Now that Orbitz has put a $150 per booking cap on its discount codes, frugal Liners have to resort to various tactics to get the best total discount. The easiest thing to do is to break your reservation into several back-to-back stays that are below the discount cap. I know that WDW can “link” back-to-back reservations so that you do not have to change rooms, but this raises several questions:
Can you do this directly with WDW yourself, or do you have to contact Orbitz Customer Service to have them do it for you (much like adding kids to a reservation for free)?
What effect will this have on your ability to make FPP reservations and ADRs for your entire stay? Will you be able to make 180+10 ADRs and 60-day FPPs based on the first day of your linked stay, or is each reservation treated separately?
Any Liners with experience with linked stays out there?
Have done a split stay I can tell you that you will only get 180 plus length of each stay for ADR’s. The easiest way around this would be to book one trip for the length through Disney until after the 180 days and then cancel after your within 180 days of checkout and rebook through Orbitz since RO discounts aren’t usually out that far in advance anyways. For FPP’s it’s actually based on your ticket length and it activates on your first check-in so you’d still get all FP’s at 60’s days of first checkin.
Interesting to see about the cap I hadn’t heard about that. That could result is some short stays when booking deluxe resorts. Maybe it’ll lead to more split stays.
As for linking I would guess that since people have discovered how to call the wholesale line to add kids they could probably do the same to make any notes on the reservation. My guess is calling that line Disney assumes you are with Orbitz and not the reservation holder.
Thanks @Outer1! I was going to flag you on this post as I was pretty sure you were the split stay guru, but decided to hold off in case my memory was faulty.
Yes, making a placeholder RO reservation direct with WDW is a good way to get around th ADR issue. I thought that WDW had fixed the FPP reservation system so that you were limited by stay length, but I guess that is not the case.
As with all split stays, you’ll only be able to make ADR’s 180 days prior for your length of stay. Hypothetically, the work around would be to book a room only for the entire time alongside your actual reservations.
Once you’ve gone beyond your length of stay and you’re well within the 180 days for your entire stay, you could cancel said reservation and still have all your ADR’s.
FPP’s are at 60 days if you are onsite and based on # of days on your tickets.
Can I ask, there was a post on chat the other day that Disney was enforcing a change fee to stop people from canceling rooms after making ADRs or FPs. I honestly couldn’t understand but the claim seemed to be you could add days, but if you reduced you were charged and that it was an attempt by Disney to stop people from canceling after ADRs. It seems as if this would be impossible, but would complicate this further.
From my notes - taken from someone on Lines.
Orbitz resi - Call the main number 407-939-4357. Get to the
operator by saying “something else” or pressing 4. Ask to be connected
to Disney Wholesale Travel.
OR
Disney Wholesale Direct - 407-939-7671. I think this is the best number.
I did this for our summer stay - worked like a charm! I got the impression that they think you are a TA or work for Orbitz - didnt say any different. You can do any changes to the account.
@Principal - I keep reading about that too. I think it probably refers more to packages and probably not a full cancel, but modification? If need to book a RO “holding” reservation for through WDW - you will be canceling the entire thing anyway once Orbitz is booked and linked so I don’t see how they can charge anything - nothing about any fee in a RO reservation. I hate modifying reservations anyway - I always just book new ones and cancel the old at my leisure.
Also - I remember one of the reservation CMs telling me that when FD reservations get canceled, modified they don’t free back up right away in the system so sometimes they stay unbooked. I don’t know if that has been fixed (or even if it is true).
I can see why Orbitz and others (Cheap Tickets) is capping now - although I do not like it :). I booked 4 CL rooms between Universal/WDW for July and saved around $1300 on all. I happened to get the last Universal rooms booked Friday morning - before the codes changed to enforce the cap - I got very lucky. Probably more and more people booking the expensive WDW resorts and other expensive resorts and Orbitz losing too much on these. Plus the Orbitz money - My last Universal I got $100 back too.