Has anyone else noticed that if you look for the same time frame with the discount no rooms available but without the discount the room is available at full rack rate... which makes me think they feel like they can get people to pay rack rate and not offer the discount.
EX: Dec 2-9- discount search comes up with minimal deluxe rooms that are villas or suites and you wouldn't be paying for these
Dec 2-9- no discount search comes up with every category and every resort being available ( with a few exceptions).
If they have rooms and they aren't sold why not offer the discount at this point?
It's because Disney believes they can sell the rooms at rack between now and December. What we don't see, and what Disney can, is the number of rooms remaining. Let's say a hotel has 800 rooms of a certain class available. Out of those 800 rooms, say 600 are booked up. Disney has no idea how many of those 600 rooms are people waiting to pounce on a deal. All they see is that there's only 200 rooms left, and 5 months to book them. At 40 rooms a month, a little more than 1 a day, there's very little reason for Disney to offer any discounts.
Now say 100 of them were for people who were waiting for room discounts, and, like what's happening with POFQ, there's nothing around. Some may go "eh, I'll stay, anyway." Others will cancel. Now there's, say, 250 rooms. It's a little harder to get to total fill, but it shouldn't be an issue.
Now say 300 of them, instead, were for people who were waiting for room discounts. Also like POFQ, there's nothing around. After the people who really couldn't afford to go cancel, now there's 400 rooms. Well, heck, the resort is now half-empty! Either they will call for another sale, or see if some of those people will come crawling back.
The point is, if the resort is mostly full, but not totally booked, Disney will sell the room, but offer no discount. This is why so many people who book anticipating the discounts is such a horrible idea. Disney sees the resorts mostly full, and go, "why should we offer anything? We're making monies!"
One thing I will fully agree with
Dreams Unlimited on: book the vacation you can afford without any discounts, and think of anything coming back as gravy on top. Don't try to book a Disney vacation banking on discounts to make your budget.
Edit: added some quotation marks.
