I just finished piecing together a 4 night standard studio stay at Poly in October. We were originally at Kidani, which had also been stitched together at 5-6 months out (including one night via the waitlist). I was watching the RAT, just to see what else might become available. Just over three months out I found two nights together at Poly, and decided to grab them. I then went to individually waitlist our other two nights, and was pleasantly surprised when the search for the third (consecutive) night showed immediate availability, rather than a "waitlist" button. So suddenly I had my first three nights at Poly, and the fourth waitlisted. Continued to stalk the RAT. A few days later I found a standard studio at Boardwalk, and switched our last night there. At that point I was pretty unconcerned about whether or not the last Poly night would come through. If it did, we wouldn't have to move - great! If it didn't, we would have a night at the Boardwalk during F&W - yay! Still continued to stalk the RAT, though somewhat less frequently. No studio rooms anywhere for that last night, and very little for any of our dates (saw SSR for a single day once or twice).
Then about two weeks ago I noticed that my Poly night had disappeared from my dashboard. Having read this thread, I knew that meant that my Poly waitlist had come through, and was just waiting to be processed, and began mentally adjusting my plans accordingly. Kept checking the RAT. Still nothing. After a week and a half, the Poly waitlist still had not been processed. I was just a few days before my 60 day mark, and beginning to doubt that the Poly waitlist had in fact matched. I called Member Services to have them combine my first three nights (booked as two reservations), and asked at that time about the waitlist request. I was told that it was still active. No indication that it had matched. Okay, so maybe we're moving to Boardwalk after all. Fine. Still not seeing anything in the RAT. Then, just when I'd about given up on Poly for that last night, the waitlist was processed. Boardwalk cancelled, reservation complete at 61 days out, and fully two weeks after the request disappeared from my dashboard.
So these are my take-aways from this experience:
- It appears that the experienced members on this board were right, as usual. Presumably when the waitlist request disappeared from my dashboard, the request had matched, even if the CM I spoke to said otherwise.
- A couple of people upthread have suggested that the number of people who are actually finding matches for individually waitlisted nights is probably (unintentionally) exaggerated; more likely these nights have already matched, and the nights people are finding in the RAT are actually further availability beyond the matched waitlist. If the gap between matching and processing can be up to two weeks (or maybe even more?), I can easily believe this to be true.
- IME, if another reservation is found with the same dates and occupants when a waitlist is processed, that reservation will be cancelled, even if you choose "No, don't cancel my existing reservation" when placing the waitlist request. This happened to me with both of my successful waitlist requests. It's a little inconvenient if you're hoping to find/match multiple nights before giving up an existing reservation, so best to be aware of the possibility before going ahead with the waitlist request. (ETA: In both cases the waitlisted night completed my reservation; possibly the result would be different if a matched request covered a single night in the middle of a longer stay.)