I’m going to reserve a room only reservation at a WDW resort, likely the Contemporary, for a number of days in December/January 2020/2021. We may go to Universal beforehand. If I want to reduce the number of days on my reservation, will that be possible or will they cancel the entire reservation first and then try to rebook whereby I could lose the whole reservation?
Note this is not to game the FP+ system. My final plans would be set at around 6 months out well before the FP+ window.
They cancel and rebook. I was in the same situation as you are (except at BWI) and ended up booking two separate reservations so I could just cancel or modify the first one if necessary and not lose the “core” days.
I booked the first 2-day reservation at Hilton LBV, figuring I’d be able to modify that one. This turned out to be a good idea, because I did have to shave off a day and it was no problem to do that at the Hilton. I also tried to modify the Disney reservation online, by adding a day. However, I couldn’t do it even though they had availability on that day, because the rest of the week was sold out. It would have been possible to book a single day at Disney but the room rate had gone up substantially, and I didn’t want to have to (possibly) change rooms which would kind of cancel out some of the benefits of doing the whole vacay at BWI.
I don’t know for sure if I would have lost that core Disney reservation if I tried to reschedule the whole thing, but it was for Memorial Day Weekend and the CM I spoke with told me not to risk it. The days you’ll be there are even busier than that.
Thanks. A follow-up question - will MDE allow me to have two reservations in my name that overlap? I’m trying to avoid creating a fake account and all.
I don’t know, sorry, as mine didn’t overlap.
I do know that if you have an overlapping reservation at a Hilton or other “partner” hotel that gets the 60-day FP, you have to manually link it through MDE. Until you do, Disney won’t know that reservation exists.
So that one could overlap with your Disney reservation without any concern, you would just modify it and THEN link it up. Which would not be a problem since you’d have all this finalized 6 months ahead of time.
I didn’t have any problem reducing my room only reservation by one day recently. I told them in advance, before they tried to change it, not to cancel the whole reservation and they said it wasn’t a problem, that they wouldn’t cancel it. Reducing it wasn’t a problem.
Thanks. When the window to reserve opens, I’ll book online two overlapping reservations and see what happens and report back.
MDE will allow and recognize both reservations. I had two reservations for about 6 months on MDE and there were no problems.
Reducing stay should not be a problem, going the other way can be a problem due to availability.
If there is a price change after you book that will apply when making length of stay changes as far as I know.
The problem arises when the room type you want is fully booked, and that’s the OP’s concern.
If there’s no availability, adding or removing days is a problem. I discussed this with a CM 9 months ahead of time, specifically because my room type was rare (there were only 10 of them) and I was going over a holiday. I asked if I could remove days from the reservation and she said only as long as there was availability. Which didn’t make sense to me.
She said she had to cancel & rebook it, and if mine was the only one left there was a small chance it could get scooped up in that time.
So I made a leading reservation to cover those “iffy” days.
When I did finally get my firm dates, I thought maybe I could cancel that leading reservation and just add to my main one, so I tried to add a day online and couldn’t, though I could book the extra day separately. So I called in and the CM said my original dates were sold out (which I obviously already knew), and to add the extra day he’d have to cancel and rebook. Odds are, no one would nab it in those few minutes but I didn’t want to take the chance.
If there’s availability, you or the CM can modify a reservation and you get the same reservation number, so it doesn’t look like it’s been canceled and rebooked, but it sounds like that’s what they’re really doing. The only way to find that out, though, is to try to modify something that’s completely sold out, which is what happened to me.
I wonder if they requested the same room for original and added day if they could make sure u get it.
Well, that was the problem. They couldn’t request the room because the rooms were already all booked up. It didn’t matter that mine was one of the parties who was filling up the rooms!
Apparently, all hotels use this same type of reservation system but you only run into it at WDW because they can be completely booked.
, they make it sooo difficult.
They do! I’ve traveled pretty extensively, and I have to admit I’ve never run into this before.
Can u get a 1 day res at that hotel? If would suck to change rooms but u could pack everything up but what u needed for 1 day and only bring that 1 suitcase over to the new room. Have a “1day” bag packed. Ive done that b4, not at disney, but like if I was just going to stop at a hotel for the night on the way…
Sorry, ur looking at reducing. Hmmmm that sucks to have to pay an extra day or risk losing.
Especially if u do DDP, that adds a day!
I’m not so sure about this. Two travel agents have warned me to book a bounceback longer because it’s easy to shorten a stay but extending can be much harder based upon availability.
I also don’t know about changes requiring cancellation and re-booking requirement, as you said they can modify. I have never experienced this. I am going in two weeks on a bounceback. I have changed the dates two times and there was never a cancellation and re-book. I have the same confirmation number from initial booking. This is not the first time I have changed dates and it did not require a cancellation.
I feel like ur kinda safe if their doing it back to back. Maybes theres a way to have everything for the new res ready, then cancel on diff comp and rebook quickly.
TA make changes over the phone with CM’s
The reason why it’s hard to know the answer to this question is that the reservation number never changes. It doesn’t look like anything’s been canceled.
It’s rare because it only happens when the room type you want is fully booked. I also had never had it happen before now, but I had two CMs basically tell me the exact same thing- once when I wanted to shorten it by a day, and once when I wanted to add a day.
And, as @drvillarejos mentioned, if they do it fast enough then there’s no problem. It’s a theoretical problem, really, but one I just didn’t want to deal with because I really wanted that big, 5 person Deluxe room at the BWI. Both CMs said if I had my heart set on it, then don’t risk it.