Updated Resort Availability Tool

[KAT4DISNEY]

If you change the webpages, add pretty pictures, and add to the complexity, members will not notice, as much as they did before, that the system often does not work right. Disney has done that successfully in the past with all of its webpages that often do not work right.

There is a very interesting factor that you may not immediately notice. The rooms you are allowed to see as to whether they are available for a resort can vary depending on the number of people you say are in your party. For example, put in two and you see all rooms, put in five and you no longer see studios that do not have sleeping units for 5, put in 7 and you get only 2BRs and above.

I did learn something I was not aware of before. You can still get Poly, Contemporary and GF hotel rooms on points. In the distant past, the opening of a DVC at one of the WDW resorts automatically meant the end of reserving the sister hotel resort on points. I had not noticed before that practice had actually changed beginning with BLT.

Booking the hotel rooms on points actually changed several years ago. Perhaps it was when VGF was coming up? They then opened all the hotels with DVC components up to point booking.

 

[JessLCH]

I dislike the new tool. The old one was very easy to search and customize with check boxes. This one is much more time consuming to search. I don't see it as an improvement at all.

 

[pangyal]

At least it clearly shows what a poor use of points it is to use it for the Moderates! That shouldn't even be showing up for me as an option as all of our contracts are resale, but whatever. Clearly, I am not missing out, based on 4 points per night more to stay at Port Orleans than VGF.

I personally like the new dashboard- it allows me to see all of the reservations I've made for all of my contracts at once. It makes the multiple contracts very easy to manage.

I got very excited at the little key showing the Annual Pass promo and yet it's the same one .

 

[DenLo]

I think it is nice. But they need to add room type as an option.

 

[Fan of Figment]

Wow, it just goes to show how different people's preferences can be. I like seeing all of my options, so to me, I like that I can now choose all WDW options with one click. Maybe they could do something to allow for people to customize it more to their liking. Like say maybe have a box you can check to not include unavailable resorts, and boxes for the specific room types or "include all". Or would that complicate things worse? I do think it's a step in the right direction though, with just a little more tweaking.

 

[NoleFan]

The new tool is awful. Takes much longer to do something that used to take seconds to accomplish. Much less efficient. The new tool is worthless to me. I will go back to the old way of checking via book your vacation now.

 

[rseeb]

Well the resort availability tool looks pretty but it does make it harder to get information quickly. I have not found a way to get a listing of all the resorts for specific dates like the old tool. This old feature was a great feature since we live so close and are just looking for availability and do not care what resort. I give it a C.

 

[NoleFan]

I hate it. They took something relatively functional and easy to check out and turned it into resort advertisement that takes multiple clicks to view the information that it is supposed to be providing. Junk as someone said. I've always detested the WDW booking site as one of the least functional booking sites out there and this is following right along. I just need to check availability easily.

totally agree. my thoughts exactly

 

[DenLo]

Everybody hated the old Availabity Tool at first until they figured out how to use it properly. The other one looked very unprofessional like it was an after thought. What is wrong with something that looks nice that takes you a minute versus 40 seconds to complete? Like I said before they just need to add the option for room type.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Wow, it just goes to show how different people's preferences can be. I like seeing all of my options, so to me, I like that I can now choose all WDW options with one click. Maybe they could do something to allow for people to customize it more to their liking. Like say maybe have a box you can check to not include unavailable resorts, and boxes for the specific room types or "include all". Or would that complicate things worse? I do think it's a step in the right direction though, with just a little more tweaking.

You could see all resorts at once with the old tool with no clicks other than search. That's one thing that is frustrating is that it takes many many more clicks to look at all the options now.

I also finally looked at the dashboard. I'm just so-so with it. The vacations booked listing needs to show the room type - really all the information that it previously did. This is more a neutral step in that it lists all upcoming vacations without a click but it doesn't show most of the information that I want to see about the reservations. Actually, I guess it's a small step backwards because I could get to the screen with all vacations in one click but now it's a click on each vacation to get details that I could previously see in a glance.

 

[wdrl]

I like the changes to the Resort Availability Tool. I have to use the Tool only a few times a year, so a few extra keystrokes are not going to kill me. But I frequently play with the Tool during the year, wondering if something is available, or how many points it might cost for different accommodations. Now, when I am playing with the Tool, its all fun and games to me. Its not like I need to get in, get information, and get out of the Tool as quickly as possible.

My wife and I are thinking about going to Japan in 2017. Until I saw Tokyo Disneyland hotels listed on the new Availability Tool, I didn't realize that we could use our points at Tokyo Disneyland. We almost surely won't use our points for such a trip, but I'll play around with the Tool just to see what it might cost us.

 

[Fan of Figment]

You could see all resorts at once with the old tool with no clicks other than search. That's one thing that is frustrating is that it takes many many more clicks to look at all the options now.

Right, but that still would bring up everything when I was just interested in WDW resorts. Sure, it wasn't a big deal to overlook what I wasn't interested in, but now it just let's me clean up the clutter a little. That's what I like. Obviously I am in the minority, haha.

 

[BillPA]

What a waste of our dues. They take one of the very few nicely working areas of the web site and screw it up.

 

[supersnoop]

You can click through the calendars on the new tool. Before, you could only move one month forward and one month back from your search. Now you can go all through the calendar. So, that's an improvement.

 

[DisMom829]

This is going to take some getting use too.

 

[wishicouldgomoreofte]

The new tool is awful. Takes much longer to do something that used to take seconds to accomplish. Much less efficient. The new tool is worthless to me. I will go back to the old way of checking via book your vacation now.

Agree. It is Awful, useless, time consuming, horrible. As you said, just using the book now is better than that terrible thing they have now.
I hope it is just something to show prospective clients and people taking tours, and when they are done, will return the previous version to us, the owners. It could be a dazzling sales tool, but bad for owners who know what they want.

 

[LisaS]

I don't want/need to see photos or information about resort amenities. Disney's webpages always load soooooo slowly, the fewer webpages I have to wade through to the get information I need the better. The old RAT was one of the best things on the members' website. If it ain't broke...

 

[LisaS]

OK, I have to take back part of what I complained about. I found the "Availability" check mark within each listed resort that allows me to see availability without going to the resort-specific page (with the photos and amenities). That saves loading at least one web page! Liking it a bit better now though I still wish I could limit the search to specific resorts and not just WDW DVC resorts.

ETA: I do like the softer background colors for the "available" vs "not available" dates on the large calendar display. That is a better than the prior RAT where I always had to remind myself which color was for available and which color was for unavailable because the background color for the unavailable dates was too prominent.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I like the changes to the Resort Availability Tool. I have to use the Tool only a few times a year, so a few extra keystrokes are not going to kill me. But I frequently play with the Tool during the year, wondering if something is available, or how many points it might cost for different accommodations. Now, when I am playing with the Tool, its all fun and games to me. Its not like I need to get in, get information, and get out of the Tool as quickly as possible.

My wife and I are thinking about going to Japan in 2017. Until I saw Tokyo Disneyland hotels listed on the new Availability Tool, I didn't realize that we could use our points at Tokyo Disneyland. We almost surely won't use our points for such a trip, but I'll play around with the Tool just to see what it might cost us.

But that all makes it less a RAT which is a pretty specific defined tool and has turned it more into a planning tool. It's trying to do too much in a link that should only do one thing IMO - look for rooms that are open.

 

[TaraPA]

Reminds me of the New Ancestry.com format switch - might be good for new users, or someone whose not sure what they want, but it doesn't work AT ALL for me. Too much fluff & pictures to get through. I usually know very specifically what I am looking for, and the new format is much more tedious & time consuming. I'm frustrated! Seriously - do any of you check for availability resort for ALL room types? Generally someone looking for a studio has zero interest in seeing if 2BR or 3BR villas are available, with every possible view...