Challenges Of Being DVC: Making & Managing Reservations

Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there are a lot of challenges that come with being a Disney Vacation Club Member. From finding available rooms to managing reservations, booking through your DVC Membership [more often than not] means jumping through hoops. In fact, the process can often be so stressful and time consuming that DVC Members [myself included] often want to be done with it, once the booking is completed, rather than rehashing the details of what happened before reaching the ‘finish line’. That’s something we’re going to change today. . . .

Because I’m in the midst of booking a trip to Walt Disney World using my Disney Vacation Club Membership, this seemed like the perfect time to share my experience. So that’s what I’m going to do today. We’re taking a look at what it was like for me to book a room for this upcoming trip, the hoops that I had to jump through and the challenges that I am facing to complete the process. Will this be a little bit confusing and difficult to follow at times? Yes. I’m going to do my best to make sure that I’m being as comprehensive as possible, but this is a confusing topic. . . . so hang in there with me and don’t hesitate to reach out.

For those of you who may have materialized here and aren’t familiar, Disney Vacation Club is a vacation timeshare program. Members of this program [aka DVC Members] buy a real estate interest in one of the Disney Vacation Club Resorts which gives them a certain number of “points” each year that they can use to stay at Disney Vacation Club Resorts without having to pay the standard nightly rate. [NOTE: I’m oversimplifying here, but if you’d like to learn a bit more about the basics of DVC you can do so HERE.]

To book a room using these points, DVC Members simply need to go through the Disney Vacation Club website, find an available room within their point budget and click a few buttons. DVC Members also have the option to borrow points from the upcoming year in order to book vacations that they might not have enough points for in this year’s budget. In the past, DVC Members could borrow 100% of their points from an upcoming year; this was “temporarily” changed to 50% in 2020 and has yet to change back.

Unfortunately, the process is often easier said than done. . . .

For this specific situation, I started with 75 points available to use in 2022 and a total of 233, available in 2023. Based on the current Disney Vacation Club policies in place, which allow DVC Members to borrow 50% of the points available in the upcoming use year [the 12 calendar months during which DVC Members have access to their points] this should have meant I had access to 75 points from 2022 and 83 points from 2023, totaling 158 points. With that budget in mind, I started to search for rooms.

Like I’ve mentioned previously, finding rooms at Disney Vacation Club Resorts isn’t always easy. While there might be rooms available, finding the right room on the right dates for the right resort can be quite the challenge. For many DVC Members, this often means having to settle for staying somewhere other than where you’d like to stay, in a larger room than you need [using more points than you’d like to as a result] or having to do split stays [where you transfer from hotel to hotel during your vacation rather than remaining in the same room]. While this might not be the biggest deal for some DVC Members, it can be very frustrating and disappointing for those who have paid premiums for points at resorts they’re never able to stay at. This is a bigger conversation for another day, but imagine paying $245 per point at Disney’s Beach Club Resort and only ever being able to find a room at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort where it’s $180 per point. It really makes you think. . . . . doesn’t it?

Fortunately, I didn’t have any specifics in mind when it came to booking a room for this particular trip. The only thing that I wanted to do was stay within the budget that I had of 158 points. This had me initially looking for Deluxe Studios [the smallest of the DVC Villas/Rooms], but that didn’t work out due to lack of availability. The next best thing that I could find was a 1 Bedroom Villa. This was more room than I needed, but was available for the entire week and would turn out to be about the same if I would have cobbled together a week at the available Deluxe Studios and changed resorts every night. Better yet, roughly a week in a 1 Bedroom Villa would come in at under 158 points. Since that was under my budget, I started clicking buttons to start the process of reserving the room.

Reserving a room on the Disney Vacation Club website is somewhat straightforward. Simply click a few buttons and enter some basic information and you’re good to go. . . . assuming the website is functioning properly. However, in my case, there was an extra step because I would be borrowing points from 2023 in order to book this room. Like I said above, I had 75 points available to use from 2022, which meant that I’d need to borrow points from 2023. All that is required to do this is clicking an additional button and typing in the number of points you’d like to borrow, from which contracts you have, in order to complete your reservation. So that’s what I did, but was unable to complete the transaction. For a reason that is unbeknownst to me, the Disney Vacation Club website would not let me borrow points. I could type the number of points I wanted to borrow into the form, but I was unable to submit the request. This had me trying all sorts of different options. I changed the reservation details, the number of points I was trying to borrow, the contracts from which I was trying to borrow. . . . . nothing worked.

At this point, the process of trying to book this room was getting increasingly frustrating. It wasn’t so much that I wanted this room at this resort, but because I simply wanted to do something I’d done countless times before; borrow points. On top of that, I wasn’t trying to do anything outside of what the Disney Vacation Club website was telling me I could do. I wasn’t trying to borrow more points than I had, for example.

Unable to borrow any points from 2023, I was left with a few options. First, I could abandon Disney Vacation Club altogether and stay somewhere else. Not the most ideal option. I could also go the route of booking whatever the 75 points I had in 2022 would get me and calling it a day. This was doable, but still not ideal. Finally, I could reach out to a family member who is also Disney Vacation Club and see what we could pull off together. . . . . . so that’s what I did.

After explaining the situation, we got to work trying to make the reservation. The first attempt involved using a combination of both our points in order to book the entire stay in one go. This did not work. While this family member and I share some of our contracts, thus giving them full access to more than enough points to book this stay, both of us have different member numbers which complicates the situation. In other words, each set of member numbers would need to make a separate reservation. There’s no way around it, this is confusing, but I’m going to leave it at that for today without opening another can of worms.

That being the case, we went the route of booking the stay in 2 separate parts; they would be booking the first few days and I would be picking up where they left off. When all was said and done, this left me with 2 separate reservations that was ultimately 1 day shy of what I had originally wanted to book. Now, with the bulk of my trip out of the way, I wanted to try booking the final day using only points borrowed from 2023. . . . for science. I went back into the DVC website, popped in the request and was able to borrow points that I was unable to borrow when I tried to book originally. While I’ve been trying to figure out why I was unable to borrow the points from 2023 originally, I’ve come up dry. There seems to be no established reasoning that I was unable to borrow those points when also trying to use points from 2022, but capable of borrowing them when using them alone.

After what felt like much more work than it needed to be, I had my 3 reservations for my week staying in a 1 Bedroom Villa. . . . but there was still something I needed to do. Because I had 3 separate reservations, I needed to contact Disney Vacation Club and let them know that I wanted to stay in the same room for the duration of my stay. This is an important step if you’ve booked a stay that looks similar to mine, because while the DVC Resort might not require that you change rooms, they might require that you do. This means packing up, checking out at 11AM and then waiting until 4PM to check back in. Accomplishing this should be easy and usually takes little more than an email, so that’s what I did.

I sent an email to Disney Vacation Club stating that I had 3 upcoming reservations, all at the same resort for the same room type, that I would like to combine so that I don’t have to change rooms during my stay. Not long thereafter, within a few hours, I received an email in response from a DVC Member Services Cast Member. This Cast Member told me that they could only see the 2 reservations I booked on my account, but that I could provide them with the 3rd reservation number and they could add a continuing request so that I wouldn’t have to change rooms. I then responded to that email with the reservation number and dates of that reservation.

The next day, I received another email from a different DVC Member Services Cast Member. This Cast Member informed me that they had looked at the reservation number that I provided and were unable to assist me with my request to stay in the same room for the duration of my stay. The reasoning provided is because, despite being the person listed on the reservation, the room was booked with a Membership that I am not listed on. They also informed me that I would need to have the DVC Member who booked that reservation complete the request. Admittedly, this response frustrated me. Not only is this contrary to what I’ve had to do in the past, but it also contradicts what the first Cast Member I spoke with said. In response to this email, I explained just that and requested that they give me detailed instructions I can pass on to the DVC Member who booked that reservation so that there is no confusion moving forward. A 3rd DVC Member Services Cast Member responded and informed me, once again, that since the reservation was made by another DVC Member, they need to put in the “Continuing Reservation” request. They also said that this should be all that is requires from them.

To ensure that there was absolutely no confusion, I sent a “Thank You” to that final Cast Member and CCed the message over to the family member who made the reservation for me. They then responded via email including all of the information that had been requested, the reservation numbers and membership numbers that were on all 3 reservations. They were then contacted by a 4th DVC Member Services Cast Member via email who said that they could not complete the request because they needed more information. It was at this point that a phone call was made.

During the phone call, a 5th Cast Member spoke with my family member about the situation that had unfolded over the past couple of days. They explained that we’ve been trying to request a “Continuing Reservation” so that I would not have to change rooms during my stay. They were then told by this 5th Cast member that it wasn’t possible to combine the reservations under 1 reservation number, but that they could easily make a note on the reservation so that I wouldn’t have to change rooms during my stay. As you’ll remember, this is all that we were trying to accomplish from the start. After completing this request, my family member inquired why this couldn’t have been done by one of the other 4 Cast Members that we’d corresponded with up until this point. The answer? It easily could have been.

Generally speaking, it’s right about here where I would wrap up the conversation by saying something positive about the way everything panned out. Maybe I focus on the fact that the 5th Cast Member seemed to be somewhat knowledgeable and willing to help. Maybe I focus on the fact that the Continuing Reservation request was submitted so I won’t have to worry about changing rooms in the middle of my stay. . . . . but the reality of the situation is that I just don’t have it in me. In fact, if I’m keeping with my continuing theme of being honest, I’m not even entirely confident that I won’t have to worry about this once I check in. I’ve even make a note in my planner to make sure I head to the front desk when I check in to ensure that this has been resolved once I arrive. Yeah, that’s my level of confidence. . . .

Quite frankly, this is not the way that this like this should go when you’re trying to manage your Disney Vacation Club Membership that you’re paid tens-of-thousands of dollars for; not counting the annual dues that are paid monthly. It’s what a lot of Disney Vacation Club Members encounter when trying to book and manage vacations though. Of course, there’s a lot of other things that we could easily talk about today before wrapping up this discussion, but I think that it’s best we leave things here for now.

Until then, we’d love to hear what you have to say about Disney Vacation Club and hear what the experience of our Happy Haunt DVC Members has been in the past. Join us over at the 2 Foolish Mortals Jamboree to chat about this topic and more! We’ll see you there.