Question about booking resorts

[SplashMtnCrew]

Yet again I've searched for the answer to my question and can't find one. So I hope some of you DVC vets can help us

I understand that we can book at our home resort at 11 months and can book at a different DVC resort at 7 months. Here's the question:

Can we book at our home resort at 11 months and then at the 7 month time frame try to book somewhere else? Can we have an existing ressie at AKL and then see if there's availablity at WLV, BWV, BCV and then change the ressie from AKL to somewhere else? That way we'd always have a ressie at our home resort if nothing else were available. It just seems like it would make sense to book that way. Then we'd have a room for sure, and hopefully could change it at 7 months to another DVC resort if possible. OR are you not allowed to change at 7 months? I hope my question makes sense. Thanks for any help.

 

[janni518]

Yet again I've searched for the answer to my question and can't find one. So I hope some of you DVC vets can help us

I understand that we can book at our home resort at 11 months and can book at a different DVC resort at 7 months. Here's the question:

Can we book at our home resort at 11 months and then at the 7 month time frame try to book somewhere else? Can we have an existing ressie at AKL and then see if there's availablity at WLV, BWV, BCV and then change the ressie from AKL to somewhere else? That way we'd always have a ressie at our home resort if nothing else were available. It just seems like it would make sense to book that way. Then we'd have a room for sure, and hopefully could change it at 7 months to another DVC resort if possible. OR are you not allowed to change at 7 months? I hope my question makes sense. Thanks for any help.

The short answer to your question is...yes.

 

[SplashMtnCrew]

Thanks!
It just seems like the smart way to do it to us! Thanks again!

 

[LisaS]

Yes. As you said, you can book your home resort using home resort points at 11 months out and you can book at any resort with any points at 7 months out. That is exactly what you would be doing in the case you describe: booking a home resort 11 months out and then at 7 months out, cancelling the original reservation and using the points to book something else. Many people do exactly that to be sure they have a place to stay, just in case they are unable to get into a different resort 7 months out. This could be the case for particularly busy times such as from Thanksgiving through New Years Eve.

MS will verify that there is availability at your chosen resort then cancel your existing reservation and use the points to book the new one. There is a minute or two when you have no reservation at all. There is very slight chance that during that time, some/all of your nights at the new resort are taken by other members calling at the same time. It can even happen that when the CM tries to put you back into your home resort that those nights have been snapped up as well and you end up with nothing or only some of the nights you need. It happens very rarely but it has happened to a couple of people here. The way around it is to book the new reservation first and then cancel the original one. That requires having enough points to hold two reservations at once, even though you will only be holding both for a few minutes.

I don't know whether the problem is that MS cannot hold the new reservation while they free up the points by cancelling the first one or whether some MS CMs are unaware of how to do it. I only know that it has affected a few people here so just be aware of that very small risk.

 

[wdwfanatic316]

Thanks SplashMtnCrew for asking this question! I've been wondering the same thing myself. It seemed like that would make sense and that you would be able to do that, but you never know!

I'm considering buying into DVC, but still researching which resort and whether now's the right time or not. There's so many options, it's hard to decide!