I'm so thrilled to be doing a split stay at Boardwalk Villas (11/28-12/4) and Wilderness Lodge Villas (12/4-12/8)!
GENESIS OF OUR 1st DVC STAY
Initially I was planning on staying at CBR and trying for Free Dining. I picked our dates for the following reasons:
- Included in 2016 Free Dining
- Resort Decorations would be up
- MVMCP
- Candlelight Processional
- Later Dates don't work w/ our commitments.
I was so excited for our 1st Christmas trip, I started stalking the Disney site waiting for the booking window to open. (I wasn't going to book b/c I think the more rooms booked = less chance of free dining, but as a new Disney addict, I just wanted to see my dates there). Lo and behold two dates in the middle of my stay were unavailable for standard and water views. Thinking it was an obvious glitch, I kept trying at various times over the next several weeks. Not only did the dates not show up, but more dates were becoming unavailable. I cleared cookies, switched computers and finally called, sure that there must be a glitch. I mean it's well over a year away and CBR is huge. The CM said that she was seeing the same thing and that they must be booked. Well no matter what the reason, I felt the chances of FD were slipping away.
Well now I had a serious decision to make (oh the trials, ). Try for free Dining another week or the complete Christmas experience. Christmas won out. Now where to stay. POR was the obvious choice (5 of us - doesn't typically offer FD in Dec.). AoA suites was a bit higher than I wanted to pay. But a scene played in my mind. When last at Disney, we were taking the boat from HS to Epcot, when my Ds7 saw Boardwalk and said "Wow.....". I told him to forget about it we were never going to be able to stay there. With this scene playing in my mind, I decide to check out renting points.
I looked up sites about renting points and found out that the week I wanted was the least amount of points for the year and that Boardwalk studio standard views are the least points of any resort. We could definitely do this. So I started researching more on how to do this and found out that b/c of the above, it is also an incredibly hard reservation to get. I would need to find an owner and have them book it exactly 11 months out from my date.
I also found out owners at 11 months can only book 7 nights at a time (they can then extend). I wanted 10 nights but that's OK b/c now I was starting to dream about Christmas at Wilderness Lodge and it's proximity to 3 of the special late evenings I was planning: MVMCP, Pirates & Pals, & HDDR. So a split stay was born.
So now I started stalking the DVC board here, finally I got up the gumption to to request points about 1 month prior to the reservation being able to be booked. Both owners agreed to hold their points to the booking window. The WLV owner voluntarily "walked" the reservation for me to get my dates. I was staring to get worried about getting into BWV standard, pool/garden view was an option but I new due to the increase in points we'd have to cut 2 nights from our stay. I was reading BWV standard studios were being booked all up 1 minute into the booking window! A Diser replied in one post that the best way to get a Christmas reservation was to "walk" a reservation from the Saturday (or Sunday) after Thanksgiving. Well that booking window opened on Christmas Day...can't ask that. But I very nicely asked my BWV owner if he would walk the reservation from the 26th. He said he would try, then he emailed me on Christmas Day saying he got it booked that morning thinking it would be the best time to try. Such wonderful owners.
If you've read all the way through that post, Thanks! I've been a stalker for the last two years, but haven't really posted. Just wanted to share that research on these boards helped secure two dreams I didn't think I'd get to do: Christmas at Disney and staying at a deluxe.