When Can You Book Villas?

[Mom2six]

I was just playing around with the dates I'm staying next September, and we will be staying in a Villa for part of the time. (We are going 14 nights and doing a split stay). Well, it keeps saying the resort category or rooms is unavailable. Is that because DVC can't book villas until 11 months out? Or is this something else? Could they really be booked up for all the 2 bedroom villas in Disney for 9/2013?

 

[vicki_c]

While you may find scattered availability for some villa locations further out, most are not going to show up for cash reservations until closer to your booking dates. I think I've seen people throw 10 months around as a time frame, but that is not any kind of fixed time frame and availability will change as time goes on.

 

[DebbieB]

I was just playing around with the dates I'm staying next September, and we will be staying in a Villa for part of the time. (We are going 14 nights and doing a split stay). Well, it keeps saying the resort category or rooms is unavailable. Is that because DVC can't book villas until 11 months out? Or is this something else? Could they really be booked up for all the 2 bedroom villas in Disney for 9/2013?

Most of the DVC resorts are soldout or close to it, so at 11 months around 95% of the rooms belong to the members, with the rest belonging to Disney Vacation Development (DVC's parent). As members start trading out for example to a cruise or an outside resort, rooms are released to CRO to pay for their trade. So there is not much availability for CRO at 10 or 11 months. DVD controls when rooms are released to CRO, there's no preset time but they can't release rooms that the members own.

 

[Mom2six]

Thanks for the replies! That's very interesting. When I booked the treehouse villas last year it was around 7 months out and it never occured to me that I would have to wait to book a room. We're still debating between the resorts, so I guess we'll have to see what gets released.

Do you know if AKL - either Jambo house or Kidani - end up having many 2 bedroom villas released?

 

[DebbieB]

Thanks for the replies! That's very interesting. When I booked the treehouse villas last year it was around 7 months out and it never occured to me that I would have to wait to book a room. We're still debating between the resorts, so I guess we'll have to see what gets released.

Do you know if AKL - either Jambo house or Kidani - end up having many 2 bedroom villas released?

AKV is not soldout for purchasing points, so more cash rooms will be available than other resorts.

 

[Lynne M]

Here's how DVC villas end up being available for cash reservations:

1) Disney retains ownership of a small (<10%) percentage of the inventory in each DVC resort. These can be used for anything Disney wants - hold 'em in case a villa needs to swapped out for maintenance, upgrade customers from other overbooked resorts, etc. Ultimately, I'm sure most end up with CRO to be booked for cash. Now, if a resort has not been completely sold to members (such as AKV or BLT), Disney's ownership percentage will be higher, so you'll see more of those villas available through CRO. I've heard that at least some of these get deposited with CRO at about 10 months out, but I''m sure it varies.

2) When members exchange out of the DVC system to use their points for cruises, stays at non-DVC resorts, etc, a villa of 'comparable value' gets taken out of the member inventory and sent over to CRO to be booked. The proceeds of that go to pay the other resort or the cruise line. DVC members tend not to trade out a lot, though, so there won't be a lot released to CRO for this reason.

3) If a villa from the member inventory is still not booked by 60 days out, it gets sent to CRO and put up for cash reservations. This is called breakage inventory. In this case, if a member calls looking for a villa like that one, it will be pulled out of the cash inventory and back into the member inventory.

So....the bottom line is, at resorts that are sold out, there are not going to be loads of villas sitting in CRO's inventory, and except for the breakage inventory villas that get moved over at 60 days out, there's no set time that they'll become available to the general public.

I wish I could give you a timeframe, but really, the only thing you can do is keep looking.