Stalking bests waitlist

[Noodlez]

I just joined last year. I am noticing that when we try to get a room whether it’s 7 or 11 months out everything is wait listed. It pretty frustrating considering the price we paid. Are there too many members and not enough resorts? How likely is it to get a waitlist come through?

Thanks for any advise!

They can only sell the number of points that exist at resorts (less a couple of percent that they hold back), so they cannot oversell DVC and there can only be enough members for the existing resorts. Ideally, it should run at full capacity all of the time, but obviously there are more popular times of year and more popular rooms (usually the cheapest!).

Where is your home resort? We can't discuss current availability, but at 11 months there is usually something available at every resort! I have never seen all rooms only available on waitlist at 11 months. Except for a couple of extremely popular times of year (such as December), there is usually at least one type of studio available too. There are tables of past availability which should show you when these times are (https://www.dvcfieldguide.com/availability-tables).

7 month availability is obviously completely different, which is why the advice is usually to buy where you want to stay.

Your waitlist is more likely to come through if you put it in early, and if it is for a small number of days. You are better trying a couple of shorter ones for the time you need.

 

[kgou]

Attempting my second experiment on the waitlist vs. stalking front. We've had our Dec stay booked since the 11 month window, and just decided to head down a day early. On Friday, I waitlisted two rooms for the night I need and will also stalk the website. Aiming for a studio that sleeps 5 which somewhat limits my resort options. A poly standard studio room did pop up on Friday night during one of my stalks, but I was being stingy with points and didn't grab it. Kind of kicking myself over that one!

I successfully used a combo of stalking/waitlist back in March to cobble together a MDW weekend 4 night stay at BWV, so hoping for similar success this time around!