I’m stumped. I used to have great luck with the room finder but not anymore. To add insult to injury my room requests are even available when I check in and I get switched to them. Has anyones resort told them they don’t get Touring Plans room requests?
For example:
I requested Zebra Trail got parking lot view Giraffe at AKL but Zebra was available and we were moved. Requested 60s at Pop got 90s but were moved to standard view 60s because it was available. I explain nicely why I requested what I did and get moved (for Pop it’s because my kids are learning to swim and can only use the splash pad, for AKL it was personal preference but just asked if they had it available)
If the rooms are available, in the same room category as I booked, and I asked in advance why am I getting the worst of the worst locations? We have a trip to CBR next month and I again have a preference (and also we can’t get up the stairs).
Help me write a better room request for find a better way to send it. Thank you in advance!
Room assignments are done centrally now. But what we don’t really know is how the teams work: are there teams working on a specific group of resorts for example. Are the teams fixed, in that Joe always works on the All Stars resorts, whilst Carrie always works on the Moderate resorts?
There are certainly more reports of people saying the room requests have not been added to their reservation when they ask at the front desk.
My theory is that there are some room assigners who don’t action room requests that TP emails to them. And if supervisors don’t add them, then anyone in their team probably doesn’t, certainly anyone they train won’t.
This happened to me in december. I had a theme park view category at Poly, requested a higher floor and included a range of specific room numbers on the 3rd floor. Was placed in a room on the 1st floor with the worst view in the category. I asked front desk and was moved up a floor, exactly below one of the rooms I requested. They even mentioned “oh yea we have a couple of rooms on the second floor”. So by all logic it seemed like my request was not received or at least not acknowledged in any way.
I wonder if phoning in requests has more chance of succeeding?
I actually had a room request done in TP, one in the on-line reservation, and one where I called and made a request. All for the same reservation. I don’t know which, if any, worked. I requested Congress Park at SSR, building 1. I got Congress Park Building 4. So either I just lucked into Congress Park rather than The Springs, or they at least saw I requested Congress Park.
TP room requests are emailed directly to the room assigners . This is an email provided by Disney but requests are not guaranteed and can be ignored.
Your request does not go to the resort since they don’t assign the rooms. Since it is a separate email I think rooms can be assigned without that request being manually added to your reservation?
One thing to keep in mind is that some rooms ( and range of rooms can be requested by many people. If 40 people request the same room/block 30 will be disappointed?
So is it better just to check in at the desk and see what you got, so that you can request something different/better if it’s available right then? We’ll be checking in late evening at YC and I’m worried we’ll just be stuck with whatever is left at 9 PM. We booked Standard which I know means we have a decent chance of a roof view, but we don’t really plan on hanging out in the room at all.
I think it is hard to tell if the TP or any individual request even gets into the system or are taken into account - as a whole, many obviously because of people’s positive reports, of course.
But in my own experience I haven’t had good luck with the room assigners listening to anything I requested, even if I included more focused info on what I really cared about, like “high room in Casitas 3 please” rather than on a particular room.
I prefer to check in at the desk rather than online because it feels more like a milestone in the start of the vacation - and I’ve found that when I ask nicely if they received my request for “XYZ”, more often than not it will result a flurry of keystrokes on the keyboard and a nice room assignment.
Last time at CSR we were upgraded to one of the best room views (IMHO) in a preferred building - and that was on a Hotwire hidden deal booking that cost me $155 per night.
I’ve used the room request 4 times in the last few years. One was this past September and one just this month, the week before Easter, which was of course a very busy time. We never got the exact room but did always get close to what was requested. Enough of the request was given so that I’m confident it was not just random luck. I’m always very polite in the notes section using please and thanking them for considering the requests. This was twice at Pop Century and once each at All Star Movies and All Star Music. Music was the most recent.
One way would be to call after making a request and ask if any requests are recorded on the reservation. I know people who have done that.
With the TP requests it’s harder. I guess you could wait until say 2 weeks after the request would have emailed in and call. If nothing had been added by that point it would suggest it had been ignored.
Personally we always do both. We either make a TP request or call DVC - depending what type of reservation it is - and then go to the front desk when we arrive. We have to pick up magic bands anyway so it makes no difference.
I cannot imagine that would be a step they could take? I guess I always just assumed the email comes in and the room assigners try to tentatively place someone in that area but as length of stays and similar requests overlap, requests get bumped.
Of course that is my mind trying to understand a technical process.
Keeping this in mind, I knew that the most detailed request was going to be through TP…so I entered a request in the reservation on-line first, called later to make the request over the phone, all before the month mark, when TP would send a request. This way, if the TP request was made, it would be the last one they see. If they ignored the TP request, it would default to what I told them over the phone.
I have used the room finder out here several times. Not once have I gotten even close to my request. I finally asked at the desk, if they had even gotten my request via Touring Plan. They said what is that and we have NO requests on your reservation. This has happened at different resorts and though Touring Plan’s swear they have a in for room requests, WDW resorts say they have no such thing. So here’s the solution. Call your resort of choice a week in advance. Make a room request with a little leeway and 9 times out of ten we get very close to our request. Maybe not the exact room but the floor and the building. Because we are older and stay at Pop Century for the Skyway access, we requested the 60’s building close to the room we stayed at before that was to our liking and received a room in that building on the floor we had had before. Very close to the room we requested but also told them we didn’t need the exact room but in the general area in the 60"s building which is very close to the Skyway. Hope this helps.
But others have had their Touring Plans requests met. Which lends support to the fact that some CMs do action TP requests and others ignore them.
We also know they start room assignments earlier than a week out. That’s why TP email in 30 days ahead. 2-3 weeks is when the room assignment team starts.
And to clarify, you cannot call a resort. All those calls are answered by CMs in a call centre who can only pass a message on to the resort. Your best bet is to call the WDW reservations number and get them to add the request. Or if it’s a DVC reservation, call Member Services because the regular reservations CMs cannot update the DVC system.
We’ve had the CM at the front desk say that they have our request and once we were upgraded because they couldn’t meet it - we just wanted to be in the same building as my parents and they upgraded both rooms from standard to river view. We’ve also been assigned the exact room that we were asked more than once.
We have tried the TP room request 7 times and have never been successful getting close to what we have requested. It really isn’t all that big of a deal since we have only stayed at the Moderate resorts. The rooms are for sleeping and showering for us as we are in the parks all day. Walking an extra 2-3 minutes is nothing in the grand scheme of things - we used our FitBits - so 27,000 steps a day versus 26,000 really doesn’t end up making a difference - we are going to POP in May so maybe our “luck” will change.
