Reservation question for a newbie

[ellataylor]

Hi there,

I ideally would like to stay at OKW for 4 nights next summer then move to our home resort of VGF for 10days. I plan to book all 14 days at VGF soon at 11 months as a back up. My question is at 7 months do I have to cancel the whole 14 days and therefore risking someone else picks it up before I book the last 10 or can I just reduce the number of days off the beginning of our stay?
I hope this makes sense.
Thank in advance

 

[Disney Spaz]

You should be able to reduce the days at the VGF by modifying the reservation. Then book OKW if you are using the same points. Any time we plan a different resort for part of the stay we always book the whole thing at our home resort and modify at 7 months after we verify availability. If using the same points there is a brief period of time where you could lose the 4 days if you drop them first then grab OKW but OKW is usually a resort that doesn't book up right at the 7 month mark.

 

[sndral]

Hi there,

I ideally would like to stay at OKW for 4 nights next summer then move to our home resort of VGF for 10days. I plan to book all 14 days at VGF soon at 11 months as a back up. My question is at 7 months do I have to cancel the whole 14 days and therefore risking someone else picks it up before I book the last 10 or can I just reduce the number of days off the beginning of our stay?
I hope this makes sense.
Thank in advance

Book VGF as two separate stays at 11 months, a 4 night stay followed by a 10 day stay. At 7 months switch the 4 night stay to OKW.
Do take a look at this thread & maybe take steps to protect from DVC ‘merging’ your reservations https://www.disboards.com/threads/ms-auto-merging-reservations.3927949/#post-65005475.

 

[CarolynFH]

Hi there,

I ideally would like to stay at OKW for 4 nights next summer then move to our home resort of VGF for 10days. I plan to book all 14 days at VGF soon at 11 months as a back up. My question is at 7 months do I have to cancel the whole 14 days and therefore risking someone else picks it up before I book the last 10 or can I just reduce the number of days off the beginning of our stay?
I hope this makes sense.
Thank in advance

I agree with @sndral - book it as two reservations at 11 months (each one will have its own 11 month window), and make the guest list on them different (add a guest to one, leave just primary guest on the other). Then at 7 months you can simply modify the 4-night reservation without jeopardizing the longer one. Then you can finalize the guest lists. Whenever you plan a split stay, this is the best way to do it.

 

[kda]

And........pay attention to your use year and the number of points being used. If you're booking the same category of room, the VGF reservation will take more points than OKW. What will you do with those "extra" points? If you're past the banking deadline, those points will need to be used by the end of the use year. Or, maybe you can use those extra points to get a bigger room at OKW

 

[ellataylor]

Thanks all, your advice is so super helpful. If never even occurred to me about booking 2 separate stays and I will definitely have different lead bookers to prevent the possible merging

 

[CarolynFH]

Thanks all, your advice is so super helpful. If never even occurred to me about booking 2 separate stays and I will definitely have different lead bookers to prevent the possible merging

It’s harder to change the primary guest than the others, so you can leave the primary guest the same on both reservations (it will default to you, so you can book quickly) and just add one guest to the reservation you don’t plan to modify. Changing the lead guest requires a call to MS, changing the other guests can be done online at your leisure.

 

[ellataylor]

It’s harder to change the primary guest than the others, so you can leave the primary guest the same on both reservations (it will default to you, so you can book quickly) and just add one guest to the reservation you don’t plan to modify. Changing the lead guest requires a call to MS, changing the other guests can be done online at your leisure.

Oh ok, that makes sense! thank you!

 

[kes601]

Here's my suggestion, this is simply because OKW is going to be easy to get at 7 months for the summer (this assumes it's a Studio, 1 BR, or 2 BR and not a Grand Villa AND you don't care if you are near Hospitality House. Book your nights at the 11 months mark for VGF (only those you intend to stay at VGF for). Then at the 7 month mark book OKW.

If you were going after a harder to get resort I'd be all in at booking your stay as a split and then modifying the part you want to change, but that isn't the case for OKW in the summer.