Room Block/Availability (Rant ahoy!)

[UpstartCrow]

This post is partly because this has been building up for a while, and partly because I desperately need advice/input, since I’m getting zilch from Disney.

As it stands, we are inviting, at bare minimum, 102 people (and likely more- fiancé has a couple of friends he’s not sure about, and my future in-laws are not unlikely to add more people). A handful live in Florida, but most will be traveling.

Encouraged by our sales coordinator not to overestimate the room block too badly (and thinking that a good deal of our guests will most likely just come down for the weekend, if at all), we put pretty much all of our nights on the wedding night, and the night before the wedding, figuring we could add on later as needed (and hey, Disney hadn’t even released reservations to the general public yet, so surely we were pretty safe).

After receiving our contract about 3-4 weeks ago, Disney finally finished setting up the block and gave us the green light to book yesterday. In the meantime, I’d been asking them if we could/should augment the block, since a few people on my side refined their plans (staying at the Beach Club for a specific week-long date range), so I was hoping I could at least lock them in for that. Disney kept telling us to wait, so we waited.

About two hours after they sent us the link to the room block website, my mom tried to book my parents' stay (one week at the Beach Club) only to find no availability. The other resorts in our block were fine, just not the one my family had been getting really pumped about staying in.

That led the second Disney-induced panic attack I had yesterday (the first one was my fault, but the point is: it was a rough day for wedding planning).

This was after business hours, but I emailed our room block coordinator (good job, self, the poor woman’s been working with you less than 24 hours, and right off the bat you’re sending her panic emails) asking what was going on. Website glitch? Or is the Beach Club really already that booked up? Because if so (say, if a convention is holding 3/4 of the resort or something), maybe it would behoove us to switch our “deluxe” option to the BoardWalk or something, since we don’t want people to be SOL if they want to stay more than two nights, or if they want to stay for a different range of dates than we accounted for?

Heard back this morning (which I have to say was actually a relief- feels like most of my emails from DFTW come at about 4:58 pm). They added a few rooms to our block for the dates I specified, but didn’t address a SINGLE one of my questions about the actual issue. So, I have no idea why it wasn’t showing availability, I don’t know if there’s some kind of event going on at the BC that’s going to make it hard for people to get rooms, and I don’t know if we have the option to switch the rooms to a different resort. She just said to add rooms to the block early (despite the fact that to all appearances, there are no rooms to add), since it’s a “busy time of year” (the wedding is the first weekend in March, but I guess there’s really no such thing as “not a busy time of year” at Disney anymore).

So, what on EARTH am I supposed to do? Assume all 102 of our invitees are going to go for a month, at every resort simultaneously, and eat more money than I even want to take the time to calculate for not meeting our guarantee? Call up every distant relative and demand they tell me their exact travel plans for next year, then and there? Because I only know about the people I *do* know about because my mom, like me, is a little bit hyperactive about this stuff and is pretty much planning the trip for a little bit of my family. I’ll feel awful if we go through this whole song and dance about how we have rooms reserved at a special rate at x, y, and z hotels, but nobody can actually book because we didn’t account for some of the dates that are farther away from the actual event, or we misjudged which hotels people would want to stay at. Plus, it could well be too late to add as many rooms as we might wind up needing at the BC anyway.

Has anyone dealt with setting up a room block for this many people? Or similar issues with availability? Or anything? We’re so lost right now.

 

[Traveliz]

The room block seriously had me stressed too. I am over 100% at this point and they are still letting people book beyond that point for rooms that I did not have actually on the block...For example, say I had ten rooms blocked for Sunday and all those are now booked. People have gone into the block and still been able to reserve that Sunday night as part of their reservation. On my block now it shows 12/10 meaning 12 booked out of 10 blocked.

It also doesn't matter what availability you personally see online as the rooms that go into the wedding block come from the reserved portion of the convention block (that we wouldn't be able to see).

Also I see your people had trouble booking right after the link went live...mine did too but a day or so later it was fine.

What I have done (and I am the mom of the bride) is just encourage people to book early and if they have any troubles to let me know and I will see what I can do. So far that has been working out well. I did send an email about my block last Wed/Thursday and haven't received a response back either. I know my room block coordinator (who was pretty quick to respond) just moved into a different position and for now I am to email my planner about block questions. I am thinking they are probably pretty busy with the extra work.

Our wedding invite list is over 150 but I only originally blocked out 70 nights and we are up to 79 booked with I know more wanting to book. People who said they would not stay on property all of a sudden are while others who were planning on long trips have decided to stay off property. It's really a stressful project judging the room block.

Good luck,
Liz

 

[UpstartCrow]

It was my understanding that that was how it worked (being able to go over 100%). My fiancé called yesterday to try to get some answers and was told (don’t remember if it was by our sales coordinator or our room block coordinator-- he spoke to both, while I was on a flight) that the room block websites sometimes show the deluxes as not having availability when they do. It apparently doesn’t happen with the moderates or values- just the deluxes. So, right now, people can book a week at the BC, but they’ll have to call, or we’ll have to add their specific dates to our block first, because the website will tell them the hotel is booked solid. Can’t help but wonder if this is to discourage people from booking the deluxe resorts at a discount (since the percentage off rack rate is higher there than at the mods/values). Hopefully that’s just me being cynical, and it really is just a weird glitch in their system. (Either way, would have appreciated a little advance warning about that particular "feature"...)

I like that you let people know to contact you if they had problems-- I took a leaf out of your book and put a little warning on our wedding website about the weirdness with the deluxe resort availability. The “accommodations” section is already so long with me trying to explain things as clearly and concisely as possible- what’s one more caveat? (I already had the boldfaced "Please book early to ensure availability!" on there. )

Thanks for the commiseration- glad to know it’s at least not just us who’ve been finding the process so stressful.

 

[AllThingsMickey4]

You are not the only one finding the room block stressful!! I hate this stupid thing!! I originally only had 20 rooms blocked (only inviting 50 max all from out of state, so I didn't want to overestimate). I asked my coordinator to add 3 Lagoon/pool views at the Beach Club for me and my family members. It makes sense now, but I thought she would book them and have them go towards the 20 night requirement. Instead it added to it, so now I'm responsible for 50 room nights. I already have 27 nights filled between our honeymoon, my parents' week long stay and my sister's stay.. but it looks like I'm going to need all of the families I've invited to come and book at least 2 nights to fulfill the remaining. Already stressing and we have 310 more days

Not trying to hijack the thread... but anyone know how it works if I need to find strangers to book my rooms so I don't have to pay for the remaining? Do they have to be on my guest list in order to check in?

 

[lurkyloo]

You can reduce your room night guarantee by up to 25 nights at 60 days out from your event. You may also apply ANY reservation at a Disney-owned and -operated resort to your block to count for your requirement, you just need to manually submit the reservation numbers to your room block coordinator. So if somehow you are still short of nights at 60 days out, you can get existing reservation numbers for other DISers or brides from the various Facebook Disney bride groups and submit them to have them count against your guarantee.

 

[lurkyloo]

This Disney Wedding Podcast episode explains everything: How to Set up a Room Block.

 

[ALegrande]

Not sure about the room block issue as we are doing our room block through Swan and Dolphin (sorry for your issues, btw- that seems SO stressful!) but I can attest to the Beach Club fill up for March. Idk what the crap is going on but I was trying to get Yacht Club for 3rd week in March and was told all Garden view rooms were sold out. Soon after that, all standard rooms were gone. I then started looking at Beach Club and was told there was only 1 room available for the room type I wanted. I dont know if that's just popular convention time or what but I experienced the same panic (I'm getting married at the Yacht Club so it's my dream to wake up there the morning-of and be able to look out onto the Gazebo where we'll say "I do" later that day). Long story short I got a travel agent and she was able to tweak some dates and find me the rooms I wanted at YC but I totally can relate to your panic and stress! I heard several different reasons why they're full- flower and garden traffic, convention bookings, they are renovating so there are less rooms available overall so they all show as booked, it went on and on and never got a straight answer!

 

[UpstartCrow]

Oh, great. Meanwhile, they told us we could still add to the block, we just had to do it asap. (Which just brings us back to the whole "we do not know which cousins are coming to the wedding this far out, let alone where they'll want to stay and on which dates" problem- to which all roads seem to lead.) Never did get a straight answer on the "would we be better off moving the block to the BoardWalk Inn, or the Contemporary, or something?" question either. I know the entirety of the Grand Floridian ballrooms had been booked by conferences by the time our respective 12-month marks rolled around, since that was our first choice for a reception venue, so I would buy the "convention bookings" explanation (but AUGH, why can they not just tell us that??). That's just bananas that the YC wasn't showing availability at all- I'm so glad it worked out for you in the end! The gazebo is such a beautiful venue, and that's so neat that you'll be able to wake up on your wedding day and see it!

My prediction is that in about a month, we're going to start getting panic-stricken emails or snarky complaints (depending on the writer ) that various family members can't stay at the BC with the rest of the group, and didn't we have rooms reserved there, and what's going on. Wish we'd realized back when we were setting up the initial block that more people were going to want to make trips out of this. Or that the entire hotel really could book up within the first week of people being able to make reservations.