Number of People Walking

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WOW!!

I'm going to post this in it's own thread, but I just got lucky, thanks to my own gut instinct...

I saw that the BW view was still sitting open this morning, my waitlist was still gone from my dashboard, and yet my reservation still showed that I had a Pool or Garden View booked so I decided to call Member Services at 9:00am and check on the situation. The member services CM told me that it showed that my waitlist had indeed been confirmed and filled....for a POOL or GARDEN VIEW!! They matched my waitlist to the exact same room I already had booked! He could not figure out what happened, but he saw that the BW view was available so he made the change and confirmed that we are now booked in a BOARDWALK view. Phew!

Then, I refreshed the page and saw that the room was no longer available...I GOT THE LAST ONE! Thank goodness I called and checked! I would definitely consider this a HUGE flub on the part of Member Services. If the waitlist is indeed filled by an actual PERSON, that person who did this needs some remediation. If it is an automated process done by a computer...well, it IS Disney IT and I guess I am not surprised.

That’s crazy. Incompetence at its finest!
 
WOW!!

I'm going to post this in it's own thread, but I just got lucky, thanks to my own gut instinct...

I saw that the BW view was still sitting open this morning, my waitlist was still gone from my dashboard, and yet my reservation still showed that I had a Pool or Garden View booked so I decided to call Member Services at 9:00am and check on the situation. The member services CM told me that it showed that my waitlist had indeed been confirmed and filled....for a POOL or GARDEN VIEW!! They matched my waitlist to the exact same room I already had booked! He could not figure out what happened, but he saw that the BW view was available so he made the change and confirmed that we are now booked in a BOARDWALK view. Phew!

Then, I refreshed the page and saw that the room was no longer available...I GOT THE LAST ONE! Thank goodness I called and checked! I would definitely consider this a HUGE flub on the part of Member Services. If the waitlist is indeed filled by an actual PERSON, that person who did this needs some remediation. If it is an automated process done by a computer...well, it IS Disney IT and I guess I am not surprised.

What a story! I have made a hobby out of studying how the DVC software works, there is no question that the waitlist is indeed software and while it used to be scheduled to run about every hour, it has been moved up to run every few minutes. It still is not run the way it should be in my opinion, triggered off of changes in inventory, that's probably because they're keeping down the processing demands on the server (or, their IT has no clue how to build this).

Steps: When a WL request
(A) matches inventory the system it
(B) puts a hold on the room, then
(C) it works to see if it can gather the points required for it (native points, borrowed or cancellation approval), and if none of these fit it goes off to
(C1) human intervention queue. That's when we get a call.

If the points are there it
(D) books the room and cancels the request.
(E) We get an email regarding this success.

You found a bug in the software. Right at the start (step A) It confused your room category request with another. What if it changed a reservation to something a family could not use and then their plans are torn apart? In my opinion this is a high priority bug, one that needs fixing asap.
 
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WOW!!

I'm going to post this in it's own thread, but I just got lucky, thanks to my own gut instinct...

I saw that the BW view was still sitting open this morning, my waitlist was still gone from my dashboard, and yet my reservation still showed that I had a Pool or Garden View booked so I decided to call Member Services at 9:00am and check on the situation. The member services CM told me that it showed that my waitlist had indeed been confirmed and filled....for a POOL or GARDEN VIEW!! They matched my waitlist to the exact same room I already had booked! He could not figure out what happened, but he saw that the BW view was available so he made the change and confirmed that we are now booked in a BOARDWALK view. Phew!

Then, I refreshed the page and saw that the room was no longer available...I GOT THE LAST ONE! Thank goodness I called and checked! I would definitely consider this a HUGE flub on the part of Member Services. If the waitlist is indeed filled by an actual PERSON, that person who did this needs some remediation. If it is an automated process done by a computer...well, it IS Disney IT and I guess I am not surprised.

Glad you were able to get the room! There still is the human component to finalize the waitlist booking and it sounds like they made a mistake and just rebooked the room you already had and released the Boardwalk view room that had matched. It's not a perfect process which leaves it open to errors but luckily you were able to "fix" it!
 
Glad you were able to get the room! There still is the human component to finalize the waitlist booking and it sounds like they made a mistake and just rebooked the room you already had and released the Boardwalk view room that had matched. It's not a perfect process which leaves it open to errors but luckily you were able to "fix" it!
Ah, you're probably right. There must be a human double checking what the system is doing, right? We would hope at least.
 


Been holding off on saying anything so I wouldn't jinx myself, but this morning I managed to complete my Oct 2019 Stay in a Jambo Value Studio! Had some luck grabbing rooms as they opened up last week from folk rolling off, then in the wee hours of the morning I was able to grab the last day.

I even had the option of changing our first day to a club room, which I didn't do, I'd rather 2 or more nights if I'm to stay club level, otherwise let me get into my room and go shopping for the week.
 
A lot of people thought that they’d do a reallocation at Poly after sellout to make studios a little more in points and bungalows a lot less. I think for every 1 point/night increase in studios you could decrease bungalows by 18 points given the ratio of 360/20.

But they wouldn’t have wanted to do that while Poly was still selling new and they probably don’t want to do so now because of the message that it would send regarding their intentions with the Cabins at CCV.

Personally I don’t think that they object too much with the way things stand now. The Bungalows are a win/win for DVC: more points to sell up front, more breakage income if they don’t book and some VIP access if they neither book nor sell CRO.


MAYBE DVC "bean counters" may not object to the way things stand now for the Bungalows. BUT, a LOT of DVC OWNERS would disagree with that! I and a LOT of others think the Bungalow points are way too high!! Just my .02....
 
MAYBE DVC "bean counters" may not object to the way things stand now for the Bungalows. BUT, a LOT of DVC OWNERS would disagree with that! I and a LOT of others think the Bungalow points are way too high!! Just my .02....
Maybe so. But the only fix to that would be to raise the price of studios and far too many Poly owners bought just enough points for the studio nights that they wanted. IF DVC reallocated, my guess is that you'd see far more upset Poly owners than happy owners.

IF DVC has an obligation to the owners' best interests, they would have to take into account the owners that bought small contracts.

Either way, there's enough muddle on both sides of which Poly owners would benefit for DVC to get away with whatever decision makes it the happiest.

I'm a Poly owner and while I have more than 500 points spread across 3 contracts and could likely afford to stay in a bungalow from time to time, I would never use my points that way even if DVC dropped the price 18 or 36/points per night. That being the case, I'd be happier if they didn't allocate our studios - some of the highest priced studios per night in the entire DVC portfolio - even higher.
 
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Ah, you're probably right. There must be a human double checking what the system is doing, right? We would hope at least.
The software finds the match and removes the match from Inventory. The human actually finishes the process by making the new reservation and cancelling the old. Doubt very much that the software made the error. It's almost certain that the CM made the error. Based on reports here, such an error is very rare. This is the first time we've read about one like this.
Happy to hear that kristenrice caught it in time.
 
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I only have 100 AKV points, so I’m only walking 4 days. I think most of the others are walking a full week.


Just curious - in the process of educating myself to the new (and more painful) ways of trying to reserve an ever popular room I noted your comment above and also that you are walking to December. I just checked availability online and there are NO club level rooms available for an entire week starting today ( and maybe longer, but it doesn't show that).

So if you have one of five studio club level rooms reserved for four nights, then there should be availability on the 5th day, right?
 
Just curious - in the process of educating myself to the new (and more painful) ways of trying to reserve an ever popular room I noted your comment above and also that you are walking to December. I just checked availability online and there are NO club level rooms available for an entire week starting today ( and maybe longer, but it doesn't show that).

So if you have one of five studio club level rooms reserved for four nights, then there should be availability on the 5th day, right?
Nice catch.

DVC broke my walk Nov 18th for booking starting on October 20th.

The 20th and 21st weren’t avail to book starting on the 18th even though I held the 18th and 19th at the time.

Somebody else on another forum made the same complaint.

I held the room but was blocked from continuing.

It wasn’t the room being planned out of service either. I watched and the 20th and 21st both opened up briefly in the wake of the 22nd and 23rd.

I was blocked. I wasn’t alone.

It’s ok. It was really more of an experiment. My goal is to have 3 nights around the opening of Star Wars. I’ll pick up somebody’s Dec wake, or ride it out to January.

I was planning on posting about this after I secure something.
 
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I booked some value dates in October once my walk was broken. All in the wake not directly walking.

I figured I didn’t need the pad to to get through Thanksgiving season so it’s going to work out fine. I have a value room for F&W and I’ll land Star Wars concierge somewhere.

I’m still playing the game.

Before the current dates extended out a week, they were actually avail right at 8 am on Mon/Tues this week. I took a shot both times.
 
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I was blocked. I wasn’t alone.
What does this mean exactly that you were blocked, and how are you sure it wasn’t a room taken out of service? If you’re doing something permitted by current rules and the system, why would DVC break your walk?
 
What does this mean exactly that you were blocked, and how are you sure it wasn’t a room taken out of service? If you’re doing something permitted by current rules and the system, why would DVC break your walk?
It wasn’t taken out of service because the dates were subsequently available in the wake moving past those dates.

On the 18th of Nov, I held Oct 16-20th (I held the night of the 19th) and the 20th and 21st were never available to slide forward, until the 23rd and 24th, after I was bumped out of walking.

If they were meant to be taken out of service 11 months from now, why were they put back into service 3 days later?

Either DVC was unofficially messing around with walking, or, as I’ve considered it, possibly a CM manipulated the system for himself or a friend. Can’t say, but another poster complained on another forum about being blocked out of the same two days.
 
It wasn’t taken out of service because the dates were subsequently available in the wake moving past those dates.

On the 18th of Nov, I held Oct 16-20th (I held the night of the 19th) and the 20th and 21st were never available to slide forward, until the 23rd and 24th, after I was bumped out of walking.

If they were meant to be taken out of service 11 months from now, why were they put back into service 3 days later?

Either DVC was unofficially messing around with walking, or, as I’ve considered it, possibly a CM manipulated the system for himself or a friend. Can’t say, but another poster complained on another forum about being blocked out of the same two days.

Upon considering what I wrote here, I guess it’s possible that two of the five rooms were taken out of service for the 20th and 21st and what later reappeared was one of the remaining three rooms being dropped in the wake, but that still doesn’t add up, and here’s why:

IF only the 20th and 21st were taken out of service, then on the 22nd (or whenever the hold was lifted), the rooms should have shown back up for booking at 8 am. At the point they were put back into service, nobody would be holding the room to prevent it from showing avail at 8 am.

This past Monday was the first time that has happened since then. As I’ve said, I’ve been watching.

If they were taken out of service, that means at least two of the five studios were removed from service for 3 weeks during F&W next year.

I watched intently and it appeared to me that the current pattern of walking didn’t skip a beat past those two days.
 
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If they were meant to be taken out of service 11 months from now, why were they put back into service 3 days later?
Still not clear on the logic here.

Say, hypothetically, there are five rooms available and five walkers. Three rooms are walked for 7 days and two for 4 days. If two rooms are taken out of service for a two-day-block, the 4-day walkers wouldn’t know it until they hit those two rooms for the dates they’re out of service, all five rooms would show as booked and unavailable to advance a walk. The three 7-day walkers walked past those two serviced rooms first and grabbed the only three available in that bottleneck. They continue to walk daily, and after getting past the bottleneck that the 4-day walkers hit, the three remaining rooms return to inventory and are immediately scooped up by others.

Wouldn’t that scenario play out as what you’re seeing? Absent concrete figures on the number of rooms being walked, I’m not clear on how you can be sure you’re being blocked. And again, I don’t see why DVCMC would bother to do anything to mess with people using the system as the rules permit it.
 
Still not clear on the logic here.

Say, hypothetically, there are five rooms available and five walkers. Three rooms are walked for 7 days and two for 4 days. If two rooms are taken out of service for a two-day-block, the 4-day walkers wouldn’t know it until they hit those two rooms for the dates they’re out of service, all five rooms would show as booked and unavailable to advance a walk. The three 7-day walkers walked past those two serviced rooms first and grabbed the only three available in that bottleneck. They continue to walk daily, and after getting past the bottleneck that the 4-day walkers hit, the three remaining rooms return to inventory and are immediately scooped up by others.

Wouldn’t that scenario play out as what you’re seeing? Absent concrete figures on the number of rooms being walked, I’m not clear on how you can be sure you’re being blocked. And again, I don’t see why DVCMC would bother to do anything to mess with people using the system as the rules permit it.
I own at BCV and Poly: no reason to ever walk at either of those.

This is my first year to own AKV and so my first attempt at a walk. I’m not worried about it because my goal here was to test the system. Notably, a 100 point walker is at a disadvantage to someone with the points to walk a full week, although once you held the first day, that shouldn’t be the case.

My 2nd goal here is to ultimately score 3 nights in concierge on or shortly after Star Wars opens.

I’m actually still quite optimistic on that last score because my dates are flexible and I’m a night worker: the 8 am window opens long enough after I’m off work to be up and ready with no other obligations but sleep after. After the first two weeks of Dec booking come and go, either rooms will start to show at 8am, or rooms will still show up in the wake. Either way, I’ll walk or wake three nights together eventually.

But. Whether it’s a room out of service or what, I was prevented from walking while I held the room through the 11 month window. And by at least one other account, I wasn’t alone.
 
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I'm interested that there seems to be a consensus against a point re-allocation to try and, at least, even out demand a bit amongst some room categories. I know AKV is problematic because the number of values and club rooms are so low in comparison to other rooms that when they increased concierge their only option was to decrease value which didn't help club and made value even worse. Same problem wouldn't apply to BLT or BWV. I know they're never going to get demand exactly even, but if I have to stay at my second preference because my first preference isn't available then a slightly reduced points cost is going to take the edge off of it a bit.

In general it's interesting, though I guess not surprising, to hear that walking seems to have gotten more popular since the online change was made. I haven't encountered it yet since I'm a once-every-other-year visitor, but with some plans for high demand times & categories coming up in the next two trips I may need to adjust my booking strategy somewhat.
 
I'm interested that there seems to be a consensus against a point re-allocation to try and, at least, even out demand a bit amongst some room categories. I know AKV is problematic because the number of values and club rooms are so low in comparison to other rooms that when they increased concierge their only option was to decrease value which didn't help club and made value even worse. Same problem wouldn't apply to BLT or BWV. I know they're never going to get demand exactly even, but if I have to stay at my second preference because my first preference isn't available then a slightly reduced points cost is going to take the edge off of it a bit.

In general it's interesting, though I guess not surprising, to hear that walking seems to have gotten more popular since the online change was made. I haven't encountered it yet since I'm a once-every-other-year visitor, but with some plans for high demand times & categories coming up in the next two trips I may need to adjust my booking strategy somewhat.
I don't think it's a matter of being against reallocating points at those resorts so much as it is about being a realist. DVC has no reason to make it less enticing to book the lower-point views because the all villas are being booked eventually. If the higher-point villas were being left empty, then there would be a reason to do a reallocation. They have no obligation to do a reallocation just because some people are encountering difficulty booking during periods of high demand.

As far as walking becoming more prevalent, it was predicted that this would happen when the online modification feature was introduced. It's a lot easier to log on when you're free to do so than it is to make time out of your day to place a call to MS. There's a lot of evidence as day after day, availability for hard-to-book villas opens up right after the "11-month minus 1 day" booking window opens. I was able to book AKV CL by following behind the walkers as they moved forward day after day. It was easier than trying to get in right at 8:00 AM at the 11-month window.
 
I own at BCV and Poly: no reason to ever walk at either of those.
Agreed... but I suspect because walking has been made so easy, that while you know there isn’t a need, if you are ever in a situation where your plans have less/no flexibility, you’ll end up walking to get ahead of those who don’t really need to be walking either. This is the new reality, where common sense won’t be so common.
I was able to book AKV CL by following behind the walkers as they moved forward day after day. It was easier than trying to get in right at 8:00 AM at the 11-month window.
Are you finding that at 11 months, the walkers are modifying daily? Were you able to reliably stalk an 11-month minus 7 at 8am? Or is the wake a little more random?

It seems like a lot of work to have to walk daily.
 
Upon considering what I wrote here, I guess it’s possible that two of the five rooms were taken out of service for the 20th and 21st and what later reappeared was one of the remaining three rooms being dropped in the wake, but that still doesn’t add up, and here’s why:

IF only the 20th and 21st were taken out of service, then on the 22nd (or whenever the hold was lifted), the rooms should have shown back up for booking at 8 am. At the point they were put back into service, nobody would be holding the room to prevent it from showing avail at 8 am.

This past Monday was the first time that has happened since then. As I’ve said, I’ve been watching.

If they were taken out of service, that means at least two of the five studios were removed from service for 3 weeks during F&W next year.

I watched intently and it appeared to me that the current pattern of walking didn’t skip a beat past those two days.

I've seen such things in the past with both Concierge and Value studios. There certainly seems to be something either glitchy with inventory or something else going on. And I just saw it this week with Boardwalk Boardwalk view rooms.

Does anyone really think that DVC takes rooms out of inventory for regular maintenance - and does it more than 11 months in advance? I know I don't and dismiss that as a reason for a room going unavailable out of sequence prior to 11 months. A lot of the maintenance can be done even with guests there - I've had VWL maintenance come thru during a stay and chatted a bit with them about it and they just do regular maintenance on set schedules even while rooms are occupied. I think anything major only occurs when there are issues discovered with the rooms otherwise it's business as usual.
 
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