Walking VGF for December

As more and more people walk it will become the future of reservations

Pretty sure walking has been possible since before I became a member in 2009. Nothing new.

When those dates are dropped then the thanksgiving people can snag them.

I’ve snagged Xmas eve and day, and a 4 night reservation for Princess, by continuing to try or by wait listing, and both were Studios at VGF. People change their plans all the time.
 
I have walked a few times I would never walk a reservation 2 days at a time. That's a terrible and time consuming way to do it. If one has the points do it for 7 days. That way it is definite you get the desired days.

Have owned since 2008, and have yet to walk a reservation. I am curious about the calling mouse services to cancel a day and add a day. Can the calling be eliminated by logging in to the member portal, selecting view or modify details, and then just changing the travels dates?
 
Have owned since 2008, and have yet to walk a reservation. I am curious about the calling mouse services to cancel a day and add a day. Can the calling be eliminated by logging in to the member portal, selecting view or modify details, and then just changing the travels dates?

It's probably suppose to work this way, but from multiple thread posts it hasn't been working, hopefully they can get it working correctly soon.
 
The supposed new ability to modify reservations online has materalized thus far only in having a link to take you somewhere to do it but when you try it, it takes you to a page that says you have to call to modify your reservation. Thus, to modify on-line, you are still limited to first cancelling your entire reservation and then making a new one, with a risk you cannot get the new one.

As to walking VGF through Thanksgiving and being disappointed because it can possibly block out others who want Thanksgiving, it is an activity allowed and one's disagreement or anger with it should actually be focused on the real cause of the problem: Disney's greed and stupid decision to build too few studios at VGF when it should have known, and most likely did know, that when it was offering VGF for sale at a then exorbitant price, most purchasers would only be able to afford enough points for a studio (before opening VGF for sale, Disney raised overall prices over a two year period about 40% after BLT had essentially sold out, just so it could offer VGF at a very high price while claiming it was a bargain in relation to the price of BLT).
 
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Disney raised overall prices over a two year period about 40% after BLT had essentially sold out, just so it could offer VGF at a very high price while claiming it was a bargain in relation to the price of BLT).
Hmmm... a bit of history repeating itself, it seems.
 
The supposed new ability to modify reservations online has materalized thus far only in having a link to take you somewhere to do it but when you try it, it takes you to a page that says you have to call to modify your reservation. Thus, to modify on-line, you are still limited to first cancelling your entire reservation and then making a new one, with a risk you cannot get the new one.

As to walking VGF through Thanksgiving and being disappointed because it can possibly block out others who want Thanksgiving, it is an activity allowed and one's disagreement or anger with it should actually be focused on the real cause of the problem: Disney's greed and stupid decision to build too few studios at VGF when it should have known, and most likely did know, that when it was offering VGF for sale at a then exorbitant price, most purchasers would only be able to afford enough points for a studio (before opening VGF for sale, Disney raised overall prices over a two year period about 40% after BLT had essentially sold out, just so it could offer VGF at a very high price while claiming it was a bargain in relation to the price of BLT).


@drusba Not having any experience with this, but thinking through, why not book say four consecutive days as four individual reservations. Then you can go online before the call center opens, cancel the first day, and book the next day as a different reservation. When all days are secured, then call and have the four days merged together.
 
I know studios are difficult to get at VGF in December, but how difficult is it to book a 1BR Standard in December? I do believe some fixed weeks were originally sold removing some rooms from inventory.
 


@drusba Not having any experience with this, but thinking through, why not book say four consecutive days as four individual reservations. Then you can go online before the call center opens, cancel the first day, and book the next day as a different reservation. When all days are secured, then call and have the four days merged together.

You could do that if you wanted to be able to make the changes online for a reservation but I do not think it accomplishes what walking does accomplish. To do everyday separately means you cannot book any particular day until you are exactly 11 months out from that day. The purpose of walking is to lock in days before you are 11 months out. For example, the problem VGF faces with studios for first week of Dec is that if you wait until Jan 1 to make the first reservation for Dec 1 at 11 months out, you may find you are already blocked out (or find that even if open at exactly 8 a.m., it fills within nanoseconds and you are still blocked out because your computer is slower than someone else's in communicating with Disney's computer.

Here is what walking does: assume Dec 1 is a Friday and you want a week, Dec 1-8. You go on line on December 25 and book Nov 25 to Dec 2, thus locking in your first desired night of Dec 1. You can likely do that starting with Sunday, Nov 25, because it will be open for at least several minutes past 8 a.m. because there is less demand for that late Nov time before Dec begins. Once you have made that reservation, you not only have your first night but you have blocked out everyone from getting the room you will have if they attempt to reserve 11 months out beginning with any day from Nov 25 through Dec 1, i.e., no one can get your room with any start date of Nov 25 through Dec 1 because you have it for those nights and thus they are also blocked out from getting any dates in your room that occur after Dec 1. Thus, you could wait until Jan 1 to call and modify your reservation to Dec 1-8 and your room will still be available for all those nights (although you should still consider doing the modifications daily to avoid any risk that fewer rooms will be available first week of Dec due to some rooms being taken out of service or due to a higher number of set week owners in that week).

Reserving just Nov 25 and then next day reserve Nov 26 and drop 25 online does not accomplish what walking does, as you are competing with everyone for your room everyday and if you continue to do that until Dec 1, you will be in the same position as everyone else is on Dec 1 who does not yet have any reservation.

Thus, making a single day reservation online day after day gives you the ability to later change the reservation online but does not gain the reservation advantage you can accomplish through walking. All you would accomplish with that day to day reservation is avoidance of the phone call needed to modify your nights but you would still have to call to have all the nights joined into one reserevation
 
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I know studios are difficult to get at VGF in December, but how difficult is it to book a 1BR Standard in December? I do believe some fixed weeks were originally sold removing some rooms from inventory.

You have more risk of losing out at 11 months out with a studio rather than a 1BR but there is still some risk because I have seen standard 1BRs disappear very quickly at 8 a.m. for early (first week) Dec time and the risk increases if your start date is after Dec 1 because many reserving that as a start date come close to filling dates after Dec 1. What has happened at VGF is that many of those members who want but cannot get studios in early Dec at 11 months out reluctantly book a 1BR for fewer days than they wanted.
 
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Have owned since 2008, and have yet to walk a reservation. I am curious about the calling mouse services to cancel a day and add a day. Can the calling be eliminated by logging in to the member portal, selecting view or modify details, and then just changing the travels dates?
Have to call MS, cant do it online. Now I would not want to risk losing my reservation trying this with the new modify ability. To be sure your reservation stays in tact, call.
 
Have to call MS, cant do it online. Now I would not want to risk losing my reservation trying this with the new modify ability. To be sure your reservation stays in tact, call.
I just called to modify a reservation and the agent told me that, as of yesterday, you can modify your reservations online. This includes changing the days.
 
I just called to modify a reservation and the agent told me that, as of yesterday, you can modify your reservations online. This includes changing the days.
Doesnt mean MS cant do it for you. I have read where people have had issues doing it online. I wouldn't chance it.
 
Pretty sure walking has been possible since before I became a member in 2009. Nothing new.

Walking a reservation as we know it today did not exist before the third week of June 2008 because before then the resevation rule was different. You could book 11 months (or 7 months) from your date of departure from WDW, meaning if you wanted, for example, Dec 1-8, you would book on Jan 8. There was something different from, but similar to, walking then but nowhere near as foolproof. For any difficult to get rooms, members would do, as suggested above, daily reservations, i.e., to get Dec 1, they would book on Jan 2 the night of Dec 1 with a Dec 2 departure date; on Jan 3 they would book the night of Dec 2 and keep doing that daily until they had all the nights they wanted and then have MS merge the rservations (members did not do any of that online then because we did not have an online reservation system). However, that daily reserving did not guarantee any reservation because for each day the competition for the day was the same, in that anyone could potentially reserve the room for that night before you did. Nevertheless, many members complained that such daily reserving should not be allowed because it disadvantage those who could not spend the time making reservations every morning at 9 a.m. when MS opened.

What was most interesting at the time is what happened within about two days after the announcement of the change to booking 7 nights at 11 (7) months before date of arrival. One of the members on this site posted a message describing how you could walk a reservation. My reaction was: what geniuses we have on this site, while some others reacted that such trickery came only from deviants.
 
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You could do that if you wanted to be able to make the changes online for a reservation but I do not think it accomplishes what walking does accomplish. To do everyday separately means you cannot book any particular day until you are exactly 11 months out from that day. The purpose of walking is to lock in days before you are 11 months out. For example, the problem VGF faces with studios for first week of Dec is that if you wait until Jan 1 to make the first reservation for Dec 1 at 11 months out, you may find you are already blocked out (or find that even if open at exactly 8 a.m., it fills within nanoseconds and you are still blocked out because your computer is slower than someone else's in communicating with Disney's computer.

Here is what walking does: assume Dec 1 is a Friday and you want a week, Dec 1-8. You go on line on December 25 and book Nov 25 to Dec 2, thus locking in your first desired night of Dec 1. You can likely do that starting with Sunday, Nov 25, because it will be open for at least several minutes past 8 a.m. because there is less demand for that late Nov time before Dec begins. Once you have made that reservation, you not only have your first night but you have blocked out everyone from getting the room you will have if they attempt to reserve 11 months out beginning with any day from Nov 25 through Dec 1, i.e., no one can get your room with any start date of Nov 25 through Dec 1 because you have it for those nights and thus they are also blocked out from getting any dates in your room that occur after Dec 1. Thus, you could wait until Jan 1 to call and modify your reservation to Dec 1-8 and your room will still be available for all those nights (although you should still consider doing the modifications daily to avoid any risk that fewer rooms will be available first week of Dec due to some rooms being taken out of service or due to a higher number of set week owners in that week).

Reserving just Nov 25 and then next day reserve Nov 26 and drop 25 online does not accomplish what walking does, as you are competing with everyone for your room everyday and if you continue to do that until Dec 1, you will be in the same position as everyone else is on Dec 1 who does not yet have any reservation.

Thus, making a single day reservation online day after day gives you the ability to later change the reservation online but does not gain the reservation advantage you can accomplish through walking. All you would accomplish with that day to day reservation is avoidance of the phone call needed to modify your nights but you would still have to call to have all the nights joined into one reserevation

Thank you, the lightbulb finally went on for me.
 

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