World Passport Collection

[mimmiepnp]

If I was to make reservation within the world passport collection is the timing of the reservation the same as our 11 month window for DVC resorts and how difficult is it to secure a reservations within this collection? Are there only a limited number of rooms available per resort? How does it all work?

Thanks again

 

[Disney_Villain]

Hi mimmiepmp!

You have a 2-year window for booking with the world passport collection (aka Interval Internation, or II on the boards here). It isn't difficult to do, as you just call MS with your request. It does cost a $95 booking fee though.

If you are flexible about which resorts you stay in and/or date ranges you can go, most people can get what they want.

Hawaiian bookings are the only exception . . . where you have to be really flexible as most people using II want Hawaii (the demand is very high). Actually, most members want the top-end Hawaiian resorts - and if you're willing to consider some that aren't so high-end, it will also increase your chances of getting to Hawaii.

I am told that 50% or more members do get their Hawaiian II requests if they book early (say at the 2 year window) and wait . . . as most of these timeshares (Hawaiian or not) open up at the 1 year advance window, with DVC'ers getting in at the 5-7 month advance window being common.

As was explained to me in a town hall meeting at OKW last year . . .

In the end, you are effectively trading your DVC timeshare for someone else's timeshare. They put in their request for a trade to DVC through theirs, surrendering their timeshare . . . and we DVCers put in just a request (along with the deposit). None of your points are actually allocated to this trade until a match is made - and you can cancel your request at any time before the match is made, getting your $95 deposit back.

If you have to cancel such a reservation (assuming you got your match), your points used for the match go into "reservation points" (which means that you have to use them for an II match again at some point).

Hope that helps a bit!

 

[mimmiepnp]

That was so helpful. Thank you so much!!

 

[Dean]

If you have to cancel such a reservation (assuming you got your match), your points used for the match go into "reservation points" (which means that you have to use them for an II match again at some point).

This is where you went off track. If you cancel a DCL, DC or similar, they go into reservation points and must be used within a year but you can use them like cash for those items where you can use points to book outside of DVC (DCL, CC, DC and the like). You cannot use those for II or BVTC. If you cancel II, you have an exchange credit related to your initial deposit that's good for a year, if you cancel a second time you get nothing.

I'd also so suggest your characterization of the ease of getting various exchanges was somewhat overly optimistic. While technically the successful exchange rate may be in the 90% range, that does not take into account cancelled exchange requests or those that settle for something other than what they truly wanted or even those that occurred late in the process. As you noted, I think the exchange success varies with the specific request but there are many other places in addition to HI that are difficult, some far more so.