When can I reserve my trip?

[eliz72586]

Hi All,
This may be a silly question, however, I can't find the answer anywhere.
I just got back from WDW last week. My DB (dear boyfriend?) and I stayed offsite and booked everything through travelocity. We were so excited about WDW and everything about it that we have already decided we would make it an annual thing-This year, we want to book straight through disney- the resort, tickets, and dining. My question is, how soon can we make these reservations? I know they have some sort of payment plan so you do not have to pay all at once...but for the life of me, I can't find anything that says how far in advance you can make the trip reservations? HELP!! Thank You!!

 

[CoachBagFanatic]

Hi There, I do believe that you can book 499 days out. I always book our vacation on line through the Disney website but some people prefer to book via telephone. Once you have a confirmation # and have made your initial deposit of $200.00 you can start to make payments as little as $20.00 each. The trip has to be paid in full 45 days prior to your arrival. You will get a lot of great advise here on DIS. Happy planning.

 

[eliz72586]

Thank you!! Time to start planning

 

[brentalex]

You can make a reservation 499 days from your last night there. If you make the reservation that far in advance, there will not be any packages available. There will only be room only reservations. And you can only make these early reservations via the phone, calling disney. They can't be made on line, although a travel agent can make it for you. You will need to make a deposit of one nights stay, based on the current room rate, not the rate that you will be paying when you actually arrive. Then during the summer, package rates for the next year will come out and you can change your reseravation to a package, if you want.

 

[hammie59]

We booked our april 2008 trip in feb 2007. Like previous posters have said, you can only reserve the rooms at first as the new packages and prices won't be out that soon in advance. The CM on the phone told me when to call back to change the "room only" ressies to a package and we did that in august 2007. We didn't get any type of discount (special code), but I'm lurking this board in hopes for one soon. The CM told me if I found a discount later I could call back and apply it.

 

[pepe of ohio]

We book, through CRO, as soon as we decide we're going and when. We just book room only for our choice dates. We always go during value season, stay away from hard date specials, Pop Warner, Golf, Marathon etc, try to work with the discounts offered by our AP's or AAA. When out by a few months, we then decide on how to handle the reservation, going room only, versus a package. In all our experiences, 40 times to WDW, we have ended up just booking room only. Dining plan doesn't interest us, too time consuming and you never know when you're going to be hungry and we don't want to vacation to a clock or schedule for eating. We usually go to WDW twice a year, so we buy AP's, our stays are of the 9-12 night varieties and we get our moneys worth out of the AP's. We keep groceries in our room fridge, grocery store in route to WDW, and prefer a picnic lunch around the pool with some beers most days.

As for the package offerings of extra fun stuff, water parks, boat rentals etc. those are not top priorities of ours so we don't need to pay for itemds we won't use, hence we don't do packages. Discounts off rack rate can't be used with packages so we prefer the room only AAA or AP discount rate and do extra things out of pocket, keeps our vacation cost low so we stay longer and go more often.

 

[CoachBagFanatic]

See I knew you would get great advise and more accurate advise than I gave you. Sorry for the misinformation. Now I know myself for future trips.