Our sales agent made a point several times of telling us to make sure we schedule our first Welcome Home visit over the phone rather than booking on line. He made it sound like there was going to be something special about doing so. Let’s just say that my phone encounter was not exactly “magical” 
. I got the impression from the DVC person on the call that there is no difference between scheduling your first visit over the phone vs. online. Did I miss something?
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Question: did you buy direct or resale?
When you buy direct, that first Welcome Home Visit will generally be made to happen even if you do not see availability in the booking engine.
When you buy resale, that’s not a thing (from what I understand).
Depending on what you were booking, there may not have been an issue with availability so there wouldn’t have been any magic to have been created.
No gifts or anything for either of my first visits (original contract was resale, next was direct).
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Thank you for stating this. We bought direct. I did not want to get our sales agent in trouble for telling me this, so I wasn’t very specific in my post above. But he definitely led us to believe that for the first welcome home visit, member services has access to inventory that DVC owners won’t necessarily see online and they will try to book you where and when you want to stay. The girl I talked to did not seem to know what I was talking about and told me that she can only see what I see online. When I went back and told the sales agent this, he claimed that she was wrong and I should call and try to talk to someone else.
I just wanted to confirm this with someone here.
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Yeah definitely call back.
I wonder if your sales agent can be a liaison. Getting you availability is the only magic that the first Welcome Home Visit booking is about.
I will say there are times they can’t make it happen. But I would say that’s the exception and far from the rule. Rather rare for a new member to not get the booking they are after for that first visit.
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When are you trying to book? As @OBNurseNH they do have the ability to book a stay when you can’t see anything. I have heard examples of times when they are unable to get a studio in your home resort, but will give you a choice of 3-4 great alternatives.
If you are trying to book certain times (like the beginning of December now) it would be very limited.
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Admittedly, there may not be availability. Our situation is that we have a February Use year. So for this one time, we got 2025 points as well as getting 2026 points on 2/1/26. Since the Poly is not my home resort, I figured I would never have a chance to book a 1BR in the Tower at 7 months. So, I was trying to book something for late October or early November. I know it is probably unavailable, but when I questioned the person from Member Services about special consideration for first Welcome Home visits, she seemed unaware of any “special inventory” that she might be able to check. The conversation did not leave me feeling satisfied that she even tried to help. She wasn’t nasty or anything and might be a newbie, or maybe I misinterpreted something.
I will try calling again.
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My experience with buying direct and scheduling my Welcome Home visit was more like yours so far. I bought in June w/ a Dec. use year, and I wanted to book early December. Which I didn’t realize at the time (but now know) is a very in-demand season. I did ultimately get rooms through waitlists–though they were not what I wanted exactly. And I did it all myself online. The calling member services did nothing for me in this case, and I was told that they didn’t have additional inventory for a Welcome Home visit.
I also wondered why they made a big deal about scheduling it that way, and my hypothesis was that they thought it added a personal touch and an opportunity to walk you through it. Like a tutorial or something.
I hope you fare better when you call again!
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Thanks for letting me know!
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I’ve never heard of this. 
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Bummer that they seem to be so inconsistent about this!
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…caaaaan one retroactively activate it? What if you buy another contract direct?
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If you buy another, they will match your use year
IDK about an additional Welcome Home visit because you’re already in da club
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Just a little update…
I called Member Services again today. I first spoke to a relatively new person who did not know much about the “offline inventory”, but she did the right thing and connected me with her trainer. The trainer was extremely helpful and was aware of the extra inventory for first Welcome Home visits. She connected with her supervisor, and they checked the offline inventory. She could only come up with 3 consecutive days in the middle of a week for the timeframe we wanted, so I passed.
I was grateful though that she made an effort to try to help me. She also gave me a separate phone number to call for help with the first Welcome Home visit and new member orientation. She said the people who work that line are much more accustomed to helping new members.
So, I am satisfied (even if it was all pretend ).
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After reading a thread on the DIS, it seems you can get a Welcome Home visit for every direct contract you buy.
However you can only use the new contract points. So if you add on 25 / 50 points you won’t have much to play with, although you can borrow points.
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We just booked our first Welcome Home stay so sharing this in case it helps anyone in the future! (Warning it’s kinda long)
We closed on two direct contracts at the Poly in July, but didn’t have any immediate plans at that point to use our points, so we didn’t bother with the new member orientation call (plus I already had resale points, so I was familiar with booking). We then decided to go in February and booked/modified ourselves a couple times, not thinking about the Welcome Home stay, and ended up with a 2BR at BRV. A few days ago, my sister was talking to someone she knows who is also a direct owner, and he was saying we should definitely trying calling to see if they can get us something else for the Welcome Home stay.
So, my dad called MS this morning asking them if it was possible for them to do anything since we already booked, and long story short, all they did was change our waitlist we had at BCV from ending at 31 days to 7 days. I found the email with the new member orientation call # and called through that a few hours later. The person I spoke to from MS was very nice, but unsure if anything could be done since we had already booked ourselves. I was prepared to ask about what happened if we cancelled ours, but she said she would check with the IT Support team if they could do anything. Then she noticed notes on our account from my dad calling earlier and saw they had already marked our BRV room as our Welcome Home stay. I explained how my dad had called but wasn’t as knowledgeable (
) and the only thing they changed was the waitlist, so she said she would still try but couldn’t guarantee anything. She asked which resorts we had in mind and I said our preference was two studios at either GF or Riviera. She said they don’t book at GF for Welcome Home stays, but she would have them check Riviera.
She came back saying they could do it, but they couldn’t guarantee that they had two resort view studios until they booked the first one, but they definitely had one resort view and one preferred view as a backup. I said that was fine, she put me on hold again, and I was refreshing my dashboard as they made the updates and saw we got our two resort view studios! When she came back, she let me know that we got them and that they could not modify this again as a Welcome Home stay. She also said the IT person was the same one who had looked earlier when my dad called, so it helped that they were already familiar with our situation.
Morale of that story is to do the new member orientation call before booking anything on a new direct contract! I had checked what cash rooms were available for our dates on the Disney site before calling and knew there were Riviera studios on there, so I felt more confident asking about those (assuming that’s where they pull the inventory from). We also feel like this switch was “worth it” to get resort view which may be harder to get at 7 months going forward. And we’re excited to stay at the Riviera for the first time and save 22 points over our BRV booking!
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