Disney released room and package discounts for December today. I called at 8 am waited on hold for for 1 hour 13 minutes. Could not find a single resort available for my dates (Dec 1 to Dec 9). Was told to check back they may release more rooms later. Hope someone else has more luck. I will be trying again and again and again.
ugh. I am on hold now trying- already looked online and nothing was available, so I hoped calling would net better results. Maybe I should hang up now… hold time was quoted as over 60 minutes and I am 40 min in… hmm.
Have the same issues for Dec4 to Dec11. not a single value resort has availability. there are a couple deluxe resorts with discounted but they are still we’ll over $400 a night so out of our price range.
I was very surprised at the limited availability too. It is hard to believe that they have such little availability. I am still holding out hope for AP November discounts for my existing reservation.
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I called right at 7 am and was only able to get a 1BR villa at Saratoga Springs. I had already booked OKW but they weren’t able to apply the discount to my existing reservation which stinks. I even asked if we could drop the reservation and rebook it right away but I guess they can’t do that. I am very surprised at the limited availability as well. PLUS I was only able to apply it for Sunday through Thursday!! What the heck!!!
I was going to see if I could get a better rate than what I already have for my trip, but after reading this, I reckon I’ll just keep what I have. Two nights at CBR (with the $75/night gift card bonus) and three at POR through MVT, which is already discounted. I will assume that nothing is available, and just keep what I have.
an hour and 15 minutes on the phone, total- no discounts, but the cast member was really kind and apologetic. She suggested that sometimes they stagger the release and suggested trying back again over the next couple of days. I probably won’t sit on hold another 2 hours to check, though.
I did just that when Free Dining launched a month or two ago. I was so annoyed I wasted 3 hours trying to get the discount and ended up with squat!
I waited on hold for an hour, nothing available for Nov. 29-Dec. 2 either. There hasn’t even been military discounts since we first booked in April. Was told to call back as they may add rooms later. Doubtful. They are almost completely booked at all of the resorts during our stay which the crowd calendars claim the levels will be 3 and 4 levels. Not sure I believe that at all.
You can probably still believe the crowd calendar, because the resorts are actually mostly full on any given day throughout the year, even CL 1 days. It does seem odd, though, that they released a discount offer when there didn’t really seem to be many rooms left to begin with. If I had to guess, especially based on what is available, I’d say that DVC has released villas at a few resorts (apparently they are the ones who choose if, when, and how many of their rooms are sold for cash and the regular resort operations have no say), and they decided to promo them.
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What @Nikkipoooo says is correct. On-site guests are not the main driver of crowds in the parks, it is the off-site guests. Because of the mighty WDW marketing machine the resorts operate at or near capacity year-round.
I don’t know what kind of discounts they released but honestly, I would look into availability through Magical Vacations Travel www.magicalvacationstravel.com/
I first saw about them here on TP and decided to give them a go and we couldn’t be happier. They saved us so much money. I know I sound like an ad right now but it’s definitely worth looking into and see if they can save you some extra cash on the dates you’re looking for.
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I understand that for the most part, but we have been 6 times to WDW, we have stayed at various times of the year, we have never seen it booked up like this. Even times when crowds were expected to be at a level 8, there was still plenty of resort availability. We have never NOT been able to get a military discount for resort stay, yet this time it’s totally booked. We have always been able to get some discount or other, not this time. For the crowd calendar to say it’s a level 3, but you can’t even get any restaurants or resorts at the park that day, something is not right with the crowd calendar. Just the resort itself is one thing, but throw in the lack of available park restaurants, and that’s when I start questioning a crowd level 3.
Which resort? We booked AOA for Dec 2-9 and received military discount. It was about 20% off the entire stay.
POR, but when I called multiple times, no resorts have had any military discount at all for my stay which is Nov. 29-Dec. 2. There were a couple a month ago that would have one night available, but not the other nights. So to get the discount, we would have to switch resorts every single night.
Oh man! Is it just that the military discount rooms they allocate for are all taken? I know they only allocate a certain number of rooms at each resort. We booked our room way in advance (like 18 months) and then our travel agent called and got us the discount applied as soon as it was available.