My first experience with them 3-ish years ago was fantastic, they had the exact hotel and dates I needed and I saved a fortune. My got-to hotel is the Pop Century.
For my second use I had specific dates, it was the Illuminations/Epcot (not really) Forever swap. No offerings for that date, so I paid rack rate. I found out after arriving the hotel was fully booked for those days, so figured that was bad timing on my part.
Now working on my third trip wit them, but for the entire month of September they only had one week available. It was Pop, which was great, but then they only had some of those nights still available and said no more from Disney. For an eight night stay, the best I could get was three nights in the middle, so my eight-night stay would have been three independent reservations for 4 (rack), 3 (MVT), and 1(rack) nights respectively. Ick. Also not great for ADRs since Disney doesn’t concatenate them for booking purposes. Also, the MVT rate was OK, but not nearly as big a discount as before, ~25% vs ~40%.
If I’ve just been unlucky, very OK with that and will keep on using them, but curious if others are having issues too? It could be Disney clamping down too, or just as likely some COVID-19 panic consequence.
Are there other outfits like MVT anyone uses for comparison shopping? I’d like my reservation settled by March 19th so I can get 180-day ADRs in. MVT falling through has me in a bit of a time crunch.
Disney has been making it more and more difficult for travel agencies like MVT to make a living planning Disney vacations. In fact, I personally know some travel agents who said they know a lot of agents who just won’t do Disney vacation planning any longer for their clients.
Gotta blame Disney on this one. They are going to great lengths to ensure no one makes any money off the reservations but themselves. I don’t think it will be long before the discount ticket resellers will be driven out as well.
I don’t think it’s MVTs fault, it’s Disney!!
We had a great experience with MVT in 2018 with the price of POP and the tickets. Then this year there was no discount during the dates and resort I wanted… it was discouraging. I worked with the same agent and she said discounts have been harder to get from Disney. And when Disney does release the discounts (not agency exclusives) they are less and less availability.
The other agency that people have worked with is Pixie Dust And Pirate Hooks. At least it won’t hurt to see if they have any agency exclusives.
We plan to be back next year or two and I’m starting to look into renting points from David’s.
I don’t doubt at all that is is Disney making life difficult. In a weird way I hope it is something related to COVID-19 over-reaction too as that would at least be temporary.
Thanks desire499mike for the other suggestions. I’ll poke at those in hopes of avoiding rack rate.
I’m currently booked with MVT and booked last year when no known exclusives were released yet. This is entirely Disney and how they were limiting a lot of outside discounts on rooms due to SWGE and the increase in crowds. The week we are going had had exclusives every year until this year. I luckily got a decent pin code, but kept my reservation through the TA, since I was already booked through them.
I wonder if you perhaps meant to talk specifically about agencies that deal in convention or large-group sales. I know they are not offering as much to these agencies in the last year or two.
But otherwise I don’t think Disney has done much - if anything - to make it harder for travel agents to work with them and with clients on bookings.
One example has to do with Disney Cruise lines. Now, I’m speaking second hand, so I do understand all the details…but basically, if an agent reserves a cruise reservation for a guest, they get the commission. But if they then reschedule that reservation, Disney treats it like it was a cancellation and rebook, and the travel agent no longer gets the commission! It didn’t used to be this way. Also, the commission rates for cruises are far less than any other cruise line out there. Just two examples of many examples the travel agent I spoke to talked about.
In the case of MVT, Disney eliminated the way MVT was able to secure certain type of discounted reservations.
I booked a room in January better than rack with MVT for POP in December. It wasn’t 40% but it was still something like $30-40 less a night. That said I was also considering another stay at CSR and the prices they had for that were significantly higher than what I could have booked myself. I also didn’t see any benefit to buying my park tickets through them (which I haven’t done yet and won’t do for a while - I’m kind of hoping that they extend the 4 days 4 parks deal as an excuse to stay more than a couple of nights).
I don’t see anything available for POP on our dates now. Perhaps people are shifting their vacations out and it’s dropping prices in the short term but cutting future availability?
ehsanchez: Yep, your experience matches mine. Seems like both less availability and less of a discount compared to rack rate. The last “big book” I got (2018) did a pretty good job of explaining why they are able to offer discounts better than anyone, so if still accurate, means they are taking big financial risks on reserving blocks of rooms. With all the all the travel concerns now, I fear in addition to Disney making life difficult, they may be reducing their exposure as well.
Regrettably, I’m getting resigned to rack rate for this upcoming trip. I will still book through MVT in hopes something comes up, but feeling less confident it will.
I’m glad you asked this. I had the same outcome with MVT. I was kind of shocked at the prices I got quoted. I know the resort prices went up, but the big discounted prices have not been there for when we are going. We are even going over one of the exclusives. I was able to book a Sun N Fun offer through Disney which was more reasonable for us. Hope things get better for them. I feel Disney is controlling it.
OK, while clearly a very limited sampling, looks like I am not alone.
Just to be really clear, I am not grumpy with MVT, still booking my rack rate reservation through them, and they still have my loyalty for future bookings. They certainly have served me well in the past and perfectly happy sticking with them if this is something temporary. It just means a lot more comparison shopping before committing.
I worked with the same agent and she said discounts have been harder to get from Disney. And when Disney does release the discounts (not agency exclusives) they are less and less availability.