the need to book day-by-day in the past even if you don't stay during traditionally busy times. I hope everything will work out for you when you do call.

Just because it doesn't benefit you doesn't mean it won't benefit the majority.

FWIW, I don't think that this change will make any difference at all to the majorityof DVC members.

 

[disneybride96]

Yesterday I called and reserved the first night of our planned trip to BWV January 18 - 23, 2009. When I called this morning to add the second night, member services put me on hold and then came back to the line to tell me that she was able to reserve all of my nights through the check-out date on Jan. 23rd. She said they started a new system this morning where you can make your reservation based on check-IN date + 7 nights (rather than check-OUT date).

I don't know if this has been posted. But, I did not know this change was coming.

HUMMPH...I am staying those same dates, and just called this morning because it is my 7 month checkout date. Someone tell me to get over it, because I got the BCV ressie that I wanted. I usually travel in off periods, but I do think it is a good idea to free up MS agents.

After just skimming through this tread, I had one thought. You have to have a lot of points to go back and cancel 2 days during a high demand period. Right now all but 21 of my points are tied up in reservations until October 2009. I guess it could be done, but it would be a nightmare for me.

 

[SuzanneSLO]

Sorry if this was already addressed (so many posts!) but since these reservations are tied to actual rooms, I don't think that's right.

Let's say Joe booked wed-tues. No one else can book Tuesday night before anyone else, because Joe is in that room! The room is NOT available for someone that called 3 days before you, because JOE is in it! Someone who is arriving on Monday or Wednesday earlier in the week CANNOT stay in JOE's room. JOE is there!! Anyone that calls earlier will be given someone else's room opened up by someone departing, but they won't kick Joe out! Which means Joe's room can't be booked any earlier by anyone else.....it opens up on Tuesday night. Voila! An even playing field for anyone planning on arriving that day.

The point is that JOE can book the Wednesday night before anyone else has the opportunity. Although MS has told people it does not work ths way, so far several people have reported real life experience that it works exactly this way, i.e., that you can add an 8th night the next day to an existing 7 day reservation. So there is no guarantee that the room will still be available for that Wed arrival. -- Suzanne

 

[RobDoc]

Putting opinions about the actual policy change aside...PLEASE....

Is it the majorities opinion that you have better shot at getting what you want if you plan to arrive on a Friday or Saturday?

I am not looking to twist the system for some evil benefit...I am just looking to be able to book a vacation for my family and have a shot at getting what we want...We usually do the 7-night stay and will have to use points on the weekend no matter what, so is it in our best interest to book from Friday to Friday?

Except for high demand dates and villa types, you probably won't have any problem getting just what you have already been reserving - especially if you are reserving 7 nights. If you are looking for a BW view studio for the first week in December, then you may want to consider a slightly different course of action - assuming MS will still allow us to modify these original reservations. Some have reported being able to add days to 7 day reservations on a day-by-day basis - but that is contrary to the reported policy MS has instituted and could still be changed. If that is allowed, then you should still be fine since you only want a total of 7 nights - so you could reserve 7 nights with an arrival earlier than you really want and then call back each day cancelling the first unwanted arrival and adding another date at the end until you have exactly the 7 nights you want. If the purpose of this change was to simplify reservations and eliminate day-by-day reservations, it would seem to fall short of that goal for certain times.

You should have no problem reserving 7 nights.

Hi all. I was up late last night reading as many posts as I could. There is just much to many of them for me to go through to find the answer I am looking for. So I will just ask my question in hopes that someone has already found out the answer. Does anyone know how these new rules will work if you go longer than the 7 day cut off? We are only able to get down once a year so we usually go for 13 or 14 days. How does one book a vacation of this length with this 7 day resriction in place? Are you going to get moved on the seventh day because your room will not be available? Thank you!

Again, unless you will be travelling in a high demand time, I doubt you'll have any problems getting your full reservation. You can reserve the first 7 nights with the first call and then some have reported being allowed to call back daily to add more dates. Others have been told they will need to wait a week to add more days - but that could also be dealt with by calling the second day to reserve another full week (now you'd have 2 rooms for a week - overlapping by a day) and each subsequent day do the same thing - cancel the 2nd room and rebook another 7 nights until you have 2 full weeks and then have MS link the two together. Either way - you would need to make daily calls to guarantee your 14 night stay.

It appears MS has arbitrarily chosen 7 nights as the limit - it would have been nice if they had decided to allow any length reservation to be reserved from the arrival date but thus far that has not happened. The limiting factor there would be the noumber of available points for each member.

 

[DVC Grandpa]

Here you go:

jim.lewis@disney.com

Tried to send my message but it failed.

 

[njmeisje]

Suzanne,
So are you saying that Person 1 can book the 7 nights of Dec 19-25th (booked on Jan 19th). Then Person 1 can call back on Jan 20th and reserve Dec 26th, and so on and so on? While Person 2 who wants to reserve the 7 nights of Dec 26th - Jan 1 would have to wait until Jan 26th to begin their reservation?

If this is how it works, it is WRONG WRONG WRONG on so many levels!

 

[jdg345]

This conflicts with other information I have seen, including a 1st hand report on another board from a pretty reliable DVC old hand who just made a made his second phone call- and added day 8 to his 7 night reservation- exactly 7 months (nonhome resort) prior to the date of day 8.

Agreed; and today I was able to add Day-9 (8 Day's total as I dropped the first day yesterday). I did not attempt to drop Day-1 (really, Day2). So to recap:

1st Call: Made Reservation at 11 months + 7 days
2nd Call: Added Day 8, Dropped Day 1.
3rd Call: Re-Added Day 8. Had I not dropped, would be Day-9.

Based on this, those looking for more than 7 Days should be able to day-by-day for 8+ and those wanting to walk reservations day-by-day should be able to do that also. So, instead of having DBD and linking, we're going to have people DBD'ing up to a week (or more) early and walking.

I'm glad they simplified that convoluted DBD booking based on departure day. This is much much cleaner.

 

[ScottakaMickey]

Suzanne,
So are you saying that Person 1 can book the 7 nights of Dec 19-25th (booked on Jan 19th). Then Person 1 can call back on Jan 20th and reserve Dec 26th, and so on and so on? While Person 2 who wants to reserve the 7 nights of Dec 26th - Jan 1 would have to wait until Jan 26th to begin their reservation?

If this is how it works, it is WRONG WRONG WRONG on so many levels!

I made a reservation today and while she didn't initially understand the start date of the reservation, she thought May 23 had to be my check out date (old system) not check-in. I told her I thought differently, she even said that the system wouldn't let her do it. Then she put me on hold, and came back and said that I was correct and she was wrong and then my reservation was available. So, I booked 7 days starting May 23, 2009.

I then asked if I wanted to extend by one day, and she said Yes, call back tomorrow and add the day to this reservation.

So, while I still kind of sit in your camp that it's wrong, it seemed to work for me. Here is my post that shows how you need to do it. Only open question is canceling, and the CM indicated that I can cancel or do whatever I wanted to the 7 day reservation, so I do think this would work.

Here is how the popular times will have to work.

I want to do a vacation December 25 to January 1. So, here is how I have to do it.

On January 19 I call MS. Book 7 days from December 19 to checkout on December 26.
On January 20 I call MS. Extend my 7 day stay to now checkout on December 27. Then I cancel my December 19 reservation.
On January 21 I call MS. Extend my new 7 day stay to now checkout on December 28. Then I cance my December 20 reservation.
On January 22 I call MS. Extend my new 7 day stay to now checkout on December 29. Then I cancel my December 21 reservation.
On January 23 I call MS. Extend my new 7 day stay to now checkout on December 30. Then I cancel my December 22 reservation.
On January 24 I call MS. Extend my new 7 day stay to now checkout on December 31. Then I cancel my December 23 reservation.
On January 25 I call MS. Extend my new 7 day stay to now checkout on January 1. Then I cancel my December 24 reservation.

I now have what I really wanted. This is going to be very complicated to get done, but it's going to have to be that way. Now, the biggest challenge is making sure you have enough points to book 7 days worth of stay if you only want to do this for a stay shorter.

 

[jdg345]

Well, here's my reply from Member Services...

Thank you for contacting Disney Vacation Club.

We appreciate you're taking the time to share your feedback about our
recent reservation booking window policy changes, and we'd like to
apologize for the disappointment you've shared in your message. Prior
to making any modifications to our procedures, we carefully analyze the
impact the adjustment will have to our Members, our operation, and our
business as a whole, taking Member feedback into consideration as well.
Over the years, Members have expressed their frustration with having to
contact us on a daily basis to reserve high-demand travel periods. This
was a major factor in our determination to make this revision. This
adjustment will allow our Member Services Advisors to assist many
Members with their travel plans on one phone call instead of multiple
phone calls over several days. Our hope is that our Members will
appreciate the opportunity to confirm their plans more efficiently than
they have been able to in the past, and in being more timely, we can
provide overall better service to our Members.

Thank you again for sharing your concern. Your feedback is important to
us.

Sincerely,

Disney Vacation Club Member Services

Translation: We thought this was better for DVC, and we'd like you to think we're doing it because it is what you wanted.

Really, unless they lock down the ability to change reservations, people are still going to call DBD, and the end result will be more complicated than what they had before. You might have people calling on a Friday that never wanted Fri/Sat just to try to get a jump on the people booking for a Sunday Arrival.

 

[bellazachmom]

Is it 8? I can see both sides to this actually. They may have chosen 7 nights so folks dont grab XMAS eve through NYE, which would shut out 2 of the biggest nights of the year. Again I think Premier Season should be left alone, make the rest 10 nights or more.

This was my interpretation, somebody please correct me if they know or think something different:

We are now allowed to book 11months/7months from our check-in date PLUS 7 nights. So doesn't that mean we could reserve the night 11/7 months exactly and then add 7 more nights for a total of 8 nights?

Still a problem for anyone who wants more nights, but I think we can currently make an 8 night reservation.

What do you think?

 

[jdg345]

Okay, I have my flame suit on and am ready for all of your flames!!! I REALLY LIKE THE NEW POLICY CHANGE!!! I don't have to worry about calling day-by-day. No waitlisting worries. I will know when I book whether I can get all of my days requested. I book sometimes on Saturday, sometimes on Sunday. Never more than 7 days. I don't go to WDW at Christmas, New Years Eve, Jersey week, Presidents week, Easter, or Thanksgiving. For me, this has been a blessing. I understand it will affect many. For those that gained an advantage calling day by day, I just feel the playing field is a little more even now. I am ecstatic with the change. Okay, flame away!

So you like it, but you're not who Disney was apparently targeting to satisfy since you don't go during high-demand times.

I am curious though how you feel that the playing field is more even now than before? Before, you were guaranteed that the morning of your call there was at least 1 room available. Now, only that possibility exists and there is quite the liklihood that there was nothing available for you today last night, or earlier.

 

[snackyx]

Scott has this about right, as convoluted as it may seem. If you read back about 450 posts you will see where this very loophole has been discussed, but if you are going to clamp down on the cancel-a-day/extend-a-day routine DVC must be careful about putting in place a cancellation policy that would hinder those who have a legitimate reason to cancel.

I just ask this: tell me what we can and can't do and I will work within those rules to make my reservations.

 

[jdg345]

There certainly could be something to this. From calls I have made to MS over the past several months I can confirm that there are MANY Friday/Saturday dates that are open in desirable units but the Thursday before and Sunday after are not. My guess would be that if we had access to occupancy numbers one would find that there are a decent number of units throughout the system empty on Friday and Saturday due to the higher points required. It could be argued that this new reservation system "encourages" one to make a reservation starting on a weekend to better insure your reservations for the rest of the week.

More points, anyone?

I not only agree with this, but I posted just the same thing a few pages ago. It could be there way of booking the weekend and/or trying to get people to add on more points. The thing is, if you can alter your reservation, you can always drop Fri/Sat later and end up with the net that you wanted. DVC ends up handling more calls than they did before, and they still end up with empty rooms on Fri/Sat.

 

[dianeschlicht]

Diane - there needs to be a "." between Jim and Lewis - the address should be jim.lewis@disney.com - it may still not get thru any better (I'm not sure that's really his email address), but should at least have a better chance with that change.

Still didn't go hrough that way either, Doc. It says something about "no access".

 

[LisaS]

This was my interpretation, somebody please correct me if they know or think something different:

We are now allowed to book 11months/7months from our check-in date PLUS 7 nights. So doesn't that mean we could reserve the night 11/7 months exactly and then add 7 more nights for a total of 8 nights?

Still a problem for anyone who wants more nights, but I think we can currently make an 8 night reservation.

What do you think?

You can book 7 nights, not 8 on the first call. We're hearing two different things about when you can book the 8th and subsequent nights. Some MS CMs are telling people they cannot book additional nights until 11/7 months prior to the first of those additional nights (in other words, one week after you book the first 7 nights). Other MS CMs are allowing people to call the following day and book night 8, call again the next day to book night 9, etc.

 

[jdg345]

Well well well!!! It got deleted before it got there!


This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

JimLewis@email.disney.com

Looks like the posted email address might not accept emails from us.

I believe it's: jim.lewis@disney.com.

 

[dianeschlicht]

I believe it's: jim.lewis@disney.com.

That's where I sent it....TWICE! I did have the "." in there, and I also had DH try it from his office as well.

 

[RobDoc]

Still didn't go hrough that way either, Doc. It says something about "no access".

While most Disney email addresses are structured that way, I'd suspect that many of the corporate officers are not as easily accessed using that format.

I'd expect that a snail mail letter to Jim Lewis (C/O DVC at the Celebration address) would have more impact than an email anyway - even though it won't get to his office as quickly.

 

[jdg345]

Believe it or not, there are other times of the year that are getting very difficult to book. Spring break now spans 2nd week of March thru all of April. There now is a bowling tournament that will be in place from January thru July every 2 out of 3 years. F&W festival has been pushed back into 3rd week of September. So just when you think you have picked a slower time, things change. Chances of obtaining your ressie are better at the percieved slower times, but alas, nothing is guaranteed. I love knowing I if I can get all of my requested days all at one time from date of arrival. I will not be dragged into an online arguement. Everyone has their reasons for liking or disliking the changes. Lets respect those that do like it. Just because it doesn't benefit you doesn't mean it won't benefit the majority.

Just to throw something out there, without knowing what the exact policy is and without actually trying to a book a period ressie you normally book, you don't know if this will actually benefit you, or hurt you. Now, if you normally book slow times, you likely aren't affected one way or the other. You could easily book at your departure minus 7 as easily as you could book arrival plus 7 and still get your days. If that's the case, then it really doesn't help/hurt you specifically at all.

 

[jdg345]

Hi all. I was up late last night reading as many posts as I could. There is just much to many of them for me to go through to find the answer I am looking for. So I will just ask my question in hopes that someone has already found out the answer. Does anyone know how these new rules will work if you go longer than the 7 day cut off? We are only able to get down once a year so we usually go for 13 or 14 days. How does one book a vacation of this length with this 7 day resriction in place? Are you going to get moved on the seventh day because your room will not be available? Thank you!

There are two ways to do this:

This may be hit or miss, but several folks have had success with the following:
Day1: Book Arrival + 7 Days
Day2+: Book Day-By-Day for Day 8+

The other option would be:

Day1: Book Arrival + 7 Days
Day2: Cancel Days 2-7, closing the reservation. Book Days 2-8. Have them linked.
Day3: Cancel Days 3-8, closing the second reservation. Book Days 3-9. Have them linked, etc.

This is *way* easier than just booking DBD for sure!