Technical Flaw in the Waitlist System?

[Mich Mouse]

While on a waitlist I will often call to check for matches. Yesterday when I phoned to inquire there was a room available at BLT in the exact category I was waitlisted for. The wait list should have matched this room to me or someone waiting ahead of me, but did not. The CM manually booked the ressie for me and I was very happy, but a tad suspicious.

Why? Because the exact same scenario occured last summer when I was waitlisted for BCV and got the ressie without the waitlisting actually matching. It was once again because I called.

Any ideas about this? Do all the cancelled reservations need to be uploaded into the system each day to create matches and if someone calls to inquire prior to that system upload occuring they get the ressie?

 

[Sandisw]

That is what I was told last year that sometimes, availability happens at the same time that someone calls and that they end up with it before the system has a chance to fill the wait list.

I found out that someone else was able to book the same exact BLT room, view that I was on a wait list for (same dates).

I ended up contacting member satisfaction to tell them how disappointed I was that the wait list was obviously not set up to work well. They ended up finding me a room and filled my request (which I was thrilled about) but still feel that rooms should not enter the inventory for CM's to book until they are sure there are no wait lists active for that room.

 

[Mich Mouse]

That is so disappointing...though I am happy to hear MS met your needs. How did you find out that someone else booked the room that you were waitlisted for? There is a real system flaw with the waitlist but it has only been to my advantage due to my frequent calling.....though I would absolutely prefer the system work as designed.... first come, first serve.

 

[Sandisw]

That is so disappointing...though I am happy to hear MS met your needs. How did you find out that someone else booked the room that you were waitlisted for? There is a real system flaw with the waitlist but it has only been to my advantage due to my frequent calling.....though I would absolutely prefer the system work as designed.... first come, first serve.

It was someone one the boards who posted that they had just snagged a BLT LV studio for opening weekend. That was the exact same time I was on the wait list.

When I wrote to member satisfaction, I didn't expect them to be able to do anything, like get me the room, but just wanted to share my opinion as a new member that it was disappointing that the wait list process had flaws.

Of course, because of this, when I do need to wait list again, I will do as you did, periodically call to see if it is available for booking and not necessarily leave it to the wait list process.

 

[cvjw]

Aren't wait lists booked at night? If they are, and someone cancels a room during the day, and then another member calls for that room, they would get it before it makes it to fill a wait list. I think that all cancellations should be checked against the wait list before being available to other members who call.

 

[Mich Mouse]

Aren't wait lists booked at night? If they are, and someone cancels a room during the day, and then another member calls for that room, they would get it before it makes it to fill a wait list. I think that all cancellations should be checked against the wait list before being available to other members who call.

In a perfect world they would be checked against the waitlsit....but they are not in my experience.

 

[Dean]

It's not a perfect system. The only way to fix it would be to hold all inventory that was canceled until it was checked against the WL. They likely should hold the inventory but doubt their system is set up to do so.

 

[jekjones1558]

Just wanted to post that I also had a bad experience with WL. I went on the waitlist at 1 week short of 11 months for one night in a BW view room. The WL was never filled. A friend who was going at the same time called MS about 2 months before check-in and got the exact room I needed (not knowing I was still on the WL). When he told me I about fell over. I called MS and they denied that he had the room I wanted. I then gave MS the confirmation number and asked to speak to a supervisor. There were no more rooms to book so MS could not give me another room. They offered me a $75 gift card for my trouble. Bottom line: the waitlist has problems. I don't trust it and consider myself extremely lucky when it works as advertised.

 

[Mich Mouse]

I guess the lesson learned is if you really want a match it might be in your best interest to call DVC.....a lot.

 

[dmoore22]

The last time I used the waitlist the CM recommended that I call often. The CM suggested calling daily, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I followed that advice and got what I needed in no time.

 

[dbs1228]

I guess I will get busy, we are trying to go from 1 bdrm to 2 bdrm BLT (mid Dec)I was told 2 out of the 5 nights were available. I waitlisted what I wanted and also called my guide since we are new members and bought over 400 points thru him and have not asked for anything. Not holding my breathe since I can never get a hold of him to begin with. I will have MS on my speed dial! lol Good to know

 

[SamSam]

I've had the same issue with waitlists, they don't come through automatically...sometimes when I call to check, the room is available and I get it. However, sometimes I get a cm who will say "if it was available you would have gotten it"....like they don't want to check for me, so I say thank you, hang up and call to get a cm who will check for me.

 

[disneynutz]

As I have posted before, I think that the wait list system is a sham. The results are to inconsistent for it to be a computer program.

Last year when I became very suspicious of the system, I couldn't get a straight answer from different levels of management on how the system works.

I was told that the system matches are immediate, run in batch mode throughout the day, matched at night, matched by a team with help from a software program. Four different answers for the same question.

Bill

 

[toniosmom]

I was told that the system matches are immediate, run in batch mode throughout the day, matched at night, matched by a team with help from a software program. Four different answers for the same question.

Seems like that's the way it SHOULD work, but obviously doesn't. It's a shame.

 

[bookwormde]

As said the waitlist sistem looks like it is a batch system without a 1 day hold on released days. Disney technology department is about as weak as it gets so this is no surprise.

I call often for waitlested nights for this and because of the fact that at resorts with lots of catagories you can not waitlist for all the catagories of the size unit you want.

bookwormde

 

[Tiger926]

Of course it's too much to ask that waitlists are filled in real time. Matching them 1x per day is ridiculous. We just got our first waitlist filled after only 2 days, so I know the waitlist works at times, but the fact that they don't do it in real time, is ridiculous, IMHO.

Tiger

 

[Crystal_27]

It would be nice to think that the inventory systems were integrated such that any cancellation of a room would immediately result in searching waitlists for the next match, but that obviously is not the case (and thus waitlists really aren't true waitlists). I'm hoping with the upcoming "enhancements" to the computer systems, the waitlist options will be made to work a little bit more fair. I guess only time will tell...

 

[dmoore22]

The results are to inconsistent for it to be a computer program.

Bill

That is the problem. WDW has multiple systems running. Many are XP, others are still DOS based. The bottom line is that Windows is inherently unstable. It makes life a little easier but it is not infallible. Call the CM and call often.

 

[Dean]

Obviously it's not a perfect system. Ask yourself whether you'd prefer it the way it is or not at all because that is the current choice. Hopefully they will improve it to make it more consistent and less likely to miss a pending request.

 

[wbl2745]

I have two observations about the waitlist system. First, a couple of days ago I was making reservations for AKV in late November, intending to walk my reservation to the days I needed. I had a reservation in October for VGC that I was going to have to cancel if the AKV reservation came through. I did that transaction first (bad idea) and then discovered that there were going to be difficulties with AKV. (I should have known that...) Any way, literally minutes later I tried to re-reserve my VGC in October and one of my days was already gone. I was thinking it was the waitlist system that had assigned it, but I suppose that someone could have called right then, but it seemed unlikely to me.

Second, again on the AKV reservations I called today to make reservations from 11/25 through 12/2 (the maximum that I can do today) and was told that in the value studios a couple of the days were unavailable. They offered to waitlist the entire stay, meaning that all of the days would have to appear before they would grant the waitlist. They wouldn't do it day-by-day. That might be an issue too, that someone with a shorter reservation is able to get all of the days of their waitlist while someone with a longer reservation during that same time would not be given those days.

On the systems side, you'd be surprised how much code is still running on very old computers and operating systems. In fact, I wonder whether each of the resorts has its own system? That wouldn't make any sense, but it could be what they do.

Lastly, on the mathematics side, I think that filling waitlists is probably an example of the knapsack problem, which in math terms is NP-complete, meaning it's really, really hard to get the optimal solution to the problem. Most of the time systems will use a heuristic to solve an NP-complete problem, which means it uses a pretty good guess at the right answer and doesn't worry about the optimal answer. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case and the cause of these frustrations.

Bottom line, calling frequently to "help" the system do its job is probably the best course of action.