Waitlist reliability?

[RanDIZ]

Great feedback. I’ve been finding all types of availability for Dec all over the place in recent weeks. I’m sure COVID has something to with it.

 

[LSchrow]

We haven't had a WL filled automatically in years. BUT, we've been able to grab many of the nights (about 5x every year) we wanted by stalking - 3AM EST seems to be my lucky time

 

[YourEveryDayAdam]

I am just going to reiterate what others have said: The waitlist system will automatically snap up rooms as the waitlists are filled, but it doesn't confirm the reservations themselves. The process works like this:

1) A customer cancels their reservation and puts a room in to availability
2) At some point (either immediately after Step 1 or several times a day...nobody know which) the system will check for waitlist availability for those rooms that were released.
3) If a matching waitlist is found, it holds the room and puts the held room and wait list into a queue for a Member Services person to process.

At this point, the room is held, but the reservation does not appear in the member's dashboard and still shows as a wait list.

4) When Member Services can get around to it, the queue is processed by a person. The person who processes it will check for things like borrowing points, having enough points, cancelling existing reservations that the waitlist might replace, etc...and book the reservation. This process may take a few days as it's a manual process.

After Step 4 is when you see the actual reservation online and waitlist fulfillment email. I think most people are checking availability between steps 3 and 4 and finding ANOTHER available room to book. There is a slight chance that folks are catching the room between steps 1 and 2, but I think that is going to be Rare...if it's even possible at all.

Me philosophy on it: There is no harm in continuing to check availability, even while you have a wait list. Personally, I doubt it's necessary, but it doesn't hurt anything to check and book the room you want by hand if you find it.

I've had tremendous success with waitlists as long as I wasn't wait listing exceptionally difficult to get rooms. Club level, Board walk view, MK View at BLT, Grand Villas, standard/cheap views, etc...can all be difficult to book. Pretty much every time I've booked easy to get rooms (Lake Views, SSR, OKW, AKV Savannah view, etc.) it's almost always successful.

 

[RanDIZ]

I guess I went into a little panic mode seeing the rooms available yet my waitlist was still showing active.

 

[Marionnette]

I’ve had a waitlist in place for what seems like forever for 3 October nights in a BWV std view studio. It just automatically filled two days ago. This is the second waitlist that I’ve had fill when stalking failed me. I was beginning to give up hope on this one.

 

[Cinderbrella1]

I was able to grab the nights we needed for an upcoming trip by diligently stalking our dates. Member services helped me cancel my other room and said the wait list would have eventually grabbed the room, but I was too excited to wait.

 

[Bullseye]

Based on starting to read this thread yesterday I jumped in right away to check my request and sure enough it was available. I think I caught mine between step 3-4. This is the second time this has happened to me and MS always tells me it had already been matched and was waiting to be processed. But we squared it away while I was on the phone . One less thing to obsess about until trip becomes a reality.

 

[buffalobasingal]

Had a similar experience with the waitlist where we needed one night at DGC in the middle of a 4 night stay. It was waitlisted for a month and I kept hoping for it to work out. But since we were needing to bank points, so we decided to make different plans. I tried to cancel this reservation online, but received an error message. So, I called member services the next morning and cancelled everything. I remember the CM asking specifically if I wanted to cancel the waitlist as well and I said yes since it didn't come through. I hung up the phone and did a search for December for other resorts/dates and was surprised to see the date that I had waitlisted show as available for the DGC along with some of the other dates I had just cancelled minutes before. So, I quickly snagged those dates, but unfortunately someone snagged the first date of our trip. I called back and asked what happened. They said they could not see the history on the transaction since it was cancelled, but probably the waitlisted night was waiting to be manually processed. So, I asked if the CM who had cancelled the waitlist would have been able to see that it was matched and pending processing. I was told that they would have had to check that in a different screen and that's why the CM probably didn't notice that it had come through and let me know. Good news is at least we have three nights all together now. But, lesson learned to always call and ask a CM to check on a waitlist before cancelling. Sometimes it can just be on hold waiting for a CM to manually process the waitlist. I've got the first night of our trip waitlisted again, but I'll be sure to call and check before making any changes this time.