So I’ve been pretty lax on the WDW planning since I made my ADRs months ago. My FPP window is tomorrow (Tues March 5) so I was doing a quick browse of the forum to make sure nothing major had happened. And I learned about the new FPP system, and now I’m not sure what to do!
I have a split stay using rented DVC points, and I have WDW park hoppers linked to my MDE account. I also have a backup room-only stay booked for the same timeframe at a basic POR room. My plan was to cancel the POR room sometime soon after the 30 day mark as long as the DVC points/room had no problems.
(If you’re curious about the reasoning: I booked the POR room in case something weird happened with the DVC points/room, ex. the owner cancelled the reservation. My understanding is that the points become almost worthless at the 30 day mark, so it’s much less likely for things to go south at that point though still possible.)
Part of me wants to leave things as is. That way I should be able to do my FPP for the whole trip, and when I cancel the POR room I’ll have FP reservations in place for the entire timeframe and can maybe (hopefully?) work with a CM to keep my FP in place.
Another part of me is worried about losing the FP for the later part of my trip if I cancel the POR reservation around 30 days prior to arrival. I’m considering canceling the POR room the day before my FPP window would open for the second half of my split stay. That way, if my FP are cancelled I’m not much worse off than I would otherwise be.
Another part of me says to just cancel the POR room now and make my FP reservations for the first part of my stay tomorrow, and wait to make the FP plans for the second part of my stay. And hope that the glitches in the FP system might allow me to make reservations for my whole trip anyways.
So you are planning on staying at POR for part of the stay, but as long as dvc points “work out” you’d change for second half to be at DVC? I’ll bet CM can work with you, so you don’t lose out. Just out of curiosity, did you go through a rental agency to rent points?
No, sorry I didn’t explain better! We are planning to do BW for 2 nights and AKL for the rest. We have the DVC points rented and paid for and the rooms reserved. There’s always a level of risk with DVC points, though. To mitigate that risk, we booked POR for the entire stay - all of the POR reservation is a back up. When the risk decreases at 30 days before our stay, we plan to cancel the POR reservation.
I used Dave’s vacation club to rent points. You won’t lose money if you go through Dave’s - if you don’t get the room you initially reserved they’ll refund the money - but if something goes wrong with the room, there’s no guarantee that they’ll have something to replace the room with. So in the unlikely event that the DVC reservation gets cancelled at, say, 45 days out because the DVC owner decided they wanted the points for something else, or they didn’t pay their dues and Disney cancelled all their reservations, or whatever reason, you get your money back from Dave’s but you may not have a room. And if the places you’d want to stay is fully booked, you’re just out of luck. Hence my POR reservation. Chances are very good I won’t need it. But it makes me feel better to know it’s there.
So far there have been no FPP actually cancelled despite the reported changes. There is a thread on Disboards with some testing I have been following. Disney even sent an email to someone on March 1st saying FPP would be cancelled if changes weren’t made by March 2nd, yet the FPP were still were not cancelled. It seems to me that Disney is just trying to scare people with their info/warnings, but don’t seem to be following through. Personally, I would keep your room only at POR and cancel it around 15-20 days out. As long as you have a real stay to cover all those days, you should be fine. I guess there is some risk to it though, so you have to be comfortable with it.