Walking At 7 Months

[disneynutz]

We don't walk reservations but the family was discussing it last night. At 7 months if you walk a reservation, you have locked out other non home bookers but not home resort owners, is that correct? We couldn't make sense of it all and the more we talked the more we couldn't agree.

Bill

 

[cruisin5]

I thought once within 7 months non-home and home are equal.

 

[CraigInPA]

It is possible to walk a reservation until the 7 month period. However, you might walk yourself into a no-availability situation. For example, let's say you wanted Thanksgiving week at BCV. Your home resort is SSR. Technically, you could make that reservation at the end of April. If you decided to book a reservation for BCV for the beginning of November at the start of April, you could then walk that reservation, one day at a time, until you hit Thanksgiving week. The problem is that the BCV owners may have already fully booked Thanksgiving week. You'd be walking your reservation, and then suddenly there would be no availability.

Walking is really only a viable strategy for 11 month bookings for this reason.

 

[zavandor]

It can give you an advantage for the 7 months 8am lottery: if your travel date are available as well as the previous day(s), you can start try booking in advance.
If you're fast enough you get your reservation plus a few days at the beginning that you'll then call to cancel. If not, you can try again next day and hope you're the fastest finger.
Maybe better to call this pre-booking, not walking.
You could technically walk a reservation far in advance, but you're probably going to be disappointed anyway. If your travel dates are in high demand, probably by the time your walking window arrives home owners will have grabbed them anyway.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

We don't walk reservations but the family was discussing it last night. At 7 months if you walk a reservation, you have locked out other non home bookers but not home resort owners, is that correct? We couldn't make sense of it all and the more we talked the more we couldn't agree.

Bill

Correct. A home resort owner could still book and block your 7 month walk.

 

[cruisin5]

Correct. A home resort owner could still book and block your 7 month walk.

I don't understand how a home resort owner and a non-home resort owner who are booking at the same time (say 7 months and 2 days) don't have the same availability.

 

[gharter]

I don't understand how a home resort owner and a non-home resort owner who are booking at the same time (say 7 months and 2 days) don't have the same availability.

As I understand, a non-home resort owner cannot book until 7 months. So what they are saying is you could walk your reservation daily until you get to the dates you want, only to find that the home resort owners had already booked those dates at 11 months or before the 7 month window opened up. Now, hopefully, before you ever started walking the reservation, you had looked to see if there were rooms available during the time you are looking for.

 

[chalee94]

I don't understand how a home resort owner and a non-home resort owner who are booking at the same time (say 7 months and 2 days) don't have the same availability.

"Walking" - by definition - means that you want more than the current reservation that you are booking. I.e. you book a 7 night stay intending to use the last night to roll forward a reservation and cancel the first 6 nights. But if a home resort owner jumps in to book the next 2 or 3 nights, your plan will quickly be scuttled since you wouldn't have access to those nights yet as a non-home resort owner...

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I don't understand how a home resort owner and a non-home resort owner who are booking at the same time (say 7 months and 2 days) don't have the same availability.

As Charles replied walking means booking ahead of the dates you want. If it were exactly 7 days from check in then there is no difference. But if one is walking a reservation then it means it is started prior to 7 months. Because a home resort owner has access to book up to 11 months from check in they could decide to book any of the dates either that you are eventually hoping to get or dates that are between when you have started walking and the dates you hope to get. If it took the last room then the walk would be negated.

 

[Sleepy Sheep]

We don't walk reservations but the family was discussing it last night. At 7 months if you walk a reservation, you have locked out other non home bookers but not home resort owners, is that correct? We couldn't make sense of it all and the more we talked the more we couldn't agree

Ok Bill, I’ll weigh in with a real life example.

Let’s say you want to book that ever elusive, impossible to get, SSR Preferred Deluxe Studio for Thanksgiving week, Su-Sa, 11/18 thru 11/24 ( which is actually the only studio available for those dates in all of WDW DVC land). So you start diligently walking your SSR Preferred Studio on April 1st, booking 11/1-11/8. You call every day adding 1 day onto the end and dropping the 1st day until today, April 12th. Today you have booked 11/12 thru 11/18. You have the 1st day of your reservation booked. You are so excited! You are THIS CLOSE! Only a few more days of calling and you’re IN!

Now unbeknownst to you, I, a happy SSR owner, just LOVE fighting Thanksgiving crowds. And I LOVE a preferred studio at my favorite resort! And I just saw an incredible deal on a flight to Orlando for Thanksgiving week. And I say to my DW, “Honey, you’re not gonna believe our incredible luck! There’s still a Preferred Studio at SSR available for Thanksgiving!”

As I sit here in my Lazy Boy on my iPad I nonchalantly book your SSR Preferred Studio for 11/20 - 11/24, cutting you off at the knees and leaving you with only Su and Mon, 11/18 and 11/19, of your Thanksgiving week. But, you can rejoice, you still have all those nice days booked in the previous week! Though I suspect that doesn’t make you feel any better. All those wasted phone calls to member services for naught.

Hope this helps

 

[CarolMN]

Walking at 7 months can sometimes work if your only competition is other members who are also booking at 7 months.

As an example, let's say you want to book 11/18 - 11/25. You start watching the RAT a week or so ahead of 4/18 to see what resorts will be possible, knowing that 2 or 3 nanoseconds after the window opens, the week you want will be gone. You notice that 11/16 &11/17 are still open - that's the Friday & Saturday nights before your desired vacation is set to begin. On 4/16, you book 11/16 - 11/23. (If you got the last room available for that week, you have now shut out anyone else who wants to book the same thing you want. On 4/17, you call MS and drop 11/16 and add 11/24. On 4/17, you call MS and drop 11/17 and add 11/24. You now have the week you want.

Could an owner block you by booking part of what you want? Yes, of course, but most owners will already have booked (they don't usually wait until the last minute) and even renters who are interested in "your week" will probably already have booked. They pretty much know to book early in the 11 month window to get what they want and they are willing to pay for that assurance. The odds are in your favor.

So in some cases, walking at 7 months will benefit you. IMO, the number of those cases is rare, though.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Walking at 7 months can sometimes work if your only competition is other members who are also booking at 7 months.

As an example, let's say you want to book 11/18 - 11/25. You start watching the RAT a week or so ahead of 4/18 to see what resorts will be possible, knowing that 2 or 3 nanoseconds after the window opens, the week you want will be gone. You notice that 11/16 &11/17 are still open - that's the Friday & Saturday nights before your desired vacation is set to begin. On 4/16, you book 11/16 - 11/23. (If you got the last room available for that week, you have now shut out anyone else who wants to book the same thing you want. On 4/17, you call MS and drop 11/16 and add 11/24. On 4/17, you call MS and drop 11/17 and add 11/24. You now have the week you want.

Could an owner block you by booking part of what you want? Yes, of course, but most owners will already have booked (they don't usually wait until the last minute) and even renters who are interested in "your week" will probably already have booked. They pretty much know to book early in the 11 month window to get what they want and they are willing to pay for that assurance. The odds are in your favor.

So in some cases, walking at 7 months will benefit you. IMO, the number of those cases is rare, though.

I've booked just before the 7 month window more than once. All it takes in some cases is one person.

 

[Dean]

I've posted on this subject a number of times. It's not likely to get you something that'd be difficult 10-11 months out but it can put you ahead of others at 7 months out. It can also be helpful when you couldn't book at 8 am on day one as well.

 

[drusba]

Walking into your 7 month reservation window can possibly work for rooms and times that do not usually fill via home resort reservations but do occasionally fill very shortly before your 7 month window opens. A key example is time around July 4, such as July 3 through 5. BLT lake view is very often open for that time on November 28 or 29, 7 months out from June 28 or 29 but then may fill on or before December 1 or 2. If the time you want is something like July 3 to 10 for BLT lake view, waiting until December 3 to reserve may be too late, but if you start walking on Nov 28 for June 28 to 5, you may be able to end up with the reservation you want.

On the other end of the spectrum, walking for a 7 month reservation is not going to work for something that usually fills well before 7 months out, e..g, for most near park rooms, you are not going to be able to get the Thurs to Sun of marathon weekend at a near park resort by beginning a walk with Jan 2 or 3 simply because those rooms will have already been filled for marathon weekend even before you begin your walk.