October Strategy

[SaraBelle88]

I am well aware that October is crazy season so I'm headed in without a ton of expectations of the perfect stay BUT I am trying my hardest to get on the monorail (we are only visiting MK and EPCOT plus it's my daughter's first trip and I just REALLY want to roll in to MK on day 1 on that monorail) if at all possible. That's the goal. We can absolutely swing a 1br at Saratoga or OKW but we'd have to borrow a about 20 points from next year which is totally fine but not ideal. Right now we have 6 days to work with and I've got two 3 night stays secured at VB (I didn't intend to have two but in my attempt to swap things around to pick up a 3 night stay at AK but it got booked while I was trying to modify my existing reservation.. whoops!) and my plan was to wait list and calendar stalk. But I feel like maybe I'm being silly trying to stalk for three nights in a row and maybe there's a more tactical way to use the wait list? I need help!

What I've got:
3 nights at VB (for a Sun-Wed stay) and 3 nights at VB (for a Wed-Saturday stay). I've wait listed both poly studios for the Wed-Sat portion.

Would you:
A. Go ahead and drop a VB booking and pick up a random day available at a monorail and wait list the other two days? (I could get one day right now at either GFV (it's their lagoon studio) or poly) plus continue to stalk the calendar (is this even worth doing for a trip in October? Is it better to focus on Poly vs GFV because there are more units there? Ahhh so many questions!)
B. Abandon all hope of a monorail during October and focus on Animal Kingdom because we've got a resort day planned and the pool/animal combo seems hard to miss (I am just nervous about the bus trek with a grouchy toddler in a stroller)
C. Play it safe and book the 1 bedroom at OKW or Saratoga. (We would probably do Saratoga for the splash pad...)
D. Book 2 days in a Saratoga studio and either waitlist or stalk for the third day (this is the most practical option but feels very defeatist)
E. Calm down because something will become available and I'm overthinking this lol

Thoughts?

 

[sndral]

Well SSR & OKW are a lot closer to the MK & Epcot than VB, so if you are planning a stay at WDW not sure why you have VB booked .
I wouldn’t bother booking VB unless I intended to stay there.
Realize that your toddler won’t remember whether they arrived at the MK on the monorail & at 5 months out piecing together a 6 night contiguous stay at a monorail resort during a popular time is going to be tough. If you’re willing to risk a split stay take a look at this thread for some idea of the numbers of available rooms at the Poly & the VGF - the Poly seems to have more standard view studios than any other category of villa on the monorail. https://www.disboards.com/threads/grand-floridian-room-type-breakdown.3918158/#post-64790397
I’d grab the 1 Poly night you see currently open, change the other VB days to SSR & waitlist the Poly (both views) for them & stalk several times a day grabbing any Poly, dropping SSR nights as I gained Poly nights.
I’d also keep an eye on VGF resort studios (a lot more of them than VGF 1 br.s,) & BLT 1 br. lake view for monorail possibilities.

 

[SaraBelle88]

We booked VB because we want 3 nights at the beach and 3 nights in WDW. We didn't care if the beach came before or after the park days but now we are leaning towards doing it after.

The monorail thing is more for my enjoyment of this trip than hers. I definitely don't expect her to remember anything but I will and I'd like to think that counts for something! Just feels like a right of passage thing. But like I said, I'm not 100% tied to that. It would just be ideal because we will be travelling with a stroller and I'd rather be jammed on a quick ride on a monorail than a multi-stop ride on a bus.

I'm watching pretty much everything but I wasn't 100% sure if going ahead and grabbing a poly night was a good strategy. I was kind of already thinking that was the right call though. You'd do the one night at poly that's available over the one night at VGF?

 

[sndral]

We booked VB because we want 3 nights at the beach and 3 nights in WDW. We didn't care if the beach came before or after the park days but now we are leaning towards doing it after.

The monorail thing is more for my enjoyment of this trip than hers. I definitely don't expect her to remember anything but I will and I'd like to think that counts for something! Just feels like a right of passage thing. But like I said, I'm not 100% tied to that. It would just be ideal because we will be travelling with a stroller and I'd rather be jammed on a quick ride on a monorail than a multi-stop ride on a bus.

I'm watching pretty much everything but I wasn't 100% sure if going ahead and grabbing a poly night was a good strategy. I was kind of already thinking that was the right call though. You'd do the one night at poly that's available over the one night at VGF?

There are only 47 1 br.s at the VGF, roughly half of them are lake view, so based on numbers alone your chances are better at the Poly, although I love those VGF 1 br. villas.
Since you only want 3 days at WDW your chances are much better IMO, grab what you can, wait list & stalk several times a day to add to what you have/’upgrade’ from SSR to monorail, be flexible & quick & good luck.