Newbie Booking at 7 months

Hi! We are new DVC members and tried booking at a non-home resort this morning right at a 7 months for the first time. We had a reservation at Grand Flo (our home resort) that I was attempting to modify to Contemporary. When I logged in at 7:30 a.m., our desired dates and room type were fully available at the Contemporary, but I received a notification that I couldn’t book until 8 a.m. At about 7:50 a.m., I logged back in and today’s date was already sold out, so even though the rest of the dates were open, the only thing I could do was waitlist (which I did). We are flexible within a few days, so I plan to try again tomorrow, which shows available currently. Any tips for this newbie? Does the window actually open before 8 and that’s why today’s date disappeared before I could snag it? Other ideas or suggestions for actually getting a reservation at the 7 month mark?

The only way the dates should disappear is that someone modified a reservation before 8am. I know many people say that owners don’t “walk” a reservation (drop the first day and add another day at the end) at 7 months but I think sometimes they do. If people are “walking” those dates might start reappearing in 3-7 days.

If the dates are available you should go to plan a vacation. Set up your search and be ready to hit it when time.gov hits 8am

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Thanks! It sounds like I did everything correctly then and just got unlucky. I’ll give it another go tomorrow!

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This is one of the most frustrating things with DVC but unfortunately there is no way around it. You just have to keep checking.

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Well I got our reservation at Contemporary this morning! Yeah!

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Congratulations! I think this one of the more frustrating parts of DVC. But availability the first week after 7 months is usually all over the place, so patience pays off!

Did you get it one day later or the dates you wanted yesterday?

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Yes, we paid close attention to the advice to buy at a resort you want to stay at so that’s why our home resort is Grand Floridian! I was modifying a reservation there for the same weekend – and we would have been just fine there – but we thought it would be fun to try a new resort if we could. Trying to change it at 7 months seemed like a good idea to do for this trip when the stakes were low and our dates were a little flexible. Anyway, yesterday I tried for Jan 23-28. The 23rd never became available, but today I was able to get 24-29. Success!

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