So, my husband and I just bought contract at Kidani Village! Yay!! We have a trip booked on points for November, but that is wwwaaayyyy to far away.
I’m trying to book a trip on points in the month of May. We have 2 different weeks that might work for us, but I can’t find any resorts that have more than just one or two nights, and we would prefer to do all 4 nights of our trip in one place. So…how do I waitlist? What is the strategy?
Are certain resorts or room types more or less likely to become available?
Can I put in more than one waitlist request at a time?
Is there a realistic chance that a waitlist request like this might come through?
I definitely don’t want to pay the points for a 2-br or 3-br for just the 2 of us, but depending on the resort I might be willing to do a 1-br. Studio would be ideal.
I believe you can do two waitlists at any given time. Deciding what to waitlist is tricky. Yes, certain resorts/room categories are much less likely to come through. For instance Boardwalk standard view studio or Beachclub studio. A SSR studio might be a safer waitlist or an OKW studio. I think AKL might be okay too.
But in addition to waitlisting … you can often find things pop up if you stalk the site. And I mean checking availability 6-10 times per day. It can work! But you have to be diligent. Also, at around the 30 days mark, you may start to see movement as people decide they can’t make their trips.
Book what you can get for now. For example, I recently had 2 nights at one resort, 1 night homeless (for which I reserved a room at a 2nd resort on cash) and 2 nights at the same second resort.
Set up a waitlist for what you need but can’t get. You can hold 2 waitlists at a time.
Stalk the site. Pretend you’re a gambling addict at the Las Vegas slots. You’ll probably find what you need/want eventually, and usually before the waitlist will find it.
Once you secure the rest of your nights, cancel the cash rooms you have and call member services to link the reservations if needed (IE I have 2 separate reservations for studios at BWV - I will have member services link those for me in the hopes that I won’t have to move rooms).
Studios are probably the toughest to get at the outset, but generally the highest number of units. So again, you can probably eventually get what you want/need.
Also - the rooms that will cost more points (ie lake view, savanna view, boardwalk view, etc) will probably be easier to find as people hunt for the less expensive rooms to hoard points
Got it. In my new member call they mentioned being able to book the villas with cash. That’s just if there are villas that haven’t been booked with points? But in my case all the villas are booked with points, thus I need to book a regular pleeb-room?
Stalking the site already worked!! I was able to grab all 4 nights in one ressie at SSR. And I’ve put in a waitlist for a couple of resorts I would rather stay at.