Time you Check-in Correspond w/ Whether you get your Room#?

[disneyberry]

<font face="times" size="+0">
<i>EDIT: 7am should be 6am. Sorry for the typo.</i>

DrTomorrow's poll and something that Lenshanem wrote about a few days ago got me wondering some more about check-in timing.

It seems that if you check-in too early, the front desk will refuse to tell you your room#. This means that you are unable to ask for a different room in case it happens to be not quite what you were hoping for.

When you don't get your room#, I also suspect that makes it possible for the front desk to shuffle things around should a guest check-in later and ask for a different room. So that guest who had better timing might end up getting the room what was supposed to be your room. But since you were never told your room# when you checked-in earlier that day, you would never know that that had happened.

So, the theory is that there is a "best" time to check-in when it's not too early (and you don't get your room# because it's not ready), and not too late (where only the "less-desirable" rooms are leftover).

I setup the poll assuming that by 5pm, all rooms would be ready for guests checking in. I think technically they're supposed to be ready by 4pm? But I recall some people reporting that's not the case.

Anyway, I don't know if this is the best way to poll this, because the resulting percentages won't really make any sense. And I'm not positive there is any pattern to this... Wishful thinking, I guess. Oh well, if anyone thinks of a better method, please let me know. This may be more of a discussion topic than a poll topic, so please reply w/ your thoughts also. TIA, everyone!

BTW, the poll allows multiple choices. Again, not sure if that's the right thing to do for polling purposes though.
Please click here to view poll results without voting in the poll.</font>

 

[tjkraz]

I'm not sure how relevant the poll might be.

It's been my understanding that the room number will always be provided if the room is immediately ready for occupancy, while they always withhold the room number if the room still needs to be cleaned at the time of your arrival. Quite simply, they don't want you going to the room until housekeeping has finished its work, which is why the room number is withheld.

Success in getting a room immediately upon arrival would depend on things like season, arrival day (I suspect it's easier to get into a DVC room early on Sunday since fewer people seem inclined to use points for weekend stays) and arrival time.

The results would be further tained by those who are willing to take a different room than originally assigned in order to get into the room early. I believe that's the core of the whole "room ready" system.

I do agree that it's possible for the front desk to shuffle you around if necessary. An actual CM posted on a related thread recently confirming that they do have this authority, but that it is rarely used. Even if that's true, I can certainly see how it would really ruin one's day to arrive at the room and discover you didn't get what was promised at check-in.

 

[lenshanem]

I'm pretty sure we have been bumped before at BCV and I think this is what disneyberry is referring to.

We checked in early, maybe around eleven? I had only one request - for my parents' room to be near mine. The front desk told me the request was filled and we were very close to one another.
The rooms weren't ready so they gave us a card to call back.
When we did get our rooms later that day they were actually on opposite wings.
Either we were bumped during the day or the front desk didn't know what she was talking about.

This does lead me to believe there must be some magic window when your odds are best. Checking in after rooms are starting to be ready, but before everything is picked over and you must take leftovers.

So in a sense I'm now starting to think maybe early isn't the best bet, but maybe early afternoon?

 

[Chuck S]

Originally posted by lenshanem
We checked in early, maybe around eleven? I had only one request - for my parents' room to be near mine. The front desk told me the request was filled and we were very close to one another.

Shan, when you checked in were you issued room keys? Were your parents also checked in at that time, and did they get room keys?

I don't think they "shuffle" once keys are issued, but if you checked in, and then your parents checked in later, their room may have been shuffled (or vice-versa - who ever checked in first).

 

[disneyberry]

<font face="times" size="+0">tjkraz, yes, it's a very valid point about the time of year, day of week, and whether people accept a different room to get in early.

So it looks like it's really not possible to take any accurate poll on this topic. Thanks for everyone who has voted though. It's still a bit of info that's somewhat interesting, though not necessarily useful.

Shan, the weird thing about your situation is that from what I heard from Jackie (the former MS Satisfaction Mgr) last year, she said that one of the situations the Room Assignors will pre-assign or pre-block rooms is when guests request to have rooms close to each other. So, it really does seem possible that you checked-in and they had blocked those rooms for you and your parents, and then later gave away one of the rooms to someone else.

I mean, I don't really think they're supposed to shuffle room assignments around after keys are issued. But what's to stop them? And you, the guest, would never have proof that they actually did that since you were never given a room# in the first place. And even if you could prove it somehow, usually by the time you find out (late in the day), it's too late to do anything about it.

I don't understand why they can't just tell you your room# first so you know exactly what the expect, and then encode the keys to be initially inactive, so that while housekeeping is cleaning the room, there's no way you could get in. They'd tell you that you should call the front desk first (just like the old system) to check if your room is ready. When you call in, and the room is ready, they can just activate the keys at that time. Everything should be encoded on the barcode of the keys anyway, so I don't see why they couldn't implement a better system.</font>

 

[lenshanem]

I checked both myself and my parents in at the same time. We were given room keys, but not the room numbers. We were given the card to call back to be given our room numbers once our rooms were ready. Once we saw we were not close by as we were told earlier in the day I called down to the front desk to be put on hold for what seemed like an eternity. (Maybe thirty minutes?) They came back and told me they could not move us any closer and probably wouldn't be able to even later in the week. I was told to call each day , but what was the point? Move on our last night?

I had both our ressies thru MS cross referenced with each other's names and ressie numbers with the request to please be close to one another. BCV is my home resort and I made these ressies eleven months out to the day.

Needless to say it did not impress my Dad. He has worked for Holiday Inn for years, since I was a baby!

I know I've been sounding negative lately, but I've yet to experience really great service at any of the DVC resorts except for BWV. Don't get me wrong, I love DVC in that we now are staying in really cool resorts where otherwise we'd probably be staying value or mod. I know my Dad was disappointed cause he knows we spent alot to join and he thinks the service should be first class all the way.

 

[tjkraz]

Originally posted by Chuck S
I don't think they "shuffle" once keys are issued, but if you checked in, and then your parents checked in later, their room may have been shuffled (or vice-versa - who ever checked in first).

Oh, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that they can switch those rooms. This is all speculation on my part (and someone is welcome to disprove me if they can), but I would guess that the front desk can tell whether the guest has used the key to enter the room or not.

Or perhaps it's a matter of them being able to tell whether the room has been released by housekeeping or not. If the room is still showing as "being cleaned", a little technical switcheroo, suddenly an unused room key opens a different door than it did when first issued.

 

[DrTomorrow]

Well, so far (late Wed / early Thurs) it looks like this:

If you check-in before 2 PM, the odds are that you'll have to wait; after 2 PM, odds are you'll get your room #.

I agree that there are many more confounding factors, that's why I made my poll just check-in time - which seems to show a landslide for 8 AM - 4 PM (duh).

 

[Sammie]

We have never checked in before 4pm and have always been given our room at check in.

We don't check in any earlier even if we are already on property.

We really are not into checking in early and coming back for the room. So we wait till they are suppose to be ready and then check in. We have always waited and have always been able to go right to our room after check in.

 

[goofy4tink]

We have had only one experience so far. We checked in on a Sunday (8/15) at around 1:30 or so. We were told that there wasn't a room ready, which I expected. No problem. The CM told me that if I wanted to wait for a bit longer he could give me a room with a pretty good view of Epcot and the fireworks/the Boardwalk. I said we would wait. We did have to wait until almost 4:00, we sat for about an hour in the lobby since it was so brutally hot/humid that day. When we got to our room, we found it was worth the wait. Based on the way the CM worded it I wonder if we had said we didn't want to wait too long, if we could have had a different room.

 

[LUVMICKEY]

We have only had one bad experiance and that was last July. We checked in around 7:00 A.M. and of course our room was not ready, which we expected. We were given the card with the number on it to call to see if our room was ready, which we did use, but we waited after 5:00 P.M. and our room still was not ready. So we went to the desk finally and asked about it. they finally gave us our room but it wasn't anything that we asked for. We had also asked for our requests at time of booking. which was at 11 months and reconfirmed those requests when checking in. Requests were non-smoking and pool view. As it turned out, we became happy with our room after the disappointment was over. We really did feel though that they had bumped us from our original room assignment. The room surely should have been ready by 4:00. But as I said, it turned out just fine.

Michele