Room Blocks

[skiqt323]

What happens if you don't meet your minimum room nights?

 

[M&M126]

You dont get your free room night the night of your wedding. And also, I think that you might have to pay for the unused rooms in your block to meet your minimum.

Girls please correct me if I'm wrong

 

[SRUAlmn]

If you don't meet your minimum you have to pay for the remaining rooms. They take the lowest room rate available in your block, and multiply it by the number of open rooms and that is what you're required to pay. We were really worried about this when we did ours, so we made it way smaller. Now we have people who can't get rooms. It's SO tough to figure this room block stuff out!!

 

[M&M126]

I'm super worried that the same thing will happen to us! Yikes!

 

[skiqt323]

I am very worried, most of the people that are coming are families, or families staying together, pretty much each person would have to have their own room to meet the minimum, I still have a ton of time, but hopefully we will make it.

 

[Janell]

I need some clarity, if you block rooms for your guest and they are not used, Disney has you pay for them? Or are you talking about meeting your minimum night requirement?

 

[jasonandlisa]

Disney allows you to block 20% more room nights than you "guarantee". So if you only want to guarantee the 25-room-night minimum, you can have 30 room nights in your room block. If you and your guests book less than 25 room nights, you are required to pay for the extras, to meet the minimum. If you and your guests book at least 25 but less than 30, that's fine.

Now, if you want to reserve more than 30 room nights in your block, then your minimum goes up, too. I started with a 60 room night block. That meant I was required to book 50 room nights. One thing you can do is increase your block as it starts to fill. I recently called group reservations and found that I already had about 90 room nights booked. Since it's still more than 3 months until the wedding, and the vast majority of our guests (who say they're coming) haven't booked rooms yet, I increased my block to 120 room nights. (So we have to have a minimum of 100 room nights booked.) That was a pretty conservative increase, since it meant that only a couple more guests need to book rooms to reach the minimum. I may end up raising the block a bit more, too, if I can.

Just to give one more example: if, in a few weeks, I find that our guests have booked 150 room nights, then I know I can add 20% of that (30 room nights) to our block without any risk.

Hope that's all clear. Oh, one more thing. (Which may complicate my explanation unnecessarily.) If guests book rooms independently (i.e., not through disney weddings group reservations), those room nights count toward your minimum but don't use up any of the room nights that were blocked. In my case, some guests booked rooms at the rack rate instead of the discounted rate, to take advantage of the free disney dining plan offer this fall. I get to count those room nights towards my minimum without subtracting from the blocked rooms.

All that being said, I am worried about guests not getting rooms. I wish people who know they're coming to the wedding would hurry up and just book their rooms! It's not like the rate's going to change... I only just got my brothers to make their reservations last week. My mom would have killed them if they had waited too long and had to stay at some other resort

 

[Janell]

Thanks for explaining that. I understand it now.

I worry too that people will wait to long to make their reservations. I like the idea of blocking the min. amont of rooms and then adding more as you go. We are told we need 25 nights, which my parents, DF and I can almost book all those nights, so I am not to worried there, but blocking a lot of rooms scare me. So I will take your idea and just block what you need too and see where it goes.

I am also thinking of sending an email to the guest invited to see if they are interested in coming or if they know they can't come, before save the dates go out. Because we are only inivting so many people and if the people who lets say are on the first invite liest can't come then we would like to invite other people. When I do that I am thinking of asking the guest who are coming about where they would like to stay, so I can make sure they have the rooms avaibale to them. Not sure if this will help or not, but its a start to get people thinking and not putting it off.

 

[Laurafoster]

You could always offer your room nights on here? Im suer there are always going to be people booking planning visits etc? You could help out a fellow disser and meet your mimimum!

 

[lurkyloo]

Yes - often you'll see posts like "Help, I need to make my room block - is anyone going to be at WDW on these dates?" We're all happy to give you our reservation numbers to add to your total.

Also, I did a search back when the DIS search system worked better, and from my research at that time, no one had ever actually been charged for not filling all the rooms in their block - they just didn't get the free night....

 

[Janell]

Thats always good to know that you can ask for help. I think we will be okay, it will just depend on if we stay at WDW the whole time or if we go to other places. Havn't gotten that far in the planning to know. Thanks for your help.