While I've been more assuming of the idea they would just create the booking category to guarantee the connecting studios where the points combined are the same as booking 2 studios seperately - example was adding the HH category for OKW - I think there has to be a little more play in the points. What makes me think that is BWV with only lock-offs for 2BR's. They do not set aside any strictly for 2BR booking so it's a flowing number with different points depending on if you're booking as a 2BR or if you're booking the 1BR and studio separately. Or, perhaps they might need to bump up the studio only point requirements by a point or two in order to add a lower cost connecting guarantee or vice versa. More for connecting than stand alone studios.
But, easiest is just a booking category - ala HH at OKW.
I thought when it was announced and still think now that Poly should have a booking category that guarantees connecting studios. It would provide the comfort level that many need to make a reservation when their group is, for example, two parents and 4 kids, all over 3 years old. The probability is high to get connecting rooms when requested but many need certainty to feel comfortable making the reservation. And Disney could easily do that without changing the total points by just charging double the points of a single room. And it should not be hard to do that in the system because its IT department, which has proven itself to have much to be desired, even accomplished that option for 2BR lock-offs.
What I have never been clear on is what Disney actually did on point totals when dealing with 2BR lock-offs such as at BWV. The rule is the total number of points for the resort cannot be more than it would take to reserve all the rooms for a year (actually a chosen base year for each particular resort when it went on sale). How does it work when the 2BR lock-offs cost less per night than the separate studio and 1BR. There seems to be three options:
(a) Disney came up with total points to sell based on the concept that all the lock-offs would be occupied as a studio and 1BR during the year. If so, that would seem to cause a legal violation of selling more points than rooms available for the year because many of those lock-offs will be reserved as 2BRs at the lower point cost and it is unreasonable to assume, when creating total points to sell, that the rooms would never be occupied as lower point 2BRs.
(b) Disney instead applied the studio and 1BR per night points only to the dedicated rooms of those sizes when determining total points to sell. and used the 2BR point totals for all the lock-offs to determine points to sell for those. You would have no legal issue because the overuse of points to reserve the lock-offs as studios and 1BRs would result in rooms still being open for the year after all points are used.
(c) Perhaps Disney used some reasonable estimate of probable use and thus determined total points to sell by assuming the lock-offs would sometimes be occupied as 2BRs and other times as higher total point cost studios and 1BRs. That might legally fit into the rule that total points cannot exceed what it would take to reserve all rooms for the year, but I not sure it would meet legal requirements or that a "reasonable" estimate of use in a base year can even be done.
Bottom line is I do not know what Disney did when determining total points to sell when the resort has 2BR lock-offs. What we do know is that total points at Poly were determined based on the assumption that all studios would always be reserved as single studios and did not assume at the time that there could be a lower per room cost option if you got connecting studios, i.e., option (a) above. It cannot now create a lower per room point cost for a connecting studio while leaving the point costs for the studios as single rooms the same as they are now without creating a legal issue of having too many points chasing too few rooms for the year. Perhaps Disney could raise the points needed for studios as single rooms for every night of the year and offer the lower point option for connecting rooms, but that would require an option (c) analysis to make an estimate first as to how often rooms would be reserved as separate studios and as connecting studios, and again I am not sure that can be done. It does not have option (b) because it created total points for studios based on the assumption there would be no lower point cost option.
