Speculating about Room Availability

Walt Disney World Accommodations
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There is a new blog on Touring Plans entitled, Every Regular Walt Disney Ticket Price in 2022. It was a great piece of work illustrating next year’s date-based park admission prices. The author joked that it looked a little bit like a crowd calendar. That comment took me to an entirely different perspective … resort room availability. Yes, I said availability.

As everyone knows, Disney has date-based resort room prices as well as date-based park ticket prices, which you can find if you open the rate calendar link provided in the rate details section when you see room rate prices on MDE. I couldn’t help but notice how the change by day of those two items is essentially the same when I compared the charts. When the park daily ticket price dropped on Monday from Sunday and then rose again Thursday compared to Wednesday, guess what? Daily resort room rates also went down and back up the same way each day of the week just as ticket prices fluctuated. I never noticed that before until I read this Blog. And I wonder now if that helps explain why room availability can be so difficult at times to obtain.

My wife and I recently looked into another trip to WDW over several different dates. We typically stay 4 nights, Sunday thru Wednesday night. This time we decided to stay 5 nights, Sunday thru Thursday nights. When I searched for a 5-night stay there was virtually no availability anywhere except for what seemed to be the most expensive rooms at those resorts. Very frustrating. However, if I changed the search to a 4 night stay at the same resort for the same week starting on Sunday again, all sorts of availability magically appeared, including less expensive standard view rooms. Even though this happened when looking into booking at the Coronado Springs the 1st week in February, that phenomenon seemed to repeat at most other resorts at different months we looked into as well. Now after reading the Touring Plans Blog, I’m left wondering if WDW deliberately controls room availability to maximize date-based resort pricing, in addition to all the other controlling things they seem to do behind the scene. In other words, they stop a “weekday cheapie” like me from taking the 1st available day (i.e.: Thursday) of the more expensive weekend room prices so I don’t lock out someone else looking for a long weekend stay. I could be way off base, but inquiring minds want to know. :slightly_smiling_face:

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It’s very possible

But also important not to forget is that while nearly all resorts are open at this time, a large value resort has not opened and does not have a predicted re-opening date. This has shifted a whole group of people to the other values, moderates, and deluxes. And I am not sure that they are operating at 100% capacity at resorts, as they are still short a significant number of housekeeping staff.

Add to that a significant increase in travel in recent and near-future months and you’ve got a bit of a perfect storm. Inventory has been VERY TIGHT for these next several months for some time now, and getting tighter all the time.

I think there’s very little that Disney does without intention. So I do think that is in play, but the other factors are contributing as well.

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Sounds plausible. They’ve restricted one night stays through early December. I guess they want to save those rooms for folks wanting a longer stay. The gap in that thinking is the system is not intuitive enough to know when a guest is simply trying to add a one night stay to an existing reservation. :roll_eyes:
I don’t think they have a capacity problem. I think they just want to make it seem that way to drive up the prices.

ETA; I can see how a one night stay exacerbates a staffing shortage in Housekeeping. With a one night stay they HAVE to clean the room for availability purposes. With a less than four night stay they aren’t cleaning rooms at all.

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And reduce the stress on housekeeping for single-night turnover, which is not insignificant.

Exactly