If enough people get shut out of their home resort right at the 11 month window and call Disney to complain Disney will remove walking IMO. But how many people are currently being shut out as of now? Not sure.
If people are getting shut out of some categories at the 11 month window, it’s because demand outstrips supply.
Ending walking won’t change that.
If there are 50 rooms and 100 people want them and all 50 rooms are being walked, then 50 people are going to be shut out at 11 months. End walking and all 50 rooms are open at 8 am on the 11 month window... and 50 of those 100 people who want the room aren’t going to pull the trigger fast enough to get a room. Ending walking might change the process but it won’t change the outcome.
The bottom line though is that it’s impossible to be shut out of your home resorts at 11 months. There aren’t more points than rooms. Walking or not, this is always a limited category problem. The real exacerbation here is point cost inflation twisting demand towards studios. DVC has no real desire to fix that because building large point sucks like the cabins and bungalows benefits their business model.
To bring the point home, let’s take BWV as an example. An increased demand for studios generally makes booking studios at 7 months at BWV, especially during peak seasons like Fall Frenzy, impossible. So. More people buy points at BWV with the express purpose of booking at the 11 month window. Over time, more owners at legacy resorts with limited categories are turning into owners who are purposing to use those points at exactly 11 months in exactly those limited categories (and in the highest demand times of year).
I’m walking an AKV room because I have AKV points. As an owner of Poly and BCV already, we’ve stayed plenty of times at Kidani and we love it there! That’s not why we bought AKV points, though, because we don’t need AKV points to find Kidani rooms from time to time. We bought AKV points to take a shot at value and concierge rooms. Because we only bought 100 AKV points (due to price inflation), that means mostly studios (maybe 1 br values in the cheapest seasons as well).
In those rooms, in studios, most times of the year, that means walking. We knew when we bought the points that so long as walking was within the rules as currently implemented, that walking was going to be, by necessity, part of the plan of ownership for those points. If I didn’t know about walking (or more specifically that nailing down these rooms was always going to be a crapshoot), then I’d be pretty danged disappointed to find that I was getting shut out. Again, the problem is that demand outstrips supply. The existence of walking, if anything, at least gave me confidence to know that I have a decent shot. And. If they end walking tomorrow, at this point, I know enough about how the 8 am booking window works that I’d STILL have a decidedly competitive advantage over your average owner. If all 50 rooms opened at 8am, and I was one of the 100 owners trying to book, my odds of success would still be much greater than 50/50. You can’t take knowledge as a competitive advantage out of the equation, even if you try. The owners that learn the system to their advantage will always have an advantage.
