Strategies for Booking the DVC Reservation You Want
As a timeshare, DVC is intended to book to capacity, which makes availability much tighter than that of cash stays. Here are some ways to help increase your chances of booking the DVC reservation you want.
At a Glance:
- Always book your home resort first.
- Set waitlists as early as possible.
- Plan ahead for split stays.
- Contact Member Services to combine split stays when needed.
- Consider getting one-time-use points in advance.
Always Book Your Home Resort First
Part of the fun of DVC is trying out the different resorts. However, even if your goal is to stay somewhere other than your home resort, always book your home resort first within the 7- to 11-month booking window. This ensures that you at least have a room for the dates that you want to travel. Once the 7-month window opens, you can modify your reservation to another resort if there is availability.
Set Waitlists as Early as Possible
When you can’t get the room that you want, it’s always worth setting up a waitlist. You can have up to two active waitlists at once per Membership per Use Year. The sooner you can set it up, the better your odds will be. For example, if you were booking a Deluxe Studio at the BoardWalk Villas and could only get a Preferred View Studio at the 11-month mark, you could book the Preferred View and then set a waitlist for a Boardwalk View Deluxe Studio right away.
Plan Ahead for Split Stays
Some DVC Members really enjoy split stays as a way to try out different resorts. If you know in advance that you would like to try booking a split stay that includes a resort that is not your home resort, it helps to create your vacation as two (or more) separate reservations. For example, if you were planning a split stay at the Grand Floridian and Riviera, but only the Grand Floridian is your home resort, you could create two separate Grand Floridian reservations at the 11-month mark. Then at the 7-month mark, you could modify one leg of that trip to a Riviera stay to create your split stay.
This works better than booking one reservation and attempting to create a split stay after the fact. If you only created one Grand Floridian reservation at the 11-month mark, you would have to modify it at the 7-month mark by either: 1) shortening it and then trying to grab the dates that you want at Riviera or 2) booking the dates you want at Riviera and then shortening the Grand Floridian stay.
The first method would be a little risky since you could lose out on the Riviera dates you want if you take too long to modify the Grand Floridian reservation. The second method is more secure but assumes that you have enough points to book both stays before shortening the Grand Floridian stay.
Contact Member Services to Combine Split Stays When Needed
Sometimes availability is limited, and you find yourself piecing together your trip one day at a time. If this happens, you can contact Member Services and request to combine them into one reservation. Note that you can only combine split stays when you have multiple reservations for the same resort, room type, and booking category (e.g., Resort View, Preferred View, etc.).
Consider Getting One-Time-Use Points in Advance
One-time-use points are a good way to bridge the gap when you are short on points but don’t want to borrow points from the next Use Year. You can purchase up to 24 one-time-use points per Use Year. The downside to these points is that you can only purchase them by calling Member Services. This means you are unable to book anything until Member Services opens at 9am on the day of your 7-month window–that’s an hour behind online booking. That one hour can make a big difference in availability at popular times of the year.
In addition, one-time-use points have to be tied to a reservation. That is, you can’t just buy points in advance, hold them, and then use them to book a reservation later. Some Members try to get around this by buying one-time-use points to book a reservation that they don’t need but is worth the same number of points as the reservation they do want. This way, they have the one-time-use points they need before their 11-month window opens. They can then modify that reservation to the one they want.
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